Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 and died in 1954. “Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.” from Wikipedia 

Queer Trickster Medicine: Making My Peace with Frida Kahlo

When I solicited requests from my friends as I was starting the Female Power Project—when I was only making shawls and scarves—I was urged by many to make something for Frida Kahlo. The implication was that I could sell a lot of them, because, you know, FRIDA. I wasn’t naturally inclined to do this. Firstly, her image and art have already been reproduced all over the place. Either my production couldn’t add anything, or I would just be jumping on the bandwagon and participating in an exploitative cliché. Secondly, Frida has been idolized largely because of her pathetic life story. Look: she was a beautiful mess AND she made great art. Be like her! Really? Her life was a train wreck (literally determined by a streetcar wreck) and I think many who idolize her are being uncritical. I don’t see her as a role model at all. Her story is about pain and anger and an unhealthy obsession with a repulsive and unworthy man. Frida was a masochist and a narcissist, an alcoholic and a drug addict, a self-conscious seeker of attention. She used her pain to exploit and manipulate people. And people use her pain to exploit her right back. This is neurotic.

However, her artworks ARE amazing and important and vital. Furthermore, she is some kind of engine in the collective mind of our culture since the late 1970s, when she was rediscovered—or maybe invented?—as an artist and a personality. There has to be something important there. To make something for Frida I had to figure out a way to approach her story and her power without losing sight of the point of the Female Power Project—which is not about selling things. If you are going to embrace Frida’s power, it should be an act that could produce something good in the world, not an act of perpetuating a neurosis. I started thinking about how pain—and anger—could be a force, or maybe a catalyst, for creative transformation. How do ugly weird accidents make beauty and life?

There are two things that allowed me to get past my reluctance to absorb Frida. One was my own experience of pain and anger and how that has produced in me an explosion of creativity. I was not the only woman who stayed up late weeping at the results of the 2016 US presidential election. But it was in January of 2017 that I realized just how alone I wasn’t, as hundreds of thousands of women came to DC to express those same feelings. This story continues as I write and the outcomes are not clear. But a train wreck has made it possible for me, at least, to find the power to flourish the Female Power Project.

The second thing is a connection I made between Frida Kahlo and the traditional trickster figure in mythology. The trickster is not a role model. The trickster is someone who breaks social rules in a grotesque and pathetic way that nevertheless creates something of inestimable social value—that creates the world and life. Social rules are based on the separation of categories—the exaltation of distinctions—and the trickster mediates distinctions so that a society can adapt to outside forces. The key for me was learning that Frida was a notorious vulgarian. She was an amazing cusser. Her cussing was an expression of anger, of course, but it also came from her famous “allegria.” Her biographer, Hayden Herrera, describes this as not just “cheerfulness” but as an enveloping force of joy in life that would emanate from her, surrounding the people near her. She would relish and revel in vulgarities. This is a truly transgressive mixing of anger and joy, especially for a woman in a macho society.

I set out to do research on the trickster by reading Luis Hyde’s book, Trickster Makes This World. I was almost immediately confounded by his assertion in the book’s preface that the traditional trickster is never female, except in one case that he could find. His hypothesis is that this is because women are natural creators because of our ability to bear children. The trickster, an essential transgressor, is a male who yet can bear creatively and from his essence the way females do. My response: what about females who do not bear children? It is maybe new(ish) to realize that females do not always bear, so that can’t really be our essence. That is Frida the trickster. She bears without bearing. She literally bares herself in her many self-portraits, her most compelling works of art. Through baring she bears her pain. Frida is the trickster we needed when, as a society, we were separating from the traditionally rigid definition of female. We still need her. We are still coming to an understanding that females don’t even need to be women and that gender is not a dichotomy but a spectrum.

Childbirth and abortion appear as subjects in Frida’s paintings. She did not have children although she was able to get pregnant. It is not clear whether she couldn’t come to term or whether she decided not to. Regardless, the subject was important to her and was one of the engines of her pain. Gender was a site of her trickster performance as well. Much is made of her cross-dressing appearance in a family portrait. So, also, of her self-portrait with cropped hair. She knew that gender is a performance and that is her trickster gift. She was the feminist trickster at the beginning of Fridamania; she is the queer trickster, now.

The shawl and scarf for Frida are called, “The Woman Who Gave Birth to Herself.” I know I read somewhere in her biography, or her diary, that she called herself this, but I’m not sure it’s worth looking it up, exactly. Psychologically, it comes from her difficult relationship with her mother with whom she did not attach as an infant. Although it comes from a primal wound, it is the perfect thing to call the shawl. A trickster female is the female who births only herself. And that creativity can, and does, suffice.

