“Find your favourite Frida!” -A sociological study of the commodified faces of Frida Kahlo

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Örebro University

School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences Sociology

“Find your favourite Frida!”

A sociological study of the commodified faces of Frida

Kahlo

Sociology, Second Cycle Independent project, 30 credits, 2021

Author: Lisa Kennedy Supervisor: Ylva Uggla

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Acknowledgements

I wish to begin this paper with an acknowledgement to the people who made it possible. A big thank you to my supervisor Ylva Uggla for all her patience, skill, and helpfulness. You have always been available to me with whenever I have needed you, and for this I give you my sincere thanks.

I also wish to thank my examinator Natalia Krzyzanowska for her help to complete this paper. Your expertise in the area and your desire to push my thesis to the next level has been

invaluable to me.

Thank you to my boss Malena Pernebro and my ex-husband Liam Kennedy, who are the ones who made it possible for me to study. I am eternally grateful to you both.

Thank you to my partner who is proud of me, and to my sons who are my biggest pride. Last of all, I wish to thank whoever created the function to clear cookies from my browser.

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Abstract

Frida Kahlo has become increasingly popular as a commodity to signify female empowerment or an exotic femininity, and her face has inspired numerous images by modern day artists and graphic designers. The market for posters and decorative objects which use new portraits of Kahlo is booming and often target young women as consumers.

This study critically explores the ethnical, cultural and gender constructions of Frida Kahlo as a symbolic as well as literal feminist poster girl on the western market. Furthermore, it

examines how these constructions function as postcolonial discursive practices. The study finds that as Kahlo is accepted as a western symbol, her embodied ethnicity and cultural belonging are erased and replaced by easily identified symbols of “strategic essentialism”, such as accessories and Mexican plants. The sexuality, frailty, and disabilities of her body are erased, and her features are westernised to make her more feminine and acceptable as a commodity. This in combination with reoccurring passivity mean that empowerment is portrayed as an act of being rather than doing and that the femininity is played up as an aspect of female empowerment.

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1. Introduction

There are few pieces of art which has had the impact and popularity as the portraits of Frida Kahlo, and there are few artists whose private life has caught the public’s imagination and interest to the extent that she has. Today, she can certainly be argued as being one of, if not the one most well-known and popular women artists of modern time. Although women artists have been tragically supressed and ignored throughout history, the popularity of Kahlo’s images prove public’s acceptance and appreciation of at least form of female expression. However, Kahlo’s way of expressing a feminine reality do not remain unchanged; the paint of her self-portraits is dry, but the paint of those who portray Frida will always be wet and as flexible as the perceived image of her. Further still as Frida’s image is commodified, it is transformed into whatever the consumer is seeking while still claiming Frida as the original signifier of messages such as feminist empowerment, womanhood, strength, tragedy, and Mexican culture.

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City in 1904, with a German father and Mexican mother. Kahlo had a complex relationship to her body and lived with several disabilities and chronic pain after surviving polio as a child and a bus accident as a young woman, in which she was impaled on an iron rod which stretched through her pelvis. Possibly on account of this, she was unable to carry a pregnancy to term, something which saddened her greatly throughout her life. The physical disabilities of Kahlo and her experience of chronic pain plays a large role in her art. In her artwork, she often included her body as a broken or hurt, with references to the pain of her miscarriages.

As a young woman, Kahlo was often cross dressing as a man with androgynous or masculine appearances, and this gender play was often significant in her self-portraits, not only in her depiction of herself in male garments and hairstyles. Typical examples of this are the

depiction of her facial hair, her calm, unsmiling gaze meeting the viewer, the masculine body language such as being comfortably seated with her legs wide apart, and her refusal to

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“beautify” herself to meet a beauty standard or ideal (e.g., “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair”, 1940). She is often stated as a feminist icon1_.

In 2002 the biographical movie Frida was released with actress Salma Hayek starring as the title character Frida Kahlo. Hayek, like Kahlo, is of mixed heritage but often noted as Mexican American or Latina. She is celebrated as a beautiful woman and often play roles where she is sexualised and her body is displayed, which is relevant to mention for two reasons: first, that Hayek as a Latina woman is continuously sexualised to the audience as a “sexy, fiery Latina”, and secondly, that the movie’s Frida Kahlo is portrayed as and by a beautiful, sexy woman, rather than an actress who is physically similar to the artist’s true self. Fifteen years later, on December 12th 2017, Hayek published a story in the New York Times2 in which she accused producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment during the filming and that he was constantly complaining of Hayek’s looks as she tried to imitate the painter’s physicality, ultimately threatening to shut down the production if Hayek did not appear fully nude and performed a graphic lesbian sex scene. No matter the truth in this accusation, it is (or was) a reality that Frida Kahlo and Salma Hayek alike were both sexualised in the movie to fit a certain screen image. Despite Hayek’s complaint that her image as a sexy and sexual Latina was against her own wishes, many of the posters and images being sold as Frida Kahlo still portray Salma Hayek in her Frida make up and look, which illustrate the public’s

continuing fascination with the idea of the androgenous and haunted woman as a gorgeous, sexual, physically perfect actress.

1_{The information about Frida Kahlo’s life can be found on}_{https://www.biography.com/artist/frida-kahlo}_or

https://www.museofridakahlo.org.mx/en/frida-kahlo-en/#back-top, biographies collected June 4th 2_{Salma Hayek, December 12}th_{2017. Collected June 3}rd_2021.

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FIGURE 1: SELF-PORTRAIT OF FRIDA WITH MONKEY AND PORTRAIT OF SALMA HAYEK AS FRIDA WITH MONKEY

Considering Frida Kahlo’s significance as a feminist and Mexican symbol, there is a strong relevance to the question of which feminist and Mexican symbols are conveyed in new commercial images intended to decorate the audience’s homes. During the construction of a commercial Frida, she is literally as well as figuratively objectified – the audience is invited to “find your favourite Frida!”, to quote one webshop3_{. The phenomenon of an empty symbol} which can mean anything is termed an “floating signifier” by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (through Mehlman, 1972, p. 15).

In this case study, I explore the construction of postcolonial gender discourse, using the image of Frida Kahlo as portrayed in modern digital artworks as research material. I use modern day artwork featuring Frida Kahlo, as Frida’s image is widely used in popular culture and popular media as a gendered Latina. The recontextualization of Frida Kahlo does not only concern newly painted commercial images of her, but it gives an excellent understanding into the process of recontextualization of a floating signifier to strive for a commercially charged form of symbolism.

This paper aims to provide insight on how Frida is depicted in digital portraits intended for the poster market, and how ethnicity, femininity, and Mexican culture is constructed in these images. As a further aspect of these research questions, the paper aims to contribute insight if

3_{Quote from}_{https://deseniooutlet.se/sv/design-magazine/trender/frida-kahlo-konstnar-och-ikon}_{, collected on} June 3rd_2021.

