Leisure activities like sunbathing turn people into fetishized commodities

Evidence

Taken in its strict sense, in contradistinction to work, as it at least used to apply in what would today be considered an out-dated ideology, there is something vacuous (Hegel would have said abstract) about the notion of free time. An archetypal instance is the behaviour of those who grill themselves brown in the sun merely for the sake of a sun-tan, although dozing in the blazing sunshine is not at all enjoyable, might very possibly be physically unpleasant, and certainly impoverishes the mind. In the sun-tan, which can be quite fetching, the fetish character of the commodity lays claim to actual people; they themselves become fetishes. The idea that a girl is more erotically attractive because of her brown skin is probably only another rationalization. The sun-tan is an end in itself, of more importance than the boy-friend it was perhaps supposed to entice. If employees return from their holidays without having acquired the mandatory skin tone, they can be quite sure their colleagues will ask them the pointed question, ‘Haven’t you been on holiday then?’ The fetishism which thrives in free time, is subject to further social controls. It is obvious that the cosmetics industry with its overwhelming and ineluctable advertisements, is a contributory factor here, but people’s willingness to ignore the obvious is just as great. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 261

Categorization

• DEFINE: The sun-tan example is a concrete working definition of how commodity fetishism colonizes free time — people pursue the commodity-sign (tan) rather than the pleasure.
• ADDENDUM: Extends the sacrifice piece’s logic in reverse: the tan is a self-imposed minor sacrifice (physical discomfort) made to satisfy a commodity norm, echoing how ritual self-inflicted suffering buys social standing.
• SEED: Article angle: run this analysis on the modern ‘wellness’ industry — biohacking, cold plunges, step-counts — where self-optimization functions exactly as the mandatory skin tone does, as a fetishized commodity-sign one must display.
• XREF: connects to: Commodity fetishism in mass production dictates conventional human behavior — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46