Feminism in Fight Club

I enjoyed our class discussion of Chuck Palahniuk’s book, Fight Club. It was interesting to discuss whether the book could be considered a feminist work or not. After thinking about this idea, I suppose that Fight Club does have some elements of feminist thought within it, suggesting a radical shift in women’s and men’s roles when it comes to childcare responsibilities. However, I disagreed with a specific argument presented in class. It was suggested in class that Palahniuk’s novel was a feminist work because it challenges and criticizes women’s obsession with consumerism and therefore open’s their eyes to the fact that they do not need to identify themselves by the material possessions they accumulate. I disagree with this argument because it implies that women are the ones in society who do all the consuming, that women lead our consumer culture. In my opinion, we live in a society dominated by consumerism, material possessions, and status; men and women both fall victim to our consumer culture. In addition, women in particular fall victim to consumerism due to social pressures directed at them. In our society where advertisements and commercials are everywhere, the media tells women that they should fit a certain ideal of feminine beauty, one which involves being thin, young, tan, having large breasts, and being well dressed. Commercials and advertisements pressure and manipulate women into believing that if they buy certain products, they will fit this unnaturally “perfect” imagine of femininity. Essentially, the argument raised in class failed to recognize these social pressures driving women towards consumerism and instead implied that women were at fault for having some kind of “natural” tendency towards consumerism.