DESIGN NOTES

In this perSISTER design I have adapted elements from the shawl design, in which  I quoted from the life and work of Frida Kahlo. I first used these roses in my “La Guadalupana” shawl design, and it’s appropriate to use them here since both the Virgin of Guadalupe and Frida Kahlo are definitively Mexican. Frida loved to wear flowers in her hair. The lace and the geometric pattern in bright colors reference the traditional Tehuantepec garb that Frida was famous for wearing. The drops refer to the many depictions of dripping liquids in her paintings, and the strings wrapping the roses refer to the roots and ropes that bind Frida in many of her self-portraits.  She births herself in her paintings.

If you want to learn more:

Hayden Herrera’s Biography, a bestseller that launched Fridamania, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, 1983.

The Wikipedia article on Frida Kahlo is very good.

Vanity Fair, September 3, 2013, “Diary Of A Mad Artist” by Amy Fine Collins

Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World, 1998

Marie Curie, born Marya Sklowdowska in 1867, was a Polish chemist who spent her working life in France. She was extraordinarily brilliant and won two Nobel prizes, one in physics for investigations into radioactivity (she coined that term) and another in chemistry for her discovery of the elements Polonium and Radium. She worked closely with her husband, Pierre, and without his admiration, support, and acknowledgement it is unlikely that Marie would have been as publicly successful as she was. They adored each other. Their daughter, Eve, wrote a biography of her mother, and when I read the (graphic!) description of his accidental death I wept in sympathy.

Marie came of age in a part of Poland that was under oppressive Russian rule which forced Polish identity to go underground. On top of this cultural oppression, Marie was forbidden to pursue a university education because she was a woman. Because of these obstacles Marie worked 8 years as a governess to make money so her sister could get a medical degree in Paris, with the understanding that her sister would then support Marie’s education. This is what came to pass. In Paris Marie was first in chemistry in her class of 2000 students, and second in mathematics. She earned doctorates in both subjects. Because of Pierre, she never went back to live in Poland although she was passionate about justice for Poland.

Marie was a child prodigy and taught herself to read at the age of four. Her early interest in the sciences was sparked by her father’s encouragement and the display case of scientific instruments he had in his study. When Marie later was maturing as a scientist, part of her success came from her precise use of scientific gadgets to measure radiation and the mass of very small things. She had amazing powers of concentration, and I see this ability to FOCUS as her special power. The idea of concentration is also demonstrated in the work that won her that second Nobel prize—Marie single handedly processed a ton of waste ore from uranium mining (pitchblende) to create a tiny sample of pure Radium. She boiled huge cauldrons of the crushed rock in a caustic solution and then set the results out in small dishes to evaporate. She describes the beautiful sight of the hundreds of dishes glowing with radiation in the dim twilight of their decrepit laboratory.

Marie Curie’s first breakthrough was noticing something worth looking into. Antoine Henri Becquerel first noticed a peculiar property of Uranium, that it could expose photo paper. He had been studying phosphorescence, but these new rays were different because they did not depend on the material first being exposed to light—they were coming from the material itself. But, after writing six papers on the subject in 1897, he went on to other things because he thought he had found all there was to find. It was Marie’s idea to measure the electrical charge of the rays using a device that Pierre and his brother had invented. The device took great concentration and precision to operate, and few people were as patient and dedicated as Marie, who took a week to teach herself how to use the device. Measuring the strength of radiation was key to her finding that there was something more radioactive than uranium in the pitchblende ore—Polonium and Radium. Work on the nature of radioactivity was profoundly important to the development of our understanding of matter.

The Curies became enormously famous around the world but they lamented this distraction from their work. Albert Einstein said he had never met anyone who was as unaffected by fame as Marie Curie. She was also a very unusual woman for her time in other ways. She was not interested in clothes and other traditionally feminine things, although she was dedicated to her family life. I get the sense that she was workman-like about this, just as she was with her research. She was very passionate and had a scandalous affair with a married physicist after Pierre had died. She was generally not concerned about social constraints and rules. Why shouldn’t she be with a man she loves? However, she was shamed by the press and was nearly denied her second Nobel Prize because of the scandal. This episode was so painful to her family that Eve Curie couldn’t write about it in the biography. Eve said only that gossip created a scandal, and that the gossip was incorrect.

I have also created a shawl and scarf design for Marie Curie.

Megan Anna Rapinoe (born July 5, 1985) is an American professional soccer player who plays for and captains Reign FC in the National Women’s Soccer League. As a member of the United States women’s national soccer team, she helped the U.S. win the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup as well as gold at the 2012 London Olympics, and finish runners-up at the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Since 2018, she co-captains her national team alongside Carli Lloyd and Alex Morgan.

Rapinoe is internationally known for her crafty style of play and her precise cross to Abby Wambach in the 122nd minute of the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup quarterfinals against Brazil, which resulted in an equalizer goal and eventual win for the Americans after a penalty shootout. During the 2012 London Olympics, she scored three goals and tallied a team-high four assists to lead the United States to a gold medal. She is the first player, male or female, to score a goal directly from a corner at the Olympic Games.

