When visual appearance is labor, bodily modification raises the commodity’s exchange value.

Evidence

Of course, the body under capitalism becomes the final thing the worker owns. The worker, the “possessor of labour-power, instead of being able to sell commodities in which his labour has been objectified, must rather be compelled to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power which exists only in his living body.” One way of interpreting plastic surgery is that under conditions of spectacle, in which an idealized image becomes something that adds value, surgery is an act designed to make one’s body a commodity with a greater exchange value. Implants, augmentation, and other forms of medical enhancement become practices that enhance one’s labor power when one’s visual appearance is part of the labor one performs. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 157

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete instance of the labor theory of value applied to appearance: surgery as investment in labor-power to raise exchange value.
• XREF: Connects to Marx’s own passage on labour-power as commodity, which grounds the whole book’s framework. — connects to: The grey, disenchanted look of the world stems from its commodity character.; Commodity fetishism conceals labor as the reality underlying the appearance of goods. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 577; The commodity form’s ersion of labor extends into art itself — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 777 (+4 more)