What Would Frida Kahlo Do?

You want an example of a woman who didn’t color in the lines? A woman who said FUCK THE RULES in the loudest ways possible? A woman for whom the Life Script^TM didn’t even exist?

Say hello to one of the most famous Mexican painters of the 20th century, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón.

Should she be your role model? Why not?

Is she without flaws? Nope, she was a messy human just like the rest of us.

Did she buck all the rules? Absolutely.

Let’s start with the easiest and most obvious: beauty standards. The infamous unibrow, the hair on the upper lip.

Even when she cloned herself, she kept these facial features intact:

What’s a bigger middle finger to Eurocentric beauty standards than to accentuate the very thing every drugstore beauty aisle is dedicated to removing? To make us feel terrible about? To shame us about what naturally happens to our own bodies?

A woman with a unibrow AND a mustache. Society will have you believe it’s the height of unattractiveness. One of the worst things a woman can be is ugly. And a unibrow alone is definitely UGLY. But combine that with a mustache?!

Straight to jail!

And yet the woman had many lovers, men and women, aside from her tumultuous marriage to Diego Rivera.

That’s another societal norm she broke. Frida married a much older man, left him, remarried him just a year after the divorce.

She had affairs (so did he). I’m not one to glamorize extra-marital affairs, but what other people do is none of my damn business. Ethical non-monogamy is real. That said, society has a very pearl-clutching attitude towards it.

Frida was bisexual, which is yet another aspect of the sexuality spectrum that society is still wrangling with. Otherwise modern bi-erasure wouldn’t be so prevalent.

A handful of her lovers:

1. Leon Trotsky, exiled revolutionary

2. Georgia O’Keeffe, painter

3. Nickolas Muray, photographer

4. Chavela Vargas, singer

This article details many rumored affairs with all kinds of famous people. Some were attributed as her simply “neutralizing” Diego’s dalliances. Did she actually have an affair with Josephine Baker? Paulette Goddard? Tina Modotti?

Maybe? And so what if she did?

My local Museum of Latin American Art held an exhibit of Muray’s photographs a few years ago. Their affair was not subtle. One of his most famous photographs was made during this time:

And this is all salacious, but what’s the point? That a famous woman had affairs?

No. It’s that this famous woman refused to confine herself to a socially respectable box of what Mexican women “should” be. And was unapologetic about her sexuality.

I love that for her. And us!

Frida mostly eschewed modern trends in favor of traditional Tehuana fashion.

What this achieved, aside from creating the unique style we know her for now, is an assertion of her anti-colonial attitude.

A proud leftist and member of the Mexican Community party, she and Diego both championed “a national renaissance based on the material culture of pre-Columbian civilizations and the indigenous popular culture of Mexico.”1

Her clothes, her hairstyle, her attitude, the way she depicted herself in her own painting all illustrated a clear point of view.

You may not agree with it, but you can’t argue Frida didn’t know what she stood for.

That’s the key: to be clear on what you stand for.

Not the small stuff like whether or not Brussels sprouts are good. It’s not important if you hated them as a kid and now they’re delicious. Congrats, that’s a sign of growth.

But the big things, that guide your morality and how you move through the world, yes. That’s what’s important. Hold on to that.

When you hit a fork in the road, anyone can choose the societally-deemed safe and acceptable route.

Or you can ask yourself, what would Frida do?

Want more? Listen to the latest episode of La Vida Más Chévere, Benchmarks are Bullshit, on your favorite podcasting app.

Get the full show notes at PauletteErato.com. This is episode 97.