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postcolonial and gendered “othering” is constructed in the images, and if so, how. As I differentiate between the artist Frida Kahlo and the commodified product Frida Kahlo by referring to the commodified product by her first name alone – Frida Kahlo vs simply Frida. I have limited my research to posters and prints since I consider these to be a valuable source material as they are intended for decorative use only, and not holding any association to any practical use. Along with images of Frida’s face, I have encountered images which portray sole items such as hands or flowers, but I have chosen to omit these images from my analysis. The reason for excluding this material is that I deem images without a facial portrait to make the material too eclectic and difficult to manage.

1.1 Definitions of key terms

The aim of this study is to provide insight how ethnicity, femininity, and Mexican culture is constructed in commercial images. This is provided through a case study in which I focus on images depicting Frida Kahlo as a “Latina”.

In this paper, I use the terms Latina, Latina/o, Hispanic and Mexicana to a varying degree. While the terms overlap in many areas, they are not synonymous, and for that reason I provide an overview on my definition and usage of these terms.

Latina: I use the term “Latina” as a gendered and racialised construct of a person who identifies

as or is read as being of Latin American descent. The racialisation and othering of the Latina are constantly constructed by external forces such as advertising and popular culture, which use coding such as the colour red, metaphors of heat and fire, hyper sexualisation or hyper domesticity (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, pp. 2–3; Khan, 2019, pp. 4–5). This mean that the Latina is consistently gendered and sexualised as a part of the racialisation process.

Latina/o: I use the term Latina/o to signify the difference between the racialisation and othering

of men and women read as Latina/o, without the added gendering and sexualisation of the Latina woman.

Mexicana: I use this term to specify the Latina as a woman of Mexican descent or native to

Mexico, rather than a woman of non-specified Latin American descent.

Hispanic: I use this term as an umbrella term for a person of Latin American descent, often

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Commodification: I use this term to explain the process of normalising the extended use of a

consumption-driven version of an otherwise non-consumer related phenomenon, such as feminism or Mexican culture. This definition is heavily based on the definition as published by Natalia Krzyżanowska (2020, p. 3)

Floating signifier: The concept of a floating signifier stem from the process of disconnecting

a known symbol from its own meaning, while remaining the claim of the original symbolism (Mehlman, 1972, pp. 15–16).

1.2 Disposition

The paper starts with an abstract where I provide summary over the findings of this study. Chapter one is an introduction to the study area and the definition of the key terms I use throughout the paper. In chapter two, I supply an overview over the previous research and literature I have used as a foundation of my own analysis of my data. In this section, I also describe the process I have used to gather the literature. In chapter three I provide an overview over the theoretical framework for the study and stake out the theories which lay as the basis of the study. In chapter four, I describe the process of data collection and selection, and I also provide the ethical considerations I have regarding this study. Chapter five provide

information about the research method and describe how I perform the research of my study. The result of this study is presented in chapter six, which is followed by a discussion on the key impact of this study in chapter seven. Chapter seven also provide suggestions how the result can be used in later studies. The paper finishes with a list of references as well as an appendix with information of the images I have used in the study.

2. Literary review and previous research

In this section of the paper, I provide previous research findings concerning the

commodification process of art, as well as presenting research concerning more general areas relating to the topic at hand. I will start by very briefly describe the process in which I have performed the search for previous material and how I have done my selections. The full search process of the paper is supplied at the end of the study as a separate annex termed “Literary search process”. I also use the term “Latina” without defining my usage of this term, as I will provide this in the theoretical framework section of the paper.

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As several case studies of the commodification of Frida Kahlo has been written, I have been fortunate enough to able to use academic studies with her as a subject in much of the previous research. This has proven fruitful since many of these studies provide insight of the

intersection between several of the areas I have chosen to focus on, such as commodification of Mexican culture or the construction of “The Latina” in a western context. However, since this paper is not about Frida Kahlo as an artist or person, nor have any intent on acting as critique on Kahlo’s art, I have limited myself to studies relating to these areas. I have excluded studies focusing to Kahlo’s artistic work.

Regarding research on postcolonialism, I have mainly based my definitions on the excellent book “Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts” (Ashcroft et al., 2013) as a base, branching out to include studies in which the processes are performed.

2.1 Search process

When searching for literature, I have used the database sociological abstracts as my main source of scientific articles. As a secondary source, I have used google scholars. Apart from these databases, I have made more shallow searches on the database Sociology Collection. However, all the articles I have used have been collected through Sociological Abstracts as I consider these to be most relevant to my research. I excluded non-peer reviewed scientific articles and included only articles in English. Many of the articles and books I ended up using were found as I wanted to use first-hand sources or found references to literature through the articles I found on the databases as I collected information with snowball sampling.

I started the search process by doing a general search on how artistic beauty are constructed in a postcolonial context. This is on account of me wishing to delve deeper into femininity, ethnicity, and fashion in a postcolonial context relating to artwork, and I deemed that these areas were all covered by the general umbrella of beauty standards, but that I would later need to take a more in-dept approach to each area individually. Keywords I applied here were postcoloniality, west, beauty and art, with several changes to each term to throw as broad a net as possible in my search (e.g., west* instead of “western” etc).

I have used several articles and books written specifically on Kahlo as I consider these to give insight into the areas I am interested in, such as the gender aspect of the construction of the Latina. Searching for peer reviewed articles in Sociological Abstracts with the term “Frida

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Kahlo” result in 57 hits of which I used one article by Molina-Guzman. I also searched for articles with key words “day of the dead” to find articles relating to the construction of Mexican culture in the west, as this is a Mexican holiday which is embraced by large parts of the west.

To include a narrower gender aspect of these construct, I extended my search to include the construction of the Latina. In this search, I used search terms such as “Latin*”, and “Exot*” (full search string: (noft(latin*) AND noft(exot*)) AND stype.exact("Scholarly Journals") AND at.exact("Article") AND la.exact("English") AND PEER(yes)) which resulted in 39 results. Of these results, I deemed two articles as applicable to my study. I also came across a review of the book “Dangerous curves: Latina bodies in the media”, which I have used to a large extent in this study.

From these articles, I have collected key terms which I have then applied to searches to find material which may cover the same area from other angles, such as exotification or othering combined with Mexican, Mexicana or Latin American (all search terms as open as possible to find variations on each term). As I moved away from art analysis as a key source of literature, I instead focused on keywords used by scholars which are authorities on the area of Latina culture, gendering, ethnicity, and authenticity.

The books I have used on visual sociology are books which I have found to be well-received and oft used by authors in similar areas. I have taken the advice given in these books, on which authors I should focus on if I wish to narrow my knowledge of visual sociology to aim more specifically towards gendering or othering. I have also received assistance from

examinator Dr. Natalia Krzyzanowska to allocate the article “Recontextualization” (Krzyżanowski, 2016).

