INTRODUCTION

The streets of Mexico City’s southern neighborhood Coyoacán are quiet. Colorful houses with intricate iron gates dot avenues named after cities in Europe: Paris, Berlin, Madrid. Suddenly, on Calle Londres, the stillness is broken. Dozens of people are buzzing about, some standing on their toes to get a glimpse at the front of a line that wraps around the block. From 1907 through 1954, this electric-blue house was home to Frida Kahlo.

Since 1958, “La Casa Azul” has been known as Museo Frida Kahlo, or the Frida Kahlo Museum, a donation from the artist’s husband, Diego Rivera, who wanted the home he shared with his wife to become a tribute to her work. And more than six decades after her death, the house still feels full of life.

When I first walk through the tall green entryway beneath the words “Museo Frida Kahlo,” I’m greeted by a large patio surrounded by walls so vibrantly blue they almost hurt the eyes; a jungle-like assortment of greenery and cacti hugs the trunks of palm trees that stretch toward the sky. Before heading inside, I spot a small stone bench off to the side and sit down to drink it all in. I close my eyes to focus on the sound of water sprinkling from a fountain; the autumn air is crisp and cool, and the scent of earth and moss clings to my skin. Overhead, leaves sway and birds caw cheerfully. And then, when I open my eyes, she’s there: a young Frida Kahlo limping through the garden, her skirt sweeping the floor as she hums “Cielito Lindo” to herself. Her hairless dog, Señor Xolotl, scurries behind her. When the front door swings open, she turns, a radiant smile spreading across her face. “Diego!” she cries. I smile, too.

And then, as quickly as it began, my daydream is interrupted by a squeal. A tall, lanky blonde is yelling “Excuse me!” as she trips over my foot. Apparently, I’m in the way; she’s been angling into this spot for a photo. After I shimmy to the side, she strikes the perfect influencer pose as her friend snaps away on her iPhone. As soon as they leave, I sigh with relief that I can return to my peaceful revelry with Frida—but no sooner does the blonde leave than a gaggle of high school girls in matching Frida Kahlo tees arrive, chatting in Japanese as they snap selfies. Behind them, it seems the crowd that has been let into the museo has nearly doubled in size; a chorus of accents fills the previously peaceful space as visitors jostle one another to try to enter the home.

Outside the museum, every corner of Frida’s beloved neighborhood—the place where she was born and where she died, where she fell in love with her husband, where she painted some of her most moving works, and where she always returned after every stint living abroad—is crowded with Frida graffiti, posters, and souvenir carts. For several blocks, you can find a woman on every corner wearing a Frida-style costume calling out that she has items for sale from a basket full of T-shirts, wallets, and tiny twee dolls with felt unibrows. Keep walking toward the center of town, and the stalls of street markets overflow with goods decorated with Frida’s image, everything from dangling beaded earrings to cooking aprons, jewelry boxes, matchboxes, slip-on shoes, iPhone cases, and… salad bowls. And this level of Frida adulation extends far beyond the magical, art-filled streets of Coyoacán.

Since the 1990s, “Fridamania” has been in full swing around the world. The artist’s posthumous popularity only increases every year, and at this point it’s clear that Fridamania is not a passing trend; the world will forever be infatuated with her image, life, art, and legacy. Thanks to a resurgence of her work during the women’s rights and Chicano movements in the 1980s, by the next decade, the late Frida had become a full-blown celebrity. A 2002 Oscar-winning biopic starring Salma Hayek only further fueled our culture’s obsession with her. Now, her influence can be felt thousands of miles away from Mexico City, reaching as far as the museums of Europe, the kitschy shops of Tokyo, and… well, basically anywhere the internet can reach.

Give her name a quick google, and you will find Frida Kahlo keychains. Frida Kahlo wallets. Frida Kahlo magnets, mugs, and music boxes. Frida Kahlo socks, suitcases, and scents. Frida Kahlo beach bags, pens, tequilas, nail polishes, coffee machines, makeup palettes, credit cards, kimonos, sneakers, garden planters. There are even sanitary napkins. (Yes, you read that right.) Her face adorns the walls of chain restaurants and postcards that spin around merchandise carousels in college bookstores. Universities around the world hold entire courses about the artist’s work. Chain retailers like Vans have released merchandise collections featuring her face. In 2017, to mark what would have been her 110th birthday, the Dallas Museum of Art held a “Frida Fest” where attendees set a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed like Frida Kahlo. During the coronavirus pandemic quarantine in 2020, small online retailers like Artelexia in San Diego, California, quickly sold out of Frida Kahlo jigsaw puzzles.

