Value, Bodily Capital, and Gender Inequality after Death

Abstract

This article examines dead celebrities’ posthumous careers and considers how gendered inequalities around possession, value, and bodily capital are produced and consumed even after death. The concept of capital plays a significant role in studies of culture, usually in relation to individual possession and personal, social, and material advantage. ‘Bodily capital’ sheds particular light upon the different ways bodies can possess value and how the generation of value is unequally distributed for men and women. Through an analysis of the Forbes Magazine Top Dead Earning Celebrities List (2001–2018), the inequality of value between men and women generated from bodily capital is examined. This article extends the intellectual agenda of sociological research on gendered inequality in bodily capital through dead celebrity posthumous careers. It reveals how, why, and when value is generated unequally with celebrity women’s bodily capital becoming a symbolic resource for others to generate profit. Furthermore, it speculates upon the prospect of a revolution in the ownership and value of gendered bodily capital among dead celebrities and predicts a future shift for women’s bodily capital and value after death.