Commodifying Icons: The Commercialization of Frida Kahlo

by Priya Prasad

Walk into a retail store for women’s apparel in 2018 and you will most likely find products plastered with slogans of empowerment, feminism, and progressivism. You may even see images of women associated with women’s empowerment: Rosie the Riveter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and most definitely, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. At first glance, this may seem like a natural progression of change, a direct result of women’s movements and progressive understandings of gender equality. Yet the idea of employing feminist rhetoric for capitalistic gains is not new, and has been obfuscated in language meant to evoke a sense of feminist identity that appeals to liberal sensibilities. The more recent utilization of women’s images to invoke this idea of corporatized feminism is an elaboration of a trend which began in the 1980s. One of the most blatant instances of this is the application of Frida Kahlo; her image has morphed into a subdued, feminized, and whitened ideal of feminism for mass consumption that stands in direct opposition to both her life and artistic endeavors.  

I. The Evolution of Co-opting Feminism

In Narcissism as Liberation, Susan Douglas contends that feminist rhetoric and the women’s movement for equality had been appropriated by the cosmetic and advertising industries of the 1980s, women’s liberation transforming into “women’s ability to do whatever they wanted for themselves, whenever they wanted, no matter what the expense.”^[1]  The movement for liberation transformed into a “female narcissism,” a crusade for self-enhancement and consumption as political ideas of equality and liberation within a large-scale social movement “were collapsed into distinctly personal, private desires,” resolved only through economic means on the personal level.^[2] This careful but deliberate move by various industries went hand-in-hand with the burgeoning, neoliberal landscape that would come to define the Reagan era of the 1980s, especially in its connection to privatization and deregulation of the free market. After two decades of demands for transformation in the political and social realm by marginalized groups, the 1980s economic and social slogan focused on the individual, the way people could singularly fix their own problems without state intervention. These problems could now be lessened by individual determination and an unregulated private sector, companies claiming to provide the solution to a person’s every intimate need, a true capitalist fantasy. Advertisements declared that women could improve themselves by taking care of themselves, care in this sense concerning only their physical appearance and improvement coming in the form of a more active role within consumer culture. Purchasing makeup, clothing, hair products, ect., meant a woman was putting herself first. After all, is that not what the feminist movement was all about, having a stake in a man’s world without losing one’s femininity?  

Today, one may assume this marketing scheme of pseudo progressivism for profit is rendered obsolete, or at the very least, too obvious to be considered economically viable. Yet in the same way neoliberalism has been repackaged by both conservatives and liberals in the political realm, the incorporation of pseudo feminism into the economic realm has morphed through the decades, adapting to the digital sphere of contemporary society as fashion retailers profit off products which represent feminism in very literal ways. The most obvious tactic, if not the most contradictory, is the incorporation of images of feminist icons, those both the industry and the supposed consumers readily associate with feminism and progressive ideals. Frida Kahlo is the quintessential image for products selling feminism as she is increasingly invoked in this manner. 

But how does this reproduction of Kahlo’s image convey feminism? Where narcissism labeled as liberation served the rising neoliberal structures of the 1980s, the specific commodification of Kahlo’s image highlights the ways in which this repackaging is unique to the structures of power present today and how they play out on the (reproduced) body of a disabled woman of color. Kahlo’s appearance is morphed to reflect beauty standards of the normative white, able-bodied feminine being, one that is distinctly alien to Kahlo in the first place, undoing much of the race and body work she encapsulated within her art. In exploring this repackaging of Kahlo’s identity, I will examine the Frida Kahlo Corporation, which licensed her name to profit off making various products in what is an absolute rejection of her anti-capitalist beliefs. I will analyze specific products marketed online, such as t-shirts made by large-scale retailers and those made by individuals that are then sold on the marketplace, contrasting them with some of Kahlo’s own work, and investigate the ways in which race and body work are subsumed in capitalism.

II. Kahlo: The Self through Art

A closer look at Kahlo’s life is needed in order to fully grasp the transformation that takes place when normative images of her are produced and used for profit. As Debra Gimlin writes, the body is fundamental to the self “because it serves to indicate who an individual is internally, what habits the person has, and even what social value the individual merits”.^[3] In this way, Kahlo’s self portraits define a self that is sculpted through her non-normative appearance in terms of both race and ability. Born in 1907, Kahlo was raised in Coyoacán, a district in Mexico City, to a German-Mexican father and Spanish-Amerindian mother.^[4] This multiracial identity would continually be represented in Kahlo’s work, as seen in her 1936 painting My Grandparents My Parents and Me. 

In it, Kahlo depicts her grandparents from both sides of her family in the clouds, a red ribbon connecting to a small child in the middle, her father and mother right behind her in a setting reminiscent of her birthplace. Her birthplace and culture continually played a role in her work—her paintings depicting native animals and plants—and would even influence the way she adorned herself, often wearing traditional Mexican dresses and jewelry. Kahlo was also disabled for a majority of her life and spent a great deal of time in a chair or in bed. At the age of six, Kahlo contracted polio, leaving her with a permanent limp in her right leg. At the age of eighteen, Kahlo was in a trolley accident that left her spinal column and pelvis broken in three different places. Recovery after this required months of time spent alone in her bed, and it is here where Kahlo began painting to relieve the boredom. Her disability became critical to her paintings as she presented herself through many of her self-portraits seated or in bed, a departure from a common narrative of disability as she still represented the pain she endured in her art. Her 1944 self portrait titled “The Broken Column” depicts the back brace she wore and the appearance of a large white pillar running straight through her body that reference the spinal injury she suffered.