Long before smartphones turned millions of people into aspiring influencers like the ones I bumped into at the museo, there was the artist who would empower generations of women to embrace their own images: Frida Kahlo. Of course, Frida was not the first person to paint a self-portrait; in fact, as far as historians know, the first panel-style self-portrait in history is 1433’s Portrait of a Man in a Turban, by Jan van Eyck. But it was Frida Kahlo who uniquely transformed self-portraits into an art of storytelling for women, depicting the ins and outs of her life—both the love and the pain—in the same way millions of people today overshare on social media. It’s just that now, instead of careful strokes of a paintbrush, we can simply capture quick snaps on a phone and upload them with just the right caption.

Fans of Frida Kahlo often discuss how the queer, disabled, and revolutionary artist would feel about the endless modern interpretations of her story. Would the admittedly self-centered artist bask in the adulation, or would she be horrified at the commodification of her image—at how watered-down her ideals, politics, and works have become? Some of these depictions have even stirred up controversy. In 2018, Mattel released a Frida Kahlo Barbie doll as part of its Inspiring Women line. The doll came complete with Frida’s signature flower-braided hairstyle and Mexican-inspired dress, but it was missing a few key attributes, including her unibrow, or any of the medical devices she needed for her disabilities (various corsets through the years and, later in life, a prosthetic leg). The doll—which also inexplicably featured lightened eyes—drew criticism from Frida’s family and estate, as well as from fans who believed that Frida would have hated nothing more than seeing herself as a commercialized doll with unrealistic bodily proportions and beauty features.

And now, here I am, sitting down to write a book on the life of Frida Kahlo, adding one more to the dozens of volumes about the artist that already line bookshelves around the world. Here’s where I should clarify that this work is in no way meant to be an extensive biography, or to speak from Frida’s perspective. Instead, this read will take a look at the various ways we can all glean lessons from Frida Kahlo’s life—while learning a little bit more about it, too. By examining the influence Frida has continued to have on our culture after her death, I hope to share how the legacy of one of history’s most iconic women can inspire anyone looking to live a little more boldly. Frida was, above all else, a master of self—the author of her own story. So it’s possible that Frida Kahlo might have loved the idea of a book celebrating her as a proudly Mexican, rule-breaking feminist artist; she might have even been delighted by the title: What Would Frida Do?

But it’s also very possible that Frida Kahlo might have detested the idea of this very book. She was an outspoken, anticapitalist woman of strong opinions and convictions, and she was not shy about making her feelings known.

Because of this realization, whenever I sit down in front of my laptop, I feel as though Frida Kahlo is watching my every keystroke. The moment I begin to type, it’s as though she is sitting across from me, frowning in an oversized armchair while she smokes a cigarette. She is as present as she was to me that day in the patio of her home in Coyoacán—no ghost or phantom, but a person as real as myself. On some days, her hair is decorated with bright-white gardenias, and on others, she wears a crown of rich fuchsia bougainvillea. Dark-brown irises peer at me from beneath that famously connected pair of brows. And currently, they are furrowed.

The more I write, the more self-conscious I become about the prose that might elicit eye rolls from this fictional Frida. And before I know it, she speaks, a lilt accenting the syllables of her warm alto as she flicks ash from her cigarette. After squinting her eyes and staring at me for a few moments, she asks bluntly, “Are you Mexican?”

I should have seen this coming. Nervously, I blabber the explanation that while I’m not Mexican, I am half Puerto Rican and half Black—and very proud to be writing this book as both a Latina and a woman of color who has admired her work and life for years. In my imagination, she huffs before following up with a rant about how she doesn’t know how I can stand to live in New York City—or “Gringolandia” as she calls it. With a sigh, I remind her that I did make my way to her home in Mexico City to research her story and paid careful attention to detail as I captured her identity, culture, and influences. She paces back and forth from the window… and after a few minutes:

“Well, if it is you writing this thing, don’t just give me compliments!” she says. “I hate flattery! Tell the people whether I had any real talent!”