(Wikipedia)

Social Justice

Here is the Rapinoe quote that appears behind her on this print: “If we want to be proud to be from a country like America and all the things that we hang our hats on, like diversity, equality, land of the free and home of the brave, it’s everybody’s responsibility to ensure that everyone in the country is being afforded the same rights.” In 2016, Rapinoe got a lot of attention for taking a knee during the national anthem to support Colin Kaepernick’s protest of racial injustice. She was one of the first white athletes to do so. She continues to protest during the National Anthem. “It wasn’t easy for me,” Rapinoe told Yahoo Sports about the backlash from taking a knee in 2016. “But it shouldn’t be. Whenever you’re trying to be an ally, and it’s super easy and comfortable for you, you’re not an ally.” She is an out lesbian and supporter of LGBTQ rights and other social justice issues. Before winning the 2019 World Cup, when asked, she had already refused to visit the White House because she didn’t want to be part of a platform legitimizing the injustices she sees in the current administration. “I feel like I’m a walking protest.” On International Women’s Day in 2019, all 28 members of the women’s national team filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation seeking equal pay and treatment to the members of the men’s team. Their whole performance during the world cup was equivalent to them saying, “We are worth it.”

I love this language describing her on the ussoccer.com website: “Megan Rapinoe is an irresistible force—on and off the field. Playful, inventive and out-of-the-box, she injects the U.S. WNT with the creativity and hunger she’s had since she grew up roaming the fields in Redding, CA…”

About the Image

Every image of a woman is a message—especially an image of a woman with a public job. Megan Rapinoe knows this and uses this. The whole women’s world cup team knows that part of their job is to entertain and celebrations are a deliberate part of that. I knew I had to make a print about Rapinoe when I saw the many versions of this image—her arms up, receiving and projecting power—and both the positive and negative comments attached to it (“She sure is full of herself”—is that a bad thing?). I thought, this will be easy to write about: an outspoken lesbian activist feminist athlete. But of course there is a lot to parse and it gets me thinking about many things, a few of which I have the time to mention here.

As is the way of the Web, I was led to many things as I researched Megan Rapinoe. Really, there’s too much, as always. 1. She pronounces her last name “Rah-PEE-noh.” 2. I found an article on the BBC site about how Afghan women athletes (and many woman seeking government employment) are harassed by officials and their coaches. They are asked to provide sex in return for jobs and advancement. No sex, no job, no place on the team. Slowly Afghan women are able to get attention focused on this injustice. Just think how complicated this is, and how compromising to women in power (what little power they can eek out), whether or not they had sex with the men who control their advancement. 3. Rapinoe and three of her soccer comrades have created a lifestyle brand to create non-binary clothing designs, among other unspecified things (re—inc) 4. while wearing a low-cut tuxedo jacket-with-shorts outfit (which she is wearing on the re—inc splash page but is not offered for sale there), Rapinoe flashed a nipple on live TV when she was filmed getting up from her seat on a ESPN awards broadcast. Is this a bug or a feature of non-binary fashion? Why is a nipple inappropriate? 

5. And this is very interesting to me: previously the most famous photo of a female soccer player (that I could find) was a 1999 image of Brandi Chastain celebrating after kicking the winning penalty kick in that year’s Women’s World Cup. [You can see and read about it here.] She has pulled off her shirt and is kneeling, showing her sports bra—there was a big hoopla about the bra. (I bet if it had been called a tank-top instead, people would not have gotten so worked up). Her fists are in the air, her eyes are closed, her mouth open: bellowing in joy and relief. She looks amazingly strong and athletically fit. What I didn’t see mentioned is that we can see a prominent scar on Chastain’s left knee where she has obviously had surgery. Athletes pay a price for their “fitness.” (Rapinoe also has had knee surgery.) It is a beautiful image, perfectly composed. She got a lot of attention for this image. After this they made a rule that both women and men soccer players have to keep their shirts on. 

I would like to highlight a few contrasts that color my interpretation of the image of Rapinoe. Chastain’s posture is unrehearsed, while Rapinoe’s has been deliberately created and repeated. Chastain is kneeling with her eyes closed and Rapinoe is standing with her eyes open. The open eyes directly acknowledge the audience, while closed eyes demonstrate an internal, more personal, event. Chastain’s image is mostly about her strong body and her joy. Rapinoe’s is perhaps more abstract than physical, and certainly more outward. It really is an acknowledgement of pride, but it also looks like an offering of pride. She seems to be saying to the crowd, “this is yours, too”. In Chastain’s posture I see strength and joy. In Rapinoe’s posture I see power and pride. Both images are humorous. Both express triumph.

Speaking of images, Rapinoe is modeling swimsuits on the Sports Illustrated website here. I’m sure a better writer than I would have much to say about what these photos mean about the male gaze and the female gaze and desire. I can tell that Rapinoe enjoys her own body. I feel like she has no shame about her carefully crafted body. It’s beautiful to see.

This design is based on a photo captured by Jamie Smed in May 2019 and it is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. I have abstracted and colored the photographer’s work and Jamie Smed has not made any endorsement of my work.