2.1 The Latina commodity

When Vogue Magazine choose the image of Frida as a Latina, the magazine act as a “cultural gatekeeper” (Englis, Solomon and Ashmore, 1994, p. 3) who decides what an accepted look is and is in a position to construct a visual discourse of acceptable visuality towards their

audience (Englis, Solomon and Ashmore, 1994, p. 3). The commodified product Frida is thus a product which has been shifted through gatekeepers who decide the acceptable and

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is not constructed as a painter but as a commodity which exist in a western and Latin

American context alike. Frida is no longer a Mexican-German painter but a commodity which is available on a global market. This create a tension between what the diverse and complex cultural phenomenon being portrayed and what is deemed acceptable to social gatekeepers as but can still be considered being “authentic” to the audience. In other words, “(the)

performance of Mexican identity is constrained by popular audience notions and expectations of Latina/o authenticity” (Molina Guzmán, 2006, p. 5). Authenticity can be created by

association to “authentic” cultural symbols or culture or by a connection to an “authentic” performer, where the authenticity is aimed solely at an audience outside of the culture being displayed.

While many of the original self-portraits painted by Frida Kahlo are unsettling or even grotesque (e.g., My nurse and I (I suckle), 1937), the look of the commodified “generic Latina” is strictly monitored, as so many representations of femininity. This is not strictly relating to a physical or “natural” appearance, but by the way that she is able to fix herself up and construct her ethnicity as well as her femininity (De Casanova, 2004, p. 19). The female Latina body is thus both a sexualised and racialised body, and a body which is under scrutiny not only as a gendered body but a racialised gendered body. Molina-Guzmán writes:

“Because the essential male body and the essential white body traditionally have held the most symbolic worth, representations of Latina beauty and desirability in the media translate into the privileging of Latina whiteness over Latina blackness and Latina femininity and heterosexuality over Latina masculinity and queerness” (2010, p. 13). The Latina body, according to Molina-Guzmán, is trapped between two forces: on the one hand, it is associated with domesticity, femininity, and heterosexuality, while on the other hand it is made into “the other”, a racial and sexual threat to a (white) national body (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, p. 25). The Latina body is often used as a trope for sexualised femininity with the consequence of racialisation for women who is read as generically Latinidad (Khan, 2019, p. 5). The Latina is thus The Other, both by the patriarchy and a postcolonial society. As an illustration of this, I have added print screens of searches made of the terms results of “Hispanic painting” and “Latina painting”, displayed in figures 2 and 3 below.

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FIGURE 2, GOOGLE SEARCH RESULT OF “HISPANIC PAINTING”

In figure 2, the result of the search term “Hispanic painting” show paintings performed by Hispanic artists while “Latina painting” (figure 3) display paintings of Latina women, that is, images of nameless women as decorative objects. The Hispanic is the artist while the Latina is an exotified female body being gazed at. Interestingly, Frida Kahlo is apparent in both results of these search results, but whereas she is depicted with a photograph as a Hispanic artist, she is instead combined with the image of “We can do it!”, an iconic poster from 1943 which is an oft used feminist symbol.

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FIGURE 3, GOOGLE SEARCH RESULT OF "LATINA PAINTING"

In short, the Latina is constantly gendered and held in relation as an Other to a white national body. The Latina is thus both racialised and gendered, and the commodification of the Latina is also a process of the commodification of gender and racialised ethnicity. The Latina is often read as a “natural”, i.e., primitive identity which is constructed through external forces with symbols such as colours, clothing, and Latin American plants to construct an idealised fantasy by colonisers viewing the colonised. I elaborate on this in the theoretical framework.

2.2 The exotic commodity

When discussing a cultural discourse, it is important to keep in mind how the myth of a uniform country culture can only exist outside of its own borders (Rodriguez, 2003, p. 11). A “Mexican culture” or “Swedish culture” can only be defined outside of Mexico or Sweden, where it can be rounded up to one simplified body (Rodriguez, 2003, pp. 11–13).

While any country’s culture is too complex to define as one item or idea among inhabitants as there are cultural differences between generations, geographical areas or social circumstances, the culture can be defined in unrefined terms by “outsiders”, non-members of the culture. Rodriguez (Rodriguez, 2003, p. 11) refer to this simplified idea of a uniform culture as

“strategic essentialism”, a concept which can be applied to cultural members by “outsiders” or indeed be performed by members amongst “outsiders”. This theory reflects the idea of a

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national essentialism, the cultural essence of a nation which contain and is limited to any society within national borders. The use of strategic essentialism is necessary to create authenticity when one’s nationality or cultural belonging is questioned or to be constructed (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, pp. 87–88), such as when a foreigner join in new traditions to show belonging with a new culture, but also when they make a point of keeping their old traditions which they may not previously participated in, as a way of marking their belonging to their previous culture membership.

Another aspect of exoticism is the aspect of desirability through novelty and racialised

sexualisation. Rape culture is a crucial part of colonialism and one which is heavily seeped in

sexualising the Other by assuming a relationship between coloniser and colonised in which the coloniser take ownership over the colonised body (Ashcroft et al., 2013, pp. 49–50). The combination of sexual accessibility through rape and fear of the Other as something unknown both sexualise the colonised body, resulting in gendered and sexualised stereotypes such as the “Fiery Latina” or the “Curvy Latina Body” (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, pp. 92–94). This also create a connection between with the sexualised, gendered body and the idea of a cultural essentialism or authenticity: the Latina is sexual/motherly/domestic/exotic etc simply because

she is an “authentic” Latina (Molina Guzmán, 2006, p. 11; Khan, 2019, p. 5).

In conclusion, the exotified commodity is read as a constant Other which is constructed by non-members or outsiders of a group. Traditions and other easily understood symbols are used by outsiders to “read” and identify the exotic commodity’s authenticity. While the actual definitions of a culture of cultural belonging is elusive and changeable, exotification is an external force in which the culture is simplified to be easily understood and identified by the consumer as authentic. I also elaborate on this in the theoretical framework.

3. Theoretical framework

In this section of the paper, I present the visual sociology analysis which I have used for the study. In the “Method” section of the paper, I elaborate on how I apply these theories as research methods for this paper. I also give background to the major sociological theories I am using in this paper, as well as present main themes and definitions of the analytical tools I have employed.

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3.1 Visual sociology as a research theory

No one knows how far back that mankind has produced images. According to an article published in The Guardian in 20194, cave art found in Indonesia can be around 44 000 years old. Of course, it is safe to say that images were not used the same way year 42 000 BC as they are now, however it shows how intent man has been on communicating a message through visual art.

The production and usage of images has exploded further in recent years, and this has required a vast change in how visual sociology is used as a tool of social studies. While images have always been prevalent in public spaces through analogue images used in advertising or movies, the possibility of digital production of images has created a boom in visual production (Zuev and Bratchford, 2020, pp. 24–25). The normalisation of online usage of image communication mean that images are created in a whole new sphere and with whole new meanings (such as emojis or memes), resulting in whole new areas and tools for social analysis. Through these messages, much can be understood not only through analysing the message of the picture or visual message itself, but also by understanding the culture and time in which the image is created (Rose, 2016, pp. 2–4).