I wonder, briefly, whether I’m going crazy from too many late nights of writing furiously. Or whether it’s at all possible this is the same Frida a docent told me is rumored to wander the rooms of the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. There, curators like to say that, sometimes, Frida returns to her old home after dark; her shape has been seen filling out corsets and skirts as if she’s borrowing her old clothing for the night.

But of course, the apparition looking over my shoulder when I type is simply the Frida of my imagination—a mental rendering my mind has created after years of wandering her art exhibits, reading her biographies, googling her quotes, and watching Salma Hayek as Frida one too many times. In fact, it wasn’t until I was a few months into working on this book that I was able to hear what Frida actually sounded like when she was alive. In May 2019, an audio recording was unearthed by the Fonoteca National, Mexico’s national sound library. In it, a voice believed to be Frida’s reads from an essay she wrote about her husband, Diego, in 1949. Of course, there’s no way to verify for sure whether it’s indeed Frida speaking; I personally was surprised to hear how feminine and delicate the voice was, a departure from the rough-and-tumble alto I had been expecting. But then again, Frida was—and still is, in my case—full of surprises.

Regardless of how, exactly, her voice sounded, by the time I type these words, I feel as though I’ve studied the artist thoroughly enough to have some sense of what she might say if she could speak to me now. (I won’t bore you with too many more details of her visits, but know that there are many evenings when I feel her suddenly reading over my shoulder before walking away slowly, frowning in dissatisfaction as she looks out the window. The smell of cigarette smoke and Guerlain’s Shalimar perfume often linger long after she’s disappeared.)

So following my imagined Frida’s advice, I don’t ever confuse the task of writing a book about the real Frida Kahlo’s life as an assignment to publish chapters full of only her goodness. In fact, from the beginning of her career, history’s most famously self-centered artist was, ironically, averse to praise. When she first presented her artwork in 1928 to Diego Rivera—the famed Mexican muralist who would later become her husband—the then twenty-one-year-old told him, “I have not come to you looking for compliments. I want the criticism of a serious man. I’m neither an art lover nor an amateur. I’m simply a girl who must work for her living.”

That simple girl who had to work for a living had no idea that someday in the far future—decades after her last breath—one of her paintings, Two Lovers in a Forest, would sell for $8.1 million in New York City, the highest price for a work by any Latin American artist, ever. But Frida likely wouldn’t care about the splashy price tag. Rather, she would want to know: What did the people say about her painting?

Still, though the artist claimed to hate flattery, she was also the woman who painted 143 paintings in her lifetime—that we know of, anyway—with 55 of them being self-portraits. Like much of her life, this is yet another example of a contradiction: her insistence that she hated flattery directly contrasts with her constant celebration of herself. But, really, that shouldn’t be at all surprising. Frida Kahlo was a woman of contradictions, one who loved her husband dearly while engaging in passionate extramarital affairs; one who painted her pain while insisting that she was strong; one who embraced femininity through intricate hairstyles and Revlon lipsticks while also dabbling in wearing men’s suits and enhancing her thick eyebrows and visible mustache.

It’s after considering all these facts that I finally realize that this is the Frida we can—and should—take inspiration from: a woman who was only as perfect as her flaws. My fictional Frida claps slowly as she sees the realization hitting me. “Finally,” she says, without even bothering to mask her exasperation. And then, after several moments and more than a few sighs, my imagined Frida sits back, shoots me a considered look, and tells me—with just the hint of a smile—that if I am going to write this book, I’d better include all of her best quotes. Even the curse words.

It’s been more than six decades since Frida Kahlo died in 1954, and now, pop culture around the world exists in an era of superfandom. Members of the Beyhive buzz around Beyoncé. The Arianators gather their tween forces to support Ariana Grande. Lady Gaga has assembled an army with her take-us-as-we-are Monsters.

