It occurred to me today, why do todays bedroom tier feminists worship Frida Kahlo?
-snip-
Well Feminist =/= strong and independent.
As well any feminist who would decry "submissiveness" as a negative quality would immediately get on my "List of people who don't know what they are talking about" list... In fact erase feminist and make that anyone... It is just this stupid cookie cutter stuff.
-snarp-
I don't know what a Bedroom-Tier Feminist is, but maybe I qualify? I identify as a Feminist, and there -is- a small magnetic Frida Kahlo paper doll in my bedroom (you can dress her up in traditional Mexican outfits, stick
a bunch of monkeys on her, or even give her a pope hat. It's awesome). Neonivek's response is a good thing to consider when thinking about Feminism. That aside, I mostly know Frida Kahlo as an artist, but can think of a few reasons other Feminists might appreciate her as an icon.
I don't know how else to respond to the assertion that she's ugly, but No? I get that it's probably a matter of differences in what we personally find pretty... but if you can't get past
her Scandalously Unplucked Eyebrows, consider
when she tames that fluffy brow and
abides by the Feminine Beauty Standards of the day.
Which brings me to a superficial but obvious point. Take a look at how she represents herself, particularly how she exaggerates the whole eyebrow situation in her paintings:
The Broken Column (NOTE: This painting is NSFW). Ignoring the rest of the painting for a moment, it's easy to see that as her saying "To all of you who are trying to tell Women like myself what beauty is, or that it's part of our duty to be 'Pretty' according to some completely arbitrary standard: this is who I am, and I like myself this way." The pressure women are put under to artificially feminize themselves and conform to societal standards of beauty- think all the shaving and exfoliating and hair styling and etc. that are still expected of ladies while in public- that's something which, as evidenced by the Human Centipede comment, is still a pressure that society imposes on Women all the time. Even in the modern context, let alone when she lived, her disinterest in changing her appearance can be seen as Feminist.
Consider that she was born at the turn of the 1900's, when Mexico and much of the world was far more deeply Patriarchal than today. Despite being a survivor of Polio which left her leg disfigured, and living in an era and culture which imposed strict rules on what a Woman was supposed to be, she became one of a handful of female students to enroll in a prestigious school in Mexico, and went on to study science and medicine. She planned to become a doctor, had she not been crippled in a car accident, which damaged her spine and limited her mobility. Instead, she took up painting while she recovered and became a famous artist and a cultural icon in her country. She was politically active, openly bisexual as you said, and all around Kind Of A Badass on several levels.
I'll leave with a short tangent. The Broken Column (the NSFW Portrait linked above) is an autobiographical work of sorts, depicting her spinal injuries as a youth, her feelings toward the slings and arrows of misfortune, and the other health-related hardships she was going through toward the end of her life. Despite that, here's a popular quote I dug up from her diaries, relating to this work. "You must laugh at life... Look very very closely at my eyes... the pupils are doves of peace. That is my little joke on pain and suffering."
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14845622 times)