Today, visual messages are an unescapable part of modern life. Advertising, visual branding, photographs, digital media, social media, fonts, symbols, cartoons, pins, prints on clothes, tv shows, movies or simple drawings are visual representatives of social constructed messages, the viewing of these often referred to as visuality (Rose, 2016, p. 3). The theory of visual sociology takes the stance that since images are social constructions, they are always

representations of social differences and not simple illustrations (Rose, 2016, p. 16; Zuev and

Bratchford, 2020, pp. 26–27), and since the images are social constructs of which we are part, the viewer is always looking at the image in relation to him-or herself (Rose, 2016, pp. 18– 19). By this means that the viewer is a part of the image since he or she interprets it within a context in which it makes sense; for instance, a meme only “make sense” to a person with the ability to interpret it from her own cultural or subcultural frames, i.e., someone who “gets the joke”. This raises the issue made by art historian and cultural analyst G. Pollock, that a

4_{As stated by The Guardian,} https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/11/earliest-known-cave-art-by-modern-humans-found-in-indonesia

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photograph displaying a sexist joke will make the viewer complicit with the photographer or artist simply by the act of “getting it” (Pollock, 1988, p. 47 through Rose, 2016, p. 33). The mass-reproduction and attainability of images have several consequences on the beholder of the images, one of which being the loss or change of the “aura” of an artwork when it is first experienced as a reproduction or photograph rather than the original artwork itself (Rose, 2016, p. 37). This is relevant to social analysis as the “audiencing” (or mass-viewing due to availability) of an image never appear in a vacuum, but how meaning of an image can be re-negotiated or rejected due to the audience’s own backgrounds or interpretation (Rose, 2016, pp. 29–40), meaning that an image is read differently depending on in which context it occurs or who is looking at the picture.

Strangely, the method of visual sociology is not uncontroversial even within sociological academia, despite how social phenomena is commonly constructed or displayed visually. Sociologist and filmmaker France Winddance Twine write in her article Visual Sociology in a

Discipline of Words: Racial Literacy, Visual Literacy and Qualitative Research Methods

(2016) of the problem created by the fact that many sociologists are typically not trained to analyse visual material despite its powerful place in society. This neglect of visual training leaves a great competence gap competence of social analysis, as Twine make the point of how certain visual constructs of racism is impossible to grasp without visual literacy (Twine, 2016, p. 2). Sociologist Luc Pauwel also urge analysts to use visual material as a rich and valuable source, and he also urge researchers to use a meta-perspective in their own choice of visual illustrations in their work (Zuev and Bratchford, 2020, pp. 26–27). This urging from Pauwel is a request for reflexivity and self-criticism from researchers as another form of analysis in the uphold of discourses within academia, an aspect which is often strangely overlooked within self-criticism. One reason for this may be the general ignorance on account of the lack of visual training, but another possible reason that I would like to raise is that research

scientists too are so used to visual material as an “innocent” part of modern life, that the usage of visual illustrations come too naturally to demand reflexivity.

3.2 The social construct of the Latina

There are no uniform definitions of “Latina”. Ethnicity, nationality, or group membership are often framed by elusive borders, as difficult to define as any national identity, which one can

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be ascribed or denied in processes of acceptance or “othering”. Of course, Latina is not only an identity which is constructed by or assigned by individuals; Molina-Guzmán elaborate on the concept as a social construct created by popular culture, advertising, or media, and which can be internalised or assigned (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, p. 3). As a social construction, the concept of Latina can be re-negotiated or contradictory depending on the context: in an analysis of women’s role in alcohol advertising, the Latina woman is explained as caught in a binary categorization in which she is maternal, domestic, humble, and demure, or sexual, hot tempered or a gateway to urban life (Alaniz and Wilkes, 1995, pp. 13–14). While this study was published in 1995, it is easy to recognize the Madonna-whore conflict as remaining in the construction of the Latina, proving how predominant this conflict is to the definition of a Latina woman (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, pp. 10–14).

This paper does not attempt to delve into the Latina/o identity or history; indeed, the reason I have chosen the term “Latina” to define the categorised othering of Frida is because it is so vague and require little more than a general idea of “The Latina” as a troupe. The term “Latina” is shallow and give little information than that it regarding a woman of Latin American descent, and yet, it is a social construct which is as charged as any social role. I choose the term “Latina” rather than a term like “Chicana” or “Latinidad” because I want to reflect any ambiguity of the vague “Mexican-ness”, or unspecified exoticism constructed in the images. The images exist in a context in which the Latina is the Other, not one which the viewer is meant to identify with. For this reason, the term Latina is handy as it describes the elusive concept of “Latina-ness” which is constructed, and which may be lost in more precise terms.

3.3 Postcolonialism - Othering, gendering, and racialisation

Postcolonialism is structured through many active processes. The processes of othering,

gendering or racialisation calls for the process of constructing a binary form of normality in

the world, in which one group or individual can be made into a “other”, i.e., something deviant from normality. As the dominant group (e.g., the coloniser to the colonised or male to the female) own power to categorise normality (and thus, abnormality), othering can be viewed as the process of truth-construction in which one group is seen as naturally dominant to another.

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Regarding the Latina, othering can be constructed in two sections: firstly, by the subordinate status as a woman in a patriarchal society, and second, as a racialized woman in an imperialist context (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, p. 93; Ashcroft et al., 2013, pp. 116–117). In fact, several feminists call to attention the problematic stance of speaking of colonization from a single gender stance when in reality, colonized women are doubly oppressed (Ashcroft et al., 2013, p. 118). By this, one can draw the conclusion that the Latina is not only a social construct of not only a person, but of a woman. The interconnected racialization and gendering of the Latina can be expressed as a double othering in which her bodies signifiers charge the gender with expectation of what a Latina is, such as exotic, domestic, tempting, virtuous etc (Molina-Guzmán, 2010, pp. 10–12, 63).

The deconstruction of the gaze is a powerful tool of examining the power dynamics in visual data, as it shows who is watching and who is being watched or what is being shown in the image. In a visual context, othering is to a great extent displayed in the how the gaze is produced regarding gendered, sexualised or racialised expectations (Zuev and Bratchford, 2020, pp. 29–30). This construct an object-subject relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, in which the colonised woman is passively being defined or constructed by the coloniser (Hall and Open University, 1997, pp. 195–196). As the gaze is constructed by way of displaying the colonisers’ or males’ view, this empowers the coloniser or male to define the narrative of the truth in the image, for example by exclusion of people of colour or by the position of the female nude body in the artistic narrative.