So it’s not hard to imagine that if the artist Frida Kahlo had been born just a handful of decades later, she, too, might have had her own passionately devoted fan base. The Friducitas, we might be called. Or maybe the Frida Fans. Perhaps Los Fridos, as she used to call her art students. Or even better: the Friduchas, a play on her childhood nickname. Yes—that’s the one.

Recently, as I walked down the hallway toward my New York studio apartment, juggling my purse and keys as I rifled through my mail, a neighbor waved to get my attention. In this city, neighborly chitchat does not exist—but on this particular day, the woman stopped in her tracks to gesture toward me and smile. “Hey!” she said cheerfully. “I love your shirt!” Confused, it took me a moment to look down and realize she was showing appreciation for the watercolor graphic of Frida Kahlo emblazoned across my chest, a T-shirt I’d purchased from an Etsy shop years ago. My suspicion quickly dissipated as I responded with a smile of my own, a show of love for my fellow Friducha. For the next several minutes, the two of us—complete strangers, save for our address—bonded over a shared love for the artist. Now, whenever we bump into each other, we often swap info about Frida exhibits or events we’ve heard about in the city.

We might not be as organized as the Monsters or as ready to report for social media battle as the Beyhive, but we Friduchas are here, carrying a torch that burns far brighter and wider than even she could have imagined as an artist who reached midlevel fame during her years painting in Mexico City.

We are the people carrying Frida Kahlo tote bags we picked up on a whim while vacationing in Mexico; the writers wearing watercolor Frida Kahlo T-shirts; the families spending Sunday afternoons in museum exhibits full of Frida Kahlo paintings; the couples touring La Casa Azul. We are the social media junkies who have contributed to nearly four million #FridaKahlo hashtags on Instagram, and who pin and share oft-repeated Frida Kahlo quotes. We are the slightly obnoxious dinner guests who drop fun Frida facts in the middle of conversation, both to make ourselves sound smarter and also because, well… is there any better solution to a lull in conversation than the storied life of Frida Kahlo?

Somehow, at one point or another, we’ve all fallen beneath Frida’s spell, perhaps without even realizing it. Our enchantment might have been sparked by a memorable quote that inspired us to be our boldest, best selves, or through a viewing of the ethereal Julia Taymor–directed Frida. Possible, too, that we just fell down an internet rabbit hole one day while reading about her tempestuous marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera. Or perhaps we became enamored with Frida thanks to the purest method: standing in front of a piece of her work and being transfixed not just by her ethereal brushstrokes and whimsical technique but also by those eyes. Warm, heartbroken, and somehow alive, as though her soul is piercing through both pain and time to let us know: she sees us.

It’s not uncommon, obviously, for artists to only find great fame and appreciation after their death. Sometimes it takes the passage of time for a culture to fully realize the true impact of a human being. But how, exactly, did Frida manage to transform from a rising artist—one whose work was just beginning to emerge from behind her husband’s shadow—into a household name who is celebrated around the world?

I first fell in love with the unibrowed Mexican artist when I was fifteen years old and saw the movie Frida. Of course, as a Latina, I was familiar with her status as an empowering icon, and I had learned briefly about her art in school. But it was watching Salma Hayek depict an artist whose passion and creativity flowed through everything from her paintbrush to her outfits to her love affairs that sparked what would become a lifelong fascination.

That obsession manifested itself in college research papers, dozens of books on my coffee table, afternoons spent wandering her exhibits, and an understanding among my loved ones that for me, Frida is a rock star. Christmas and birthday gifts over the years have included Frida Kahlo earrings, postcards, framed prints, and even a beach bag; to this day, I carry a beat-up wallet I once purchased in Mexico that features her pensive eyes. But over time, she’s become much more than just a beautiful image; it’s Frida’s story that has made her a hero for me. The woman who survived accidents and a lifetime of debilitating pain—both physical and emotional—while still creating stunning works that our culture reveres to this day is now a legend to me. And it’s the words she painted on one of her last paintings that solidified my appreciation for her: “Viva la vida!” or “Long live life!” For me, Frida the woman is a badass symbol of strength and courage—a real person who showed us by example that no matter what obstacles life throws our way, we all have the power to be the authors of our own stories.