While there is pain evident in this image, the tears on her face, the nails running into her body, Kahlo’s gaze remains steady, direct, and almost calm as she reveals herself in a way that presents to the viewer her current state of being, not necessarily asking for pity masked as empathy.

To reduce Kahlo’s artwork as an escape from her pain is to deny the larger meaning of her work, which constantly touched upon social and cultural issues. Kahlo’s race and disability intermixed with politics and activism as she was fiercely anti-capitalistic and anti-American. During her teenage years, Kahlo had joined the Mexican Communist Party in the 1920’s, and in 1936, she joined the Mexican section of the international Trotskyist movement, even harboring the Marxist revolutionary and theorist in her home for some time.^[5] The political and socials meaning of Marxism and her anti-capitalistic beliefs are readily seen within Marxism Will Give Health to the Ill, created the year of Kahlo’s death in 1954. The image depicts Karl Marx uplifting Kahlo in the center, her crutches discarded in this moment as a dove is pictured in the far left corner, contrasted with a hand choking the neck of a bearded white man in a red, white, and blue hat, whose body is that of a chicken. Kahlo’s anti-American feelings would carry with her throughout her lifetime, as her last public appearance before her death was spent participating in a protest against U.S. interventions in Guatemala. 

III. Erasing the Radical

The understanding of Kahlo’s social and cultural perspectives are crucial in analyzing the re-branding that occurs through the commodification of both her name and her face. To understand the ways in which Kahlo’s image is marketed, we must first begin with the licensing of her name and the rise of the Frida Kahlo Corporation. Is it here where the reproduction of Kahlo’s image and name occur in its most obvious and contradictory forms. Expanding on the co-opting Douglas analyzes in the 1980s, Kahlo’s image is invoked in the name of preserving her legacy, expanding “her positive impact and inspiration of empowerment, self-confidence, passion and love.”^[6] The Frida Kahlo Corporation was created in 2005 when Kahlo’s niece, Isolda P. Kahlo, licensed Kahlo’s name after feminist literature re-introduced her to the public. By owning Kahlo’s name and the rights to the Frida Kahlo brand worldwide, the corporation is able to sell and produce all products with Kahlo’s face on it, from sneakers to nail polish to liquor, in the name of “honoring [a] strong woman that transcends and overcomes barriers of culture, time and society with her unique and iconic personality.” ^[7] 

Coincidentally, it is this very character which the commercialization of Kahlo inevitably erases. Contrary to its principle statement, the Kahlo Corporation takes part in erasing much of the legacy they are said to be preserving as the site does not state Kahlo’s political and social views. Kahlo’s art essentially becomes aesthetics in the background of economic viability, as even the gallery which displays her artwork contains no titles or context, though ironically, a watermark is placed on all works to prevent theft.

In connection with products created by the company, the Frida Kahlo Corporation has partnered with major retailers to further the economic possibilities of Kahlo’s brand, such as Google, Converse, and Scribe among others. In its extension to fashion, the corporation partnered with Zara, a global fashion retailer, to create the “Frida Kahlo Collection,” advertised as capturing “the essence of Frida Kahlo the artist with innovative designs defining her way of life and her passion with a modern and casual lifestyle.”^[8] This statement is supported by an image of a white model wearing a graphic t-shirt with Kahlo’s image transplanted on it, her unibrow barely visible and her upper lip hair completely done away with.

The image is one that is similar between large scale retailers like Zara, Forever 21, and Hot Topic among others, illustrating a key aspect of this rebranding: the beautification of Kahlo’s face to create a normalized, feminine figure. This includes not only removing her facial hair, but also whitewashing her image, transforming her into a body that counters the very aspects that made her a resistor.

As stated previously, Kahlo took great lengths to represent her cultural heritage, doing an incredible amount of race work that ranged from the jewelry she wore to the plants and animals she depicted within her pieces. Created in 1938, Self Portrait with Monkey shows a monkey curling around Kahlo’s neck in a style which reimagines Mexican mythology.

Another example is Self Portrait as a Tehuana (1943), a picture that emphasizes both Kahlo’s cultural and racial identity as a Mexican as she is adorned in a traditional Mexican Tehuana gown. Kahlo’s mixed racial identity strongly emphasizes the labor of race work, a concept that King-O’Riain explains, albeit in a different context, that mixed race individuals must do to exert a cultural and racial identity through adjusting their physical appearances.^[9] Kahlo accomplished this by making her skin purposefully brown in her paintings, in addition to portraying herself in traditional Mexican clothing. Kahlo also made more evident her unibrow as well as her upper lip hair, something she would often do in her work to actively and representationally rebel against eurocentric beauty standards.