Postcolonialism draw on a rich history of artwork which has exotified and sexualised the colonised, constructing an “othered” colonised body through depictions of art. There is also a long history of depicting the colonised body or culture as an example of primitivism, or that the Othered body or culture has a less “cultured”, “civilised” or “primitive” existence, and where the coloniser’s gaze seeks simple symbols of the colonised culture, which is deemed less sophisticated and thus less valuable than the coloniser’s artistic expressions (Ashcroft et

al., 2013, pp. 215–216). Primitivism is also exemplified by Othered cultures being seen as

closer to nature with a “mystic”, almost magic Otherness, where the colonised culture and people being “less civilised” and more animalistic which separate the colonised from the coloniser and make the colonised body and culture an object of study for the coloniser (Hall and Open University, 1997, p. 161; Ashcroft et al., 2013, pp. 215–216).

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3.4 “The western gaze”

While both orientalism and exotification are a part of western art history, there are several other ways to construct an art narrative in such a way as to cater it to a western audience and construct what I refer to as “the western gaze”.

The influence of western art is present not only in the absence of the marginalised artists accepted in the sphere of “great art”, but it is also present in the assimilation of coloniser’s gaze. One example of this is the construction of “the good eye”, i.e., the ability to read art’s composition in relation to other artworks (Rose, 2016, pp. 56–58). By this standard, an image exists within a context where other western images are the standard measurement of quality, and as such, the “western gaze” is used to “westernise” images to make them more

recognisable to a western audience. It is for example no coincidence that Kahlo chose to paint herself waist-up, half-turned to the beholder this is a part of a long western art tradition in portrait painting, which construct the standard of what is recognisable according to “the good eye”. This again draw from the western tradition of displaying Othered cultures and bodies in museums as something for the western gaze to define, and later to recognise through “the good eye” (Hall and Open University, 1997, pp. 159–161).

4. Data collection and selection

In this section of the paper, I present the process in which I have collected and selected the data which I have used for the study. I also provide an overview to visual sociology and visual critical methods of analysis, as well as review ethical considerations of the study.

4.1 Data collection

The data for this case study has been collected between January and March 2021 and the posters containing the images I have analysed was available within this time frame. I have used Bryman’s steps of qualitative data collection method (Bryman, 2012, pp. 384–385). As mentioned in the introduction, I encountered Frida Kahlo items ranging from slippers to kimonos or wallpaper. I have limited my research to posters and prints since these are

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images of Frida’s face, I have encountered images which portray sole items such as hands or flowers, but I have chosen to omit these images from my analysis. The reason for excluding this material is that I deem images without a facial portrait to make the material too eclectic and difficult to manage. I have chosen to collect material from Swedish web shops which I have encountered from a very basic web search. The reason for choosing the Swedish market as a source of data is to limit myself to a manageable amount of material all the while

collecting images which I consider the data representable to the images found internationally. Indeed, many of the artists responsible for the artwork found on the online shops are non-swedes and sell posters with their artwork on non-Swedish as well as Swedish sites5. I have chosen to use data from ten of the largest Swedish online shops which sell posters. These webshops are: https://nordicpostercollective.se/, https://www.juniqe.se/,

https://desenio.se/, https://deseniooutlet.se/, https://www.bimago.se/, https://www.zazzle.se/,

https://www.bga.se/, https://favoritdekor.se/, https://posterland.se/, and

https://www.posterlounge.se/. I have chosen to include both desenio.se and deseniooutlet.se as

these webshops include variations of products, and I therefore consider these to be valid as different shops.

The online stores are all chosen by a google search “köp poster affisch Frida Kahlo” (“buy poster Frida Kahlo” with “affisch” being an alternative word for poster). My intent with this simple search is to target the most accessible online stores met by the consumer in a general google search. I have chosen to limit myself to few search terms since further searches did not reveal results which differed from my limited search. I thus consider the data collected

through these initial searches is enough to give a comprehensive view of the market images, and that no further collected data would be necessary to perform a thorough analysis.

Through this search, I encountered ten Swedish online stores of various sizes with the number of artworks containing Frida’s image ranging from 53 to two. Many of the artworks were sold by more than one online store. I excluded material sold by Amazon.se as I consider this online shop to be unmanageable for data collection due to its mere size.

5_{One example of this is the Swiss artist “Treechild” whose portraits of Frida are sold on several of the Swedish} sites. Her designs are also available on online stores such as walleditions.com with the marketing blurb that she “offers a collection of art posters for children and babies, as animals, landscapes, and Pop Culture characters”.

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The collected data resulted in 155 images which included several duplicates, as some images were sold on two or more sites. These duplicates have been removed from the collected material, resulting in 136 images of which several contain parts of each other e.g., the same face displayed with different patterned backgrounds. I have however omitted duplicate images with single-coloured backgrounds where nothing varies but the colour, as I consider these to be too uniform to give consider as separate images.

4.2 Ethical considerations

The material I have analysed is available to the public without any limitations and is therefore covered by the Swedish Act on Copyright in Literary and Artistic Works (1960:729, §§1 – 2). According to these legal frameworks, reprints of publicly available artworks are permitted in cases of scientific research if the research is not performed for financial gain and the author perform good practice as defined by Swedish law 2005:359. However, the reprint of

copyrighted images is limited to studies which are not available to the public and for that reason I am including the images in the material only before the study is published on the digital platform DiVA.

As I mentioned in the introduction of this paper, it is of no relevance to the subject if the images are considered “good” or “bad”. As I went through my collected data and started to section the pieces, I was aware that describing the images and categorizing them may create the impression that they are “wrong” or “bad”. However, is it never my intention to analyse these images as art pieces, but rather to use them as material of a case study in which they are valuable documents within a social context.

As a white, western woman, I am not an “insider” in the Latin American culture. I thus make no attempt to give any inside view on Latina experience, but focus on the expressions of postcolonialism and gendering as expressed in modern commercial artworks. This may be viewed as problematic by some; however, I ask the reader to please bear in mind the focus of the paper is not strictly Latin American but Latin America constructed not towards insiders but for outsiders, of which I am one. Another aspect to point out is the paper’s lack of historical background regarding the colonisation of Latin America, and the lack of space given to description of Mexican or Latin American historic culture. The reason for this is simple: I am not a historian and am not qualified to give more than a brief background to the

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sources of modern-day discursive expressions (i.e., the commodification of Mexican symbols such as “The Day of the Dead”-costumes). This is quite contrary to Foucault’s ideas of archaeological knowledge as to discover discourse development (see for instance “The

Archaeology of Knowledge”, 1969), but for a critical analysis of a modern-day phenomenon I consider focus on present discourse expressions fully adequate and appropriate.

5. Research method

In this section of the paper, I present the intergraded use visual analysis. I have used the three-dimensional module for political analysis presented by Fairclough (2013, pp. 94, 132), but altered to enable a clearer analysis of visual material. For the analytical process I have borrowed the model presented by Wang (2014, pp. 6–7) which is presented in full below. However, in this section of the paper, I will not yet apply the methodology to my own material, but only summarize the method to give a fuller insight in my own research as it is presented.