Still, the life of this icon is shrouded in much uncertainty; her legacy leaves behind many rumors, misattributed quotes, and plenty of questions unanswered. No matter how much you know about her, there is still so much to learn. And most of us are hungry to know—who was Frida Kahlo really?

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, as Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón. Her story began in a small house that would eventually become known as La Casa Azul in the village of Coyoacán, Mexico City. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a painter from Germany who immigrated to Mexico; he and her mestiza mother, Matilde Calderón y González—of Spanish and indigenous Mexican descent—raised Frida and her three sisters, Matilde, Adriana, and Cristina. (Frida also had two half sisters from Guillermo’s first marriage who were raised in a convent.)

From an early age, Frida learned that she had many odds against her. At age six she contracted polio, an infectious disease that weakens the muscles and sometimes stunts growth, leaving Frida with one leg shorter than the other for the rest of her life. And at eighteen, she was in a bus accident that would sentence her to a lifetime of endless operations, chronic pain, and the inability to bear children. And then there was the complicated relationship with her mother; Frida’s mother constantly worried about her daughter’s appearance, understanding that her physical challenges would affect her marrying prospects—and she wasn’t quiet about it. In the 1999 book Kahlo by Andrea Kettenmann, Frida is quoted as having once said that her mother was “kind, active, and intelligent… but also calculating, cruel, and fanatically religious.”

Frida didn’t grow up wanting to be a painter. Her interest in art and, eventually, self-portraits didn’t begin until age eighteen. In 1925, while riding the bus home from school with her boyfriend, Alejandro Gómez Arias (a classmate at the private National Preparatory School in Mexico City), a street trolley collided with the bus. Frida survived the accident, but barely, landing in the hospital with several spinal injuries, fractured ribs, a broken collarbone, and a shattered pelvis, the result of a handrail that pierced her body and exited through her vagina.

The healing process kept Frida bedridden in a full-body corset for over three months. The long road to recovery meant the end of her hopes to head to medical school, so instead—inspired by her extended hospital stay—she began to consider a career as a medical illustrator. Soon, using her father’s oils, she was dabbling with painting, and her work slowly expanded from still lifes to portraits of friends and family. And then, when her parents brought in an easel and positioned it so that Frida could paint from bed, Frida began to spend endless hours looking in the mirror to discover the person who would become her favorite subject: herself.

If there was one thing Frida may have adored more than her own image and story, it was love. Throughout her lifetime, she would have more than a few torrid, passionate love affairs, her first being with Alejandro, to whom she wrote hundreds of angst-ridden letters while he traveled the world and grew increasingly distant from her after the accident.

But it was her marriage to Diego Rivera that was the most infamous. Frida got her first glimpse of the painter in 1922 when she was one of only thirty-five female students at the National Preparatory School. Diego was painting a mural in the auditorium. Rumor has it that Frida—the class mischief—used to play tricks on the painter, yelling out distractions at him as he painted. A few years later, the young girl Diego had previously encountered as a pesky prankster had grown into an aspiring painter who asked the famed muralist to review some of her work.

Although he never doubted her talent or her potential as an artist, Rivera quickly became more interested in reviewing… Frida. He “earnestly courted her” until they were married, when Frida was twenty-two years old and Diego was nearly twice her age, at forty-two. She was head over heels, and he was too, even though this was his third marriage and he was adamant about his inability to be monogamous. Before they wed, Frida’s parents were apprehensive about the rumored womanizer—especially her mother, who called him the “elephant” to her “dove.” But the pair embraced the monikers as loving nicknames that teased their physical differences.

Long before paparazzi would trail Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or nickname Bennifer or Brangelina, Diego and Frida—each most commonly referred to by first name—were a glamorous couple whose exploits would often hit the papers as they crisscrossed the globe for various art projects and events. But several obstacles stood in the way of their happiness, including Frida’s loneliness as her husband became increasingly tied up with his work—plus her never-ending surgeries and illnesses, which left her unable to bear children with Rivera.

