April, 2008Shock, Pain, and Comfort: Sexuality in the Work of Frida KahloIn her self-portraits, Frida Kahlo’s regal and penetrating gaze is simultaneously seductive and defiant. With an almost masculine confidence she asserts her position as confrontational observer rather than passive object of depiction. She has full command of her sexual powers and uses them to gain power and maintain control, even as she displays her vulnerabilities. Kahlo was never one to bow down to rules of propriety. Sexually liberated for the standards of her day, she rejected her assigned role of sexual passivity. In her allusion to and flaunting of her sexual attitudes, her paintings defy the prudish conventions of her European and Catholic heritage. She rejected any links between sexual behavior and shame or sin, preferring instead to celebrate its associations with fertility, abundance, and the cycle of life and death. Yet for Kahlo, sex was also a source psychic, and possibly physical pain. Sexual activity was often a device to mask her emotional pain and take revenge on Diego Rivera for causing it. At other times, it was a source of comfort. Kahlo’s self-portraits, still-lifes, and surrealistic fantasies provide evidence of all these aspects of her unabashed sexuality. Kahlo resisted conforming to accepted gender roles since her childhood. Her father took an interest in her precocious intelligence and shared his interests, such as photography, with her as he might have done with a son. Perhaps for this reason she developed a deeper bond with her father than she did with her mother, and formulated from early on, a masculine outlook. Once she enrolled in the Nacional Preparatoria (as one of only 35 girls in a student population of 2000), her tomboyish nature fully emerged. She fell in with a gang of boys who she regarded as her curates, or pals, and frequently acted as their mischievous ringleader, instigating boyish pranks and schemes. It can be assumed that a certain amount of bravado surfaced in her personality at this time, as did her tendency to form the comradely and loyal friendships with men that would characterize love relations throughout her life (Herrera, 32). Her lifelong attraction to outstanding men began at the Preparatoria as well, where she teased and flirted with Diego Rivera, then delighted in the shocked reactions of her horrified friends when she announced to them that she would one day have his baby. In a family photograph taken when she was 19, a short time after her recovery from the trolley accident that nearly took her life, Kahlo stands in a confident, masculine pose, dressed in a man’s three-piece suit and tie, with her hair mannishly slicked back. Considering how this must have shocked and unsettled some of her family members, it is likely that she took great some satisfaction in subverting propriety and gender expectations. It is possible that this act gave her a sense of personal power that distracted her from the pain of her wounds, and in that sense, it foreshadows the efforts at pain relief through cross-dressing in Self Portrait With Cropped Hair, 1940. Despite growing up in the repressed Catholic culture of Mexico at the turn of the 20th century, where sex, at least as far as women were concerned, was for procreation only, and a woman’s virtue hinged on her ability to deny her sexual impulses, Kahlo did not shrink away from her sexual appetites. She rejected these societal dictates, believing that sex was a natural act in which pleasure was meant for both men and women. In self-portraits, Kahlo frequently employed the symbolic use of hair and animal imagery to allude to the primal nature of her sexuality. It was fashionable then, as now, within Western societies for women to remove excessive body hair by shaving, waxing, or tweezing. Modern standards of feminine beauty, always subject to cultural conditioning, idealize a nearly hairless female body. Not only does this negate any possible associations with masculinity, it also suggests a civilized cultivation of everything biological and instinctive. Excess body hair, due to its association with animals, may be regarded as a sign of an over-active sex drive or lustful personality. A shaved, plucked and bleached woman appears to have her primitive instincts in check; her animal impulses under control. Kahlo rejected this artifice, preferring to remain au naturale. In Fulang Chang and I, 1937, Kahlo’s un-tweezed eyebrows form a pair of thick arches over her dark staring eyes. The exaggerated shadow of fur that sets off her upper lip is intensified by a lock of long, thick slightly uncontrolled hair hanging over her shoulder. As she rebuffs the artificial vanities that dictate our perceptions of feminine beauty, she flaunts her unrestrained sexuality and possibly alludes to a masculine or androgynous aspect of herself. Kahlo reinforces the suggestion of uninhibited sexual impulses in this portrait with the inclusion of her pet monkey. She kept a menagerie that included a number of spider monkeys that appeared in many of her paintings. In both Mayan myths and in Western tradition, monkeys are regarded as a symbol of lust, unrestrained animal instincts and primitive drives (Herrera, 81). Monkeys are