I have chosen to make certain adjustments to Wang’s method to better suit my own material. Wang has performed his study on images displayed on Time Magazine’s website while my material is collected from web-shops and does not have a defined purchaser outside of his or her nationality. This key difference makes it near impossible to perform the same precise method as Wang and I have thus chosen to adjust the focus of the method to better suit my research questions. However, it is highly interesting that this key information (who the images are intended for) is lacking, and it may be of great interest in a later study, both to give a fuller understanding of the consumer but also to give deeper insight in the result of this study.

5.1 Critical visual methodology

In this case study, I have chosen to apply the methodology presented by Wang in his study Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies (2014) as I consider this to be an excellent tool to find answers to the research questions I target. Of course, Fairclough’s initial framework for CDA is applied to the general description of text, which certainly include

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images as well as other non-verbal forms of multimodal communication (Fairclough, 2013, p. 7). While Wang claim that critical discourse analysis has a long history of neglecting the use of non-verbal communication and focusing almost solely on verbal text (Wang, 2014, p. 3), this is contradicted by the number of researchers who use CDA as a multimodality research tool (e.g., Wodak through Kendall, 2007). By way of applying CDA to visual media, Wang presents a negotiation between visual media analysis and Faircloughs original

three-dimensional model for analysis of political discourse (Wang, 2014, p. 7). This method of a model differs from the methodology presented by Rose in which she focuses on the images in

their milieu rather than their content (Rose, 2016, pp. 25–28).

Fairclough’s original model for critical analysis of political discourse uses three dimensions: a spoken or written discourse text, the production and interpretation of this text through

discourse practice, and finally the discourse is placed into de facto social practice

(Fairclough, 2013, p. 94). Wang’s application of this model is referred as discursive narrative

visual analysis (see figure 4).

FIGURE 4,WANG’S MODEL OF DISCURSIVE NARRATIVE OF VISUAL ANALYSIS6

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The application of Wang’s model follows three steps: visual description, visual interpretation, and explanation of social context. Through this model, conduction of discursive analysis can be performed in much the same way as Fairclough’s initial steps of analysis of political discourse analysis, enabling a micro-to-macro perspective in which an analysis of “micro-analysis” of discursive action (Fairclough, 2013, pp. 38–40, 88–90) is put into use a macro discourse which in produce social action. Wang’s method can therefore be conducted to produce information regarding the visual discourse, discursive practice and finally enable

social practice analysis (Wang, 2014, pp. 6–9). This is thus performed after the collection

and categorisation of data.

The collection of the data was performed on the ten web shops I found available on the Swedish market. I thus collected data from all sources I found available and removed any duplicates, leaving me with 136 unique images. These images were then categorised through five categories:

 Images which are digitally altered photos of Kahlo. This is to target the changes which transform the images of Kahlo (albeit themselves commodities) to enhance the

desirability of Frida as a commodity, and thus pinpoint which aspects of the commodity is desirable.

 Images produced in such a way as to draw reference to other art pieces or artistic styles. This is to find similarities to other western artistic expressions, which may influence or construct the western gaze.

 Images where Mexican imagery is a main part of the picture. Albeit Frida herself is a Mexican symbol and it can thus be argued that any image containing her picture is a Mexican themed image, I have focused here to collect the images which have other Mexican symbols or themes as the main part of the image. This is to compare the aspects of Mexican imagery to the images where Mexican imagery plays a smaller part of the image narrative, to compare which aspects of Mexican symbolism are used. In many of the pictures the symbols themselves were re-occurring from other images but played up to play a larger part of the picture.

 Images in black and white, as most images use colour as a central part of the image, to allocate similarities and differences in the symbolisms used in images with

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 Images where Frida’s body is present as a part of the picture. As most of the images depict Frida’s face and shoulders, this category is in place to allocate the use of Frida’s body as a part of the image.

The first step in Wang’s model is to perform a detailed visual description of the image. This material can then be used as data for the second step of interpretation, to reveal discursive practices. I thus started my analysis with these categories and went over the images to find similarities and differences in each category. I focused on obvious similarities such as the use of colour, aspects of the gendering process and reoccurring symbols, all of which were made into subcategories. I also paid attention to which points of Frida’s looks which were used as a way of identifying her, as her facial features and clothing varies greatly, to find aspects of which parts of Frida is the essential part of her depicted identity.

The second step of analysis is broken down to production, distribution, and consumption of discursive practices, this is to say that focus first lay on explaining the producer and

production process of discursive practice. Through this, focus can shift to explain how the discursive practice is distributed through images, and finally how the viewer intergrade or consume the discursive practice in the image and “perform” discursive practice through the media of social practice. The production of the images displays how the images are presented by the producer/artist, the distribution of the images displays how visuals prepare the viewer to accept the ideologies encoded in the images, while the consumption of the images shows how the viewers or consumers assimilate these ideologies (Wang, 2014, p. 12). In this study, I exclude the aspect of the consumption and have not focused on the production and

distribution parts outside of what I found by the collection of the data. This is due to the size and focus of this study, which is to identify the processes in which femininity, ethnicity and Mexican culture are constructed. However, I have made notes on the production and

distribution aspects of these images to gain a picture of the areas in which these pictures may act as discourse constructions.

I went through the web shops to find the general cost and size of the posters available for purchase. By categorising the images through pricing and image production, I came to some conclusion regarding the targeted consumer. The production of the images is performed digitally, and they are distributed via numerous web shops within Sweden as well as

internationally. Digital production of images is a relatively new phenomenon, as is the large-scale ability distribute the images to an international market of consumers. The digital

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production of images provides a great deal of freedom for the producer as well as the consumer, as they can make changes to the image easily and quickly. The choice of digital production of the images thus provides a great deal of freedom to alter images by adding or removing details from scanned photographs or otherwise digitally available images.

The distribution of the images is done online via web shops of varied sizes. The sizing and the price of the posters varies greatly, from around 20x30 cm to 100x225 cm, with the price of the poster going up by each level of size. Generally, the price varies between around 100 SEK to 350 SEK, but certain posters are sold for substantially more than that. The most expensive print costs 4652 SEK, for which the consumer can also make personal alternations to the size of the print. Generally, the price of the prints ensures availability to a very large number of consumers. Frida’s role as a feminist icon makes it probable that most consumers are girls or women, and the difference in price show that the consumers’ disposable income range from low to high. Still, most of the images are at a reasonably cheap cost which target a low-income consumer.

Because of the small scale of this study, I do not perform any part of the consumption aspect of these images. This is because I am unable to retrieve any data from the consumers and I am therefore unable to analyse how the images are received or interpreted. However, in a larger scale or as a part of a separate study, the results of this study may be used as a basis for further investigation into the consumption aspects of the images.