And then there were the extramarital affairs. While it was no secret to Frida that her husband was a womanizer, the deeper the two fell into their marriage, the more hurtful his often public disloyalty became. Frida also dabbled in affairs, reportedly with both men and women, partaking in flings with everyone from Leon Trotsky to a rumored dalliance with dancer Josephine Baker. But despite infidelity on both of their parts, what truly shattered Frida and Diego’s marriage was his extramarital affair with Frida’s younger sister, Cristina.

The two divorced in 1939, a fraught period during which Frida continued to paint as her work began to gain recognition in art circles. But the duo quickly found their way back to one another later that same year, getting married for a second time on Diego’s fifty-fourth birthday in 1940. The happiness of their reunion didn’t last long, however; over the next decade, a lifetime of illness began to catch up to Frida, leading to her death from a pulmonary embolism in 1954 when she was forty-seven.

The dramatic story of Frida Kahlo’s life is perhaps even better known than her work. But then again, with one look at her repertoire, you can see her entire tale, honest and uncensored—a stunning feat from any woman, but particularly from one who came of age during the 1920s and 1930s.

There’s the 1932 piece called Henry Ford Hospital that she painted after a miscarriage, featuring herself hemorrhaging on a hospital bed. There’s also the 1949 portrait Diego and I, painted after Frida discovered her husband’s very public affair with film star Maria Felix. In it, Frida is without her signature braids or adornments, her hair wild and tangled around her neck; on a forehead wrinkled by worry lines is an image of a miniature Diego. And then, of course, there is Thinking About Death, a work that doesn’t need much translation: Frida is long necked and bare, staring pensively straight ahead. The viewer gets another look inside her mind via a drawing on her forehead: a tiny skull and bones.

In other words? To know Frida Kahlo, you only need to study her artwork. There, her full story is laid bare: her surgeries and pain, her inability to carry children, her tumultuous marriage—and affairs—and her preoccupations with everything from sex to monkeys to death. But much of Frida’s story is also now available in her own words, thanks to her journals and the hundreds of letters she wrote to friends, family members, doctors, and lovers. Much of this writing is what provides the quotes that now adorn Pinterest boards, refrigerator magnets, and posters in college dorm rooms—a lifetime of wisdom, anguish, and courage living on through trinkets and tchotchkes.

Decades later, Fridamania is in full effect—and not going anywhere. (Take a look at Google trends over the years, and you’ll see that since 2004, searches about the artist have steadily increased, year by year.) But why is it that we are still so intrigued by Frida Kahlo? It’s true that during her own lifetime she began to rise to notoriety, but she never came even close to being a household name the way she is now. In fact, it was sometime after her death that her artistry came to be recognized in its own right; for decades, she was known primarily as the quirky wife of Diego Rivera, one with a uniquely strange painting style.

In the 1970s, Frida began to slowly emerge as a feminist icon; she rose to fame thanks to Chicano artists who rediscovered her work and used her image as a symbol to represent Mexican women during marches and exhibitions. By the early eighties, her work was being featured in exhibitions around the world, as far away as Japan. And slowly but surely—with help from Hayden Herrera’s 1983 biography and, later, that 2002 biopic—Frida’s story, in addition to her artwork, became legendary.

Still, Frida Kahlo is far from the only famous woman with a tragic story who ever lived. Hilda Trujillo Soto, director of the Frida Kahlo Museum, has a theory as to what makes Frida stand out. “I think the world just keeps being interested in Frida because we keep getting little surprises from her, like in 2004, when we discovered more personal items from her house,” Trujillo Soto tells me. She continues:

We knew she was a proud Mexican woman and wife to Diego, but then her belongings and letters showed us she was also a woman who loved jazz and French music—one who could speak English and German, one who didn’t care about the rules for women. I think Frida would have loved the attention she’s getting now. She would’ve been very proud to represent Mexican and Latina women and just women… and that she could teach people to be free.

Frida Kahlo is a totemic symbol for hope, for change, for revolution, for resilience. There is no doubt that we can all learn endless lessons from the icon about how to live life loudly, boldly, and colorfully.

And so, my fellow Friduchas, here I go, diving in headfirst to explore the clues she left behind for those of us looking for guidance on how to emulate even just a little of her magic. With my imagined Frida looking over my shoulder, I embark on my search for the answer to a question many of us might want to ask ourselves during this journey we call life: What would Frida do?