Frida Kahlo's Effect On Modern Feminism

Frida Kahlo is often hailed as the most well-known and influential woman artist of all time, yet few know of her actual impact on society. While her rise to fame can be attributed to the feminist movement of the 1970s, it is important to acknowledge the influence that her artwork had on modern feminism (Biography.com). Frida Kahlo defied traditional female gender roles through her art by emphasizing the physicality of the female body without eroticizing it and by expressing gender fluidity in her paintings.
Frida Kahlo, an artist born in Mexico City in 1907, was only a teenager when the Mexican government started promoting the local culture of her country as unique and distinct from European culture, a theme that she echoed in her paintings …show more content…
Pain was also a central theme in many of her works because she had to endure it all her life: first as a child when she contracted polio, leaving her with a handicapped leg, and then as a teenager (Bakewell 171). When she was 18 years old, a streetcar crashed into the school-bus that took her home, impaling Frida on a steel handrail, which penetrated her hip and went through her body (Biography.com; Herrera xi, 48). The accident left her with a fractured spine, a crushed pelvis, and a broken foot, all of which affected her later life because of chronic pain, infertility, and multiple surgeries (Herrera xi). Frida started painting during her recovery period after the weeks of hospitalization following the accident (Biography.com). However, she did not let pain stop her from remaining her artistic or (Communist) political activities, even when she had her right leg amputated to halt the spread of gangrene or when she was hospitalized with bronchial pneumonia (Biography.com). She died when she was only 47 years old due to embolism of the lungs, but some believe that she committed suicide (Herrera 431). Her paintings emphasize her physicality and her feelings, while appropriating symbols used in religious portraits, such as the crown of thorns worn by Jesus (Bakewell 172). She uses these religious symbols to challenge …show more content…
For example, she sometimes wore men’s suits, and she exaggerated her facial hair in her self-portraits to look more masculine (Bakewell 169). Her oil on canvas painting Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair shows her with short hair, wearing a navy blue suit with her unibrow and her moustache clearly visible. She is holding scissors and sitting in a “manly” and dominant pose, with her legs spread apart, surrounded by locks of her hair. She painted this self-portrait after her divorce from Diego due to their infidelity toward each other (Lindauer 43). The painting implies that she cut her hair, thus taking on a masculine, active role despite the traditional role of women as passive observers (Lindauer 46). The self-portrait includes notes from a song whose lyrics are: “If I loved, it was for your hair, Now that you are bald, I don’t love you any more.” (Lindauer 43). This statement may be a declaration that acquiring masculine characteristics (baldness) did not serve Frida because Diego left her when her fame as an artist (another masculine trait) exceeded his (Lindauer 43). Thus, she thought that he divorced her because she was too masculine in the sense that she was dominant. However, the painting may symbolize her rejection of the traditional feminine role because she is also wearing