hair-covered humanoids with faces, hands and bodies that bear an uncanny and genetic similarity to our own. But while they resemble humans, they are subject to none of the restraints or boundaries that culture imposes on us. They are free to act on their primitive urges without any consideration for propriety. Kahlo draws a parallel between the fur-covered monkey and her own furry lip and brow, flaunting her uncultured sexuality in the face of polite society. She also implies, however, that the fruit, like her body, is wounded. In Still Life (Tondo), 1942 she opens the wounds of fruit like wounds in her body. The torn half papaya is disconcertingly female (Herrera, 86), possibly alluding to her broken body. In Still Life of Prickly Pear, 1938, there is a suggested sexual violence, possibly the loss of virginity, as the fruit drips red bloodlike juice onto the white tablecloth, or “sheet”. While sex is a source of pleasure, it also leads to pain, if not in the body then in the soul. When you love deeply, she seems to say, you can hurt deeply as well. Kahlo’s linking of eroticism and pain speaks of her troubled relationship with Rivera. A first-rate philanderer, Rivera even had a doctor declare that he was unfit for fidelity (Herrera, 57). It is uncertain whether or not Kahlo expected his womanizing to end after they married, but it is likely she did not anticipate the pain his infidelities would cause her for the rest of her life. Wearing a veneer of modern, liberated bravado, she pretended to tolerate his affairs, claiming, “I do not believe that the banks of the river suffer for letting a little water run” (Herrera, 57). She had affairs as well, returning his infidelity in kind. While she was intimate with both women and men, it was only her affairs with men that Rivera could not tolerate. In a statement typical of chauvinistic double standards, he said “I don’t share my toothbrush with anyone.” Kahlo tended to keep her affairs with men secret, but she would flaunt an infidelity when she wanted to incite his jealousy or pain. Her heterosexual affairs were possibly not so much a source of true pleasure for Kahlo as a distraction from Rivera’s philandering and a form of revenge against him. This is possibly the case in her affair with Leon Trotsky. While she attempted to conceal their affair behind a veneer of friendship, she flirted so openly with him that it seems unlikely Rivera would not have noticed. This is evident in Self Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, 1937, a painting she gave Trotsky as a gift shortly after her affair with him ended. In this painting she presents herself to him between a pair of curtains, as if she is on a stage. Her gaze is unmistakably seductive. In one hand she holds a bouquet of flowers, indicative of their romance. In the other she holds a sheet of paper, on which the dedication to Trotsky is written and signed by Kahlo “with love.” It would have been obvious to Rivera and all others involved that this gift was a flirtation or seduction of Trotsky, and an attempt to flaunt their affair in Rivera’s face. By inciting his jealousy, perhaps she hoped to ease her own pain. In this gesture, Kahlo gains power and control over her relationships with both men, portraying herself as the active pursuer, of one man, the blatantly disloyal wife of another. When Kahlo and Rivera reunited after their divorce, they agreed that there would be no sexual intercourse between them. Kahlo claimed she could not make love to him with all those women flashing in her head. Therefore, both continued to look outside the marital relationship for their sexual needs. Kahlo’s affairs seem to have been possibly distractions from her pain over Rivera’s betrayal when he had an affair with her sister Christina (an act which may have been in itself revenge against Kahlo for insisting they return to Mexico from New York City). This particular affair hurt Kahlo deeply, and she felt her affairs with men were repayment for Rivera’s betrayal (Herrera, 115). After their divorce, sexual references in Kahlo’s work seem to be more obviously linked with pain. In Remembrance of an Open Wound, 1938, she pulls up the ruffle on her Tehuana dress to reveal a wound on her inner thigh that looks like a displaced and bleeding vagina. This does not reference one of Kahlo’s actual injuries; it is an invented wound that seems to suggest the connection between sex and pain. It is possible that this pain was purely psychic, but it also seems likely that in her fragile and broken physical state, sexual intercourse may have been physically painful as well. Kahlo’s right hand is hidden behind the ruffle of her dress, placed near her genitalia. She announced to her friends that her hand was hidden because she was masturbating. Was this an attempt to shock her audience with her unabashed sexuality? Or was it a suggestion of her need to comfort herself to ease her loneliness and emotional pain? In Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940, Kahlo again fuses sex and pain. This painting, which she completed following her divorce, alludes to an act of self-destruction in her pain over Rivera’s betrayal with Christina. In a fit of violence Kahlo has destroyed the most obvious