Frida Kahlo--Barbie or Barbada?
Well, I guess I saw this coming when a few months back I chanced on an ad for a children's picture book about Frida Kahlo, featuring a very cutesy, Disney-fied image of her on the cover. If there's one popular figure I thought our culture could never succeed in sanitizing, it would be la Frida! But come to find out that it's actually happened now in an even worse way: that she's been incarnated as a Barbie doll! !Increible!
There's been a lot of complaint about this in the media, I'm glad to say, but of course most of it has focused on the doll's appearance, which strongly resembles that of Mexican born actress Salma Hayak, who portrayed Frida on film. It was actually a good movie, I thought, though it seems to have produced most or all of the images of the artist that most Norteamericanos have ever encountered. For example, few who have spoken out about the appearance of the doll seem aware that Frida Kahlo had not only the famous unplucked "unibrow" (a dumb expression!) omitted in the Barbie version, but also a very visible black mustache, of which Frida as an openly androgynous person, was very proud. The doll's standard Barbie skin tone and non-authentic "Mexican" clothing are hardly worthy of mention.
Would it have been asking too much of these designers to have looked at a few of Frida's very numerous close-up photographs or her many self-portrait paintings; or to have read, say, the Wikipedia article about her life? I suppose to have done so would have given the project too much depth and authenticity for the American consumer. It might also have forced the manufacturers to confront some aspects of their subject which might prove too controversial or unsettling for even many 'feminist" potential purchasers of sexualized plastic figurines. But then, Americans would always prefer to be passive recipients of superficial bits of reality doled out to them by mass media than to feel interested enough to engage in research that might lead to something closer to a deeper truth!
So (though none of these points are at all objectionable to this blogger) here for readers are few seemingly lesser-known fun facts about Frida for those who want to use her as raw material for a prettified and wholesome Latina "icon:"
She was bisexual, though her primary love was her philandering husband Diego Rivera
Her pelvis and reproductive organs were horribly mutilated in a traumatizing accident she experienced as a teenager, as the result of which...
She endured disability and severe chronic pain for most of her adult life, resulting in her eventually losing one of her legs to amputation
She was a communist who reportedly went so far as to have a love affair with Leon Trotsky
In later life, she was arguably an alcoholic and/or prescription drug addict
She was fond of profanity and off-color humor--and eccentric or outrageous behavior in general
As an expression of her suffering, blood, woundedness, maiming, and death were frequent themes of her art work.
A pretty picture for your little girls? (Lots of "teachable moments" there!)
Most scholars of Kahlo's life and art agree that what is most significant about her history is not her pretty, exotic clothing and hairstyle, but her ability to transcend her difficult existence and transform it into a life filled with artistic creativity and meaning. But this truth can't be conveyed by something as superficial as a stylized physical representation.
So in closing, I might suggest that the manufactures of Frida Barbie consider developing a few accessories to go with the doll and lend her a bit more verisimilitude:
Crutches, a wheelchair and an old-fashioned, wooden prosthetic leg
A phial of sugar-pill faux opiate medications, with instructions for use printed in Spanish
A "baby" doll in the form of a miscarried fetus
A back brace and plaster-cast corset
A man's suit for purposes of occasional cross-dressing
A sugar Muertos skull bearing the name "Diego" on its forehead
And--most importantly--an artist's easel, palette, brushes and paints.
Empowered, !Si! Pretty and conventional, !No!
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