The third step of Wang’s method call for social practice analysis. In this step, I have carefully studied the categorised images to find common themes which can illuminate the construction of “common sense”. In the images, reoccurring themes of Mexican symbols are limited to basic and easily identified items such as cacti or “exotic” flowers and animals. Through this, the Mexican culture exclude any items which require anything other than very basic

knowledge of Mexican symbols. The Mexican flag is for instance excluded, as is any form of political or historical references. While Frida’s look is changeable, basic symbols of her look ensure that her appearance is easily identified, most often through her eyebrows and flowers in her hair. She is most often depicted as more conventionally attractive than she was, often portrayed as the actress Salma Hayek, which construct the “common sense” that a woman’s appearance is fluid if she is made more conventionally attractive, and that Frida’s own

appearance can be hinted at instead of depicted. In this manner, it relates closely to the liberal idea of recontextualization, in which symbol loses its meaning but is still regarded as a

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symbol; Since Frida is Frida Kahlo at the same time as she is Salma Hayek, Salma Hayek is therefore a symbol of everything that Frida Kahlo symbolise.

5.2 Methodological challenges and limitations

Qualitative research and critical discourse analysis of course hold limitations, as does any form of research method. It is impossible to generalise in such a way as to say that one sample reflect an absolute truth about the population, and although critical discourse analysis’ very aim is to find a macro perspective through a micro analysis, this is impossible to guarantee. It is also, of course, impossible to exclude the author’s own visualisation and interpretation of the imagery, which for instance influence the categorisation of subjective classifications such as what can be considered as a feminine appearance. These issues have been raised by many researchers (e.g., Bryman, 2012).

To contradict these difficulties, I aim for full transparency and reflexivity in my

considerations in categorisation, and how I have applied the previous research. It may also be argued that while there is no guarantee of objectivity, objectivity is not the goal of this study. As I have been able to use all7 data available on the Swedish market, and as the Swedish market can be considered as reflecting the western market, this study reflects the discourses as constructed on images aimed at a large part of the population.

6. Result and analysis

In this part of the paper, I present the first step in the result. I firstly present an overview of the visual data and then I describe the themes in more detail in accordance with step one in Wang’s method of discourse analysis of visual data. My original idea for this study was to apply the use of CDA quite rigorously, but a large extent of this study has been performed without using CDA as a tool. The reason for this is that I found that with the large amount of data I have gathered, I found the material to be too big to use CDA to the extent that I had

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originally envisioned. The result and analysis are presented as a unified text, as I consider this to provide a more uniform and harmonious presentation of these sections of the paper. I have collected 136 unique images from ten web-shops aimed at Swedish consumers. The images range from minimalistic to highly detailed, and they are all in part or fully digitally produced. Of the 136 objects, 15 images are in black and white while the remaining 121 pieces contain at least one colour. The colours are often bright with Frida wearing a bright red hairband with a large ribbon or brightly coloured flowers in her hair. The use of colours varies but in the cases of a subdued colour scheme the graphic designer use a dash of colour to draw attention to a certain part of the image, most often flowers in Frida’s hair. The exception to this is images created with a continuous contour drawing technique in which one single line create the entire image with minimalistic results.

Re-occurring themes are flowers, lipstick, earrings and jewellery, Mexican design patterns, exotic fruits, animals and references to art or pop culture. Most images contained only Frida’s face or Frida’s body to just below her shoulders. The entire body or body parts are used as a part of the image in 35 cases, two of which were images where her body is that of a deer, a reference to the painting “The Wounded Deer” from 1946. In these images, the body of the deer is wounded by several arrows while no image displays a disfigured, wounded, or non-functioning human body.

6.1 Non-Mexican Frida

Frida’s clothes are generally made up by traditional Mexican enagua skirts, loose blouses, and rebozo shawls draped around her neck or upper body. Her accessories are limited to hanging earrings, necklaces with medallions or large beads, and headbands. These clothes and accessories can be read as “Mexican themed”. The exceptions to these outfit themes are:

 “Pop Frida” in which Frida is painted as the Virgin Mary in an early renaissance style, wearing a green dress downfolded to reveal her left breast and her arms partly covered by a cape made of stoat fur. On Frida’s lap is a cream-coloured blanket decorated with Louis Vuitton pattern, on top of which she holds the baby Jesus.

 Two images called “Frida” and one picture called “Modern Frida”, all based on photographs of Frida cross-dressing in a masculine shirt,

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 “Frida con Amigos” where Frida is nude apart from a red cloth draped over her left shoulder,

 “Couture Mexicaine” where Frida wears a western-style dress in 1930’s fashion,

 “Frida” where Frida is nude from the waist up and flowers are covering her lower body, creating a form of tight skirt or second skin,

 “Green Chair”, where Frida is wearing white leggings with a pineapple print in yellow and green, a yellow coat with thin white stripes and a flower brooch, a black shirt with the collar marked with red and red, pointy boots with white stripes,

 “O’h So Frida” where an image of Frida is placed on the chest of a blurry red 1950’s style dress with wide knee-length, puffed out skirt. The dress is decorated with roses, a thin black belt, and a black necklace.

 “Little Frida” in which Frida wear a straight black-and-blue patterned A-line dress with yellow collar and short bright-red sleeves with blue flounce,

 “Rebel Girl” in which the lower part of Frida’s face is covered by a black and white bandanna in the style of a person disguising themself,

 “Totemic Frida” where Frida wears a blue velvet jacket in vintage military marching uniform style, with lace flounce and black gloves.

Wang (2014) emphasise the importance of metaphors as powerful tools of persuasion in discourse (Wang, 2014, pp. 17–18). In all images, Frida is depicted with flowers, most commonly around her face. Metaphors commonly used in the images are often relating to Frida as associated with nature, e.g., flowers being a key figure in all or nearly all the images, she is also commonly surrounded by animals such as birds, cats, and monkeys, or has wings behind her body. In the images where Frida is not clad in traditional Mexican style, she is often “dressed up” in a masquerade costume such as a Virgin Mary, a soldier in a uniform or a “rebel” with covered face. Apart from the use of clothes and accessories, items and aesthetics read as “Mexican” symbols include the use of Day of the Dead-make up, “exotic” animals such as monkeys and parrots, neon lights on a dark background and the appearance of artistic embroidery. Aside from flowers, the images contain agave plants, cacti, Mexican dwarf palm trees and monstera plants.

Frida’s eyebrows are often emphasized as important to her facial features. In some cases, her face is changed from human to an animal, a toy, or a skull but with her eyebrows still

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unibrow, all these images show Frida as clearly female coded and meeting a conventional western beauty standard.

Several of the images are based on actual photographs of Kahlo or pictures she has painted. I have chosen not to spend special attention to changes made to these images, as I consider the changes made to be covered by the analysis of all images (e.g., in cases of Frida’s dress being made brighter than the original image is covered by my analysis of the colouring of the images). I have however paid special attention to the pictures in which Frida is depicted in a particular artistic style, as well as images which make references to other well-known western phenomena, e.g., Frida as a Lego figure, Frida as the Virgin Mary (see figure 6).