Large-scale retailers like Zara erase these cultural representations and ignore the race work and active resistance to eurocentric beauty that lie at the heart of Kahlo’s work. This is again demonstrated in online retailer PinkQueen’s commercialized Kahlo. The brand advertises “Women’s 3D Frida Kahlo Daft Punk T Shirt Sweatshirt Green,” a sweatshirt which features a glamorized punk Kahlo complete with small tattoos visible on her pale arms, a cigarette between her fingers, and wearing prominent makeup and a Daft Punk t-shirt. 

The image relies on a Western cultural understanding of rebelling, resistance in this case being seen in the way Kahlo is smoking and appears to have tattoos. Resistance is not further depicted as a disruption of the normalized understandings of hegemonic structures of femininity, eurocentricity, and white supremacy, which all are enforced rather than challenged. A similar example—a graphic tee from the retailer Hot Topic labeled “Frida Kahlo Endure More Girls Ringer T-shirt”—reinforces the same eurocentric beauty standards, all but completely erasing Kahlo’s unibrow as her image is transplanted on a white garment, the only color coming from her flower crown and necklace. 

The Hot Topic shirt engages in a more advanced rebranding of Kahlo as it contains a quote by her on front that reads, “At the end, we can endure much more than we think we can.” This quote is indeed Kahlo’s, although it has been removed from the context within which it was spoken. This transforms her words into a subdued, generalized statement of resistance, rather than a critical and radical act of subverting social and political structures.

Though large-scale retailers have much larger consumer pools, independent sellers on sites such as Etsy and Redbubble are popular sites to buy and sell Kahlo-related items, especially clothing. One may assume that at the independent level, more variety exists in how Kahlo’s image is marketed. Yet even on these more democratized online catalogues the same mode of white-washing and body work erasure occurs, ironically on a surprisingly larger scale as copyright infringement is more difficult to track on the individual level. On Etsy, a t-shirt titled “Colorful Women’s Frida Kahlo Tee” lies in stark contrast to Kahlo’s painting Self Portrait with Monkey. 

Their similarities end with the styled hair and accompaniment of a monkey; on the garment, both Kahlo and the monkey are incredibly pale, no visible signs of facial hair present aside from a partial unibrow. Both Kahlo’s eyes and hair changed to light-brown from the dark brown/black that it is in all her portraits, making her appear as white as possible while still carrying visual cues of being Kahlo (i.e. the slight unibrow and flower crown). Significantly, Kahlo is also depicted in a standing position, a trait shared with the PinkQueen sweater as well. This deliberate erasure of Kahlo’s disability creates the image of an able-bodied, white-passing women that brings her closer to the eurocentric standards of whiteness.

Conclusion

Throughout the reproductions of Kahlo’s image, a theme of a erasure occurs, one that whitens, feminizes, and eliminates her disability. But for what reasons? What is it about a non-normative body that renders it in need of change in order to be economically viable? Susan Bordo describes how the body is ordered by “stamps of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity and femininity,” how women’s bodies are especially regulated through the managing and self-disciplining of bodies to reflect an “elusive ideal of femininity,” one that is always out of grasp.^[10] Building on Foucault’s idea of docile bodies, or those bodies “whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjugation, [and] transformation,” Bordo contends that the constant need for improvement of the woman’s body fuels a consumer economy. Women endure painful and time-consuming practices and products to manage their bodies, while these processes are then understood as “liberating, transforming, and life-giving” experiences.^[11] Bordo states that the reflection of ideal femininity and body representation is reflected in the form of visual culture. Why, then, would the depiction of Kahlo’s non-normative body be threatening or problematic? Because this would counter the capitalist drive that forces women to improve and achieve an unachievable ideal through consumption and management. Consumers are shown an idealized version of Kahlo because the reality of who she was and what she looked like cannot adhere to the vision of the productive feminine body that women are told to strive for implicitly.

Kahlo was known in her life for defying both gender norms and eurocentric beauty standards. Her self-portraits were purposeful acts of depicting herself as she was, emphasizing her racial heritage, ethnicity, and facial hair, while also confronting the reality of her life and representing herself not as a tragic figure but one of rebellious fervor. However, in the digital and commercial age, Kahlo’s iconic normative-defying appearance has been appropriated by corporations which transform her image into a figure that is normalized, white, and able-bodied, all while simultaneously capitalizing on the identity that made Kahlo famous in the first place. Feminism in this respect is being co-opted to sell to consumers an iconic look, rather than promoting a restructuring of normative sociopolitical standards. The co-optation of Kahlo represents a pseudo-feminism entrenched in the same neoliberal politics that infiltrated political and cultural realms in the 1980s, presenting the image of Kahlo as a replacement for true rebellion against systems of inequality and domination. In reality, the consumptive appropriations of these products counter what Ella Shohat describes as “multicultural feminism,” a movement that recognizes the intersectional nature of identities and acknowledges “oppression and empowerment” as relational terms, individuals being able to occupy various positions of oppression/empowerment simultaneously.^[12] Kahlo’s image should be used to promote inclusion and the representation of marginalized, intersectional identities, as she historically represents Shohat’s multicultural feminism. Instead, Kahlo’s image and body has been re-coded through capitalism.

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