symbol of her feminine beauty and sexuality: her hair. She sits on a chair, facing us with her legs spread in a posture of masculine power, dressed in an oversized man’s three-piece suit, which possibly belongs to Rivera or at least connotes his absence. Recalling the family photograph at age 19, her hair has been cut mannishly short, and evidence of the violence inflicted upon her femininity lies in the locks of hair that seem to writhe about the room. The scissors are still in her hand which, placed near her genitals, dramatizes her willingness to inflict pain and violence upon her own sexual organs. By chopping off her hair, she has already destroyed her femininity metaphorically, but she shows her willingness to take the next step by destroying her actual female parts as well. The image suggests that she wishes to harm herself to punish Rivera for his betrayal. “Revenge is a boomerang cutting away her femininity but not reducing her vulnerability (Herrera, 152). We can also analyze this work in terms of her frustrations with the inequities and double standards of gender in her society. She returns to the cross-dressing antics of her youth, challenging the societal roles assigned to us by gender. Staring out at us with bravado and stoic defiance, she seems to say, “if only I were a man, I would not have to suffer so much pain.” The man’s suit combines with the removal of her femininity and the threat to obliterate her woman-hood suggests that she longs for the sense of power that comes with androgyny or masculinity. Proscribed gender roles seemed to be an inconvenience and source of suffering for Kahlo. Life would be much easier if only she were a man. While sex with Rivera and other men were linked to pain and revenge for Kahlo, her sexual encounters with women seem to have relieved some of the pain that Rivera brought upon her, and been a source of comfort for her. In her depictions of bisexuality, we get the sense of a gentle, nurturing relationship between the two feminine forms. In What the Water Gave Me, 1938, Kahlo slips into a surrealistic revelry as she soaks her aching body in the tub. On a sponge which becomes both a raft and a bed, she places two female nudes, one dark skinned and of Indian descent, the other lighter skinned and of European descent. They embrace romantically and seem to be in love. The dark skinned figure seems to soothe and comfort the light skinned woman, suggesting that the indigenous one has greater strength. A nearly identical couple appears in Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939. This painting was a gift for an intimate friend. Again we see the two women, embracing as before, in the natural context of a jungle. The lighter skinned woman places her head on the lap of the indigenous woman. She seems to take strength and comfort from this darker skinned woman. The wilderness environment and the monkey who peers out from the foliage both the naturalness of what they are doing and their uncontained lust for one another. Could this indicate an actual lover in Kahlo’s life? Or is she just a hypothetical ideal, someone Kahlo longs to find? Or are they both Kahlo herself, divided into separate entities, comforting herself? There are other occurrences in Kahlo’s work where she herself in a dual portrait, as a way of soothing physical and emotional pain. This possibly alludes to an imaginary friend she had as a child, who comforted her in times of duress. Perhaps this friend appears in the dual portrait Two Fridas, 1939. Here we see again a light skinned Frida, wearing European style dress, holding the hand of a darker skinned indigenous Frida who wears a Tehuana dress. Again the indigenous woman is the stronger; it is she who comforts the weaker European self. The Tehuana Frida holds a miniature portrait of Diego in her left hand, while the European Frida tries with her right hand, to use a clamp to stop the flow of pain and blood from her heart as it spills onto her dress. Could this be Kahlo’s childhood friend? Or is the suggestion of a female lover who provides the emotional support she needs? The image is subtly sexualized. Both Fridas sit with their legs spread wide apart, in the same position of masculine dominance seen in Self Portrait with Cropped Hair. The position of her hands are similar to this painting as well, the positioning of the clamp and the miniature portrait of Diego recalling the placement of the scissors near her genitals. Again, the emotional pain of loneliness and loss along with physical pain are in close proximity to her sexuality. The positioning of her hands near her genitals also recalls the implicit masturbation in Remembrance of an Open Wound. This is another example of Kahlo’s willingness to openly draw attention to her sexual behavior, but it does not seem in this painting that her primary intention is to subvert societal norms. Instead she portrays the dual nature of sex, as a source of both comfort and pain. Rejected by Diego, alone and unhappy, she must hold her own hand to ease her pain, filling in for him both emotionally and sexually. WORK CITED Herrera, Hayden. Frida Kahlo: The Paintings. Harper Collins, New York, NY. 1991.
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