FIGURE 5:FRIDA AS AN EMOJI SCULL

Obviously, when defining an image as “feminine” or female coded, this is to an extent a matter of opinion. Certain images carry a large amount of female coding (make-up, jewellery, feminine beauty) while others are more neutral without being outright androgynous. I have deemed Frida to be read as a woman in 115 of the 136 images, either by a “feminine”

appearance or by feminine coded clothing or accessories, such as a flower headband, lipstick, or clad in dresses or draped shawls, which I will comment on further below. However, there are certain images which I deem to be obviously non-gendered despite this form of gender coded accessories, such Frida’s face is a cartoon “Day of the Dead” skull with a rose hairband (see figure 5).

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6.2 Frida as a western art piece

Several of the images have aesthetics founded on western artworks. The images I have identified as relating to a western phenomenon, object, art style or otherwise recognisable themes are as below, using the image names given in the web shop:

 “Pop Frida”, which is described in the previous section on description of clothing.

 “Love is Art Frida and Van Gogh”. This image is based on Kahlo’s painting “Frieda and Diego Rivera” in which a smaller Kahlo is holding the hand of her larger husband Diego Rivera, who is holding a palette and paint brushes. In the image “Love is Art Frida and Van Gogh”, Frida is wearing a brown dress with flowers with a black

cardigan or shawl over her shoulders. She is holding a large bouquet of sunflowers. To her right is (Vincent) van Gogh, wearing a blue suit and hat. They are turning away from one another but holding hands and looking at each other from over their shoulders. Frida has a hairband with red roses, red lips, two necklaces and gold earrings.

 “Frida Toy” in which Frida is depicted as a Lego toy figure. The toy is depicted with a black skirt with a grey dotted pattern and a yellow and orange zigzag seam. It has a bright yellow shirt with red dots and a black shawl with black, long fringes. It has several gold necklaces, gold earrings, a hairband with a large bouquet of pink flowers, pink dots on her cheeks and red lips. The background is bright pea green.

 “Till Queendom Come”, where Frida is depicted on a playing card as the queen of spades. The picture has a light, understated colour palette with a beige background and the appearance of two watercolour brush strokes, one blue on her right shoulder and one orange and apricot coloured brush stroke on part of her head. She is holding her left arm over her stomach with the hand covered by her shawl. Her right elbow is resting on her left arm, her right arm lifted towards her face. Her nails are painted, her hair is mainly covered by large flowers, she has a Venus symbol earring and a thin choker necklace.

 “Frida Kahlo Inspired Portrait” where four images of Frida are printed in a pop-art inspired matrix referencing Andy Warhol’s style. Print style copies of Frida’s face are placed upon brightly coloured backgrounds in pink, red, yellow, and turquoise. Frida’s face is printed in blue, yellow, pink, and green.

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These images all portray Frida with flowers and other symbols of nature, where Frida is depicted as quite literally being “close to nature”. Many of the images show her face as that of Salma Hayek as presented in the 2002 movie Frida, even going so far as to make Frida’s face visibly pasted on to a body which is unrelated to her (see figure 6).

FIGURE 6,FRIDA SURROUNDED BY LEAVES, BREAST COVERED BY TEACUP

6.3 The western gaze in practice

While there are of course several references to Kahlo’s own paintings as well as references to photos of her, there are also several artists and art styles present in the images depicted on the posters. In these images, the concept of “the good eye” can be argued as being a powerful tool in the Othering process of Latina culture, as the humorous referral of western art is used to blend cultures and assimilate Kahlo’s own art further into the western art sphere. I have previously in this paper referred to this phenomenon as “the Western Gaze”, i.e., the

contextualisation of the image to a recognisable western frame, creating meaning which draw on a western understanding.

In most of the images, Frida is wearing traditional Mexican clothing, but she is also sometimes “dressed up” as “someone else”, such as the Virgin Mary or a bandit. These images play with the construction of Frida’s image as a Mexicana, and they instead place her in another context in which she still carries the same symbolic value as a feminist icon. By

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doing this, Frida is constructed as a “general” feminist icon without any actual meaning. In the image “Phewomenal” (see figure 7), Frida is depicted as a largely faceless woman surrounded by other faceless women, all of which are identified by symbols, such as Marie Curie with a test tube and the fictional Holly Golightly with a black dress, a pearl necklace, and a long cigarette holder.

FIGURE 7, FRIDA AND WESTERN FEMINIST ICONS

Frida is here identified by thick eyebrows (only three of six women in the image has eyebrows), flowers in her hair, earrings, and a patterned dress. There is nothing to

differentiate a fictional woman from a real one in this image, and the only thing they have in common is that they are well-known women in western culture, which categorise them as “phewomenal”, the title of the image and a portmanteau of “phenomenal” and “women”.

6.4 The construction authenticity

The construction of authenticity is of great relevance to the construction of cultural

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by the audience. Of course, representation of Mexican culture is present in all the poster images in the form of Kahlo herself; she is a global symbol of 20th century Mexican culture as well as a symbol of a globally accepted construction of the Latina (Molina Guzmán, 2006, pp. 2, 5). As such, one might argue that any image containing references to Frida is an image of Mexican or Latina/o culture, and so I begin this section of the paper to state that while I include symbols of Mexican culture which is used by Kahlo herself in her paintings (cacti, monkeys etc), I exclude Frida’s images or references to her art from my analysis. The reason for this is that I hardly consider the aspect of Frida as a Mexicana worthwhile to include in my analysis after this brief note, which covers all images.

Symbols which are employed to construct an authentic Latina are plants such as cacti, large and colourful flowers, exotic animals, Mexican patterns and draping shawls and dresses. These are also employed to construct the authentic Frida alongside of Frida’s distinct eyebrows. While the Latina is a gendered and exotifying fantasy, this image needs to be maintained alongside with symbols which identify Frida to construct the assimilated image of Frida as an authentic Latina. Overall, very much of Frida may change in appearance, and she is generally identified more by symbols than by actual facial features or any form of activity: her facial features or skin tone differ greatly, but she can be identified by her flower headband and eyebrows, or by how she is posing in a western portrait style. The authenticity of Frida is thus not her actions or personal being, but by how she is constructed by surrounding symbols. As mentioned previously, there is often an association of “primitiveness” in colonial and postcolonial depictions of colonised bodies and cultures in art, which is a part of a binary opposition in which colonisation is upheld as “civilised” (e.g., Ashcroft et al., 2013, pp. 26, 216–217). This tradition is transparent in many of the images even if they depict a “modern day” Frida or a Frida within a western context. The Othering of Frida is represented in

Mexican symbols which draw on the fantasy of the Latina as a person “closer to nature” (than the western/coloniser viewer). To uphold this fantasy of authenticity, a “closeness to nature” is reoccurring to conform Frida to the fantasy of the authentic Latina or Mexicana.

In conclusion, authenticity is constructed by the “strategic essentialism” raised by Molina-Guzmán (p. 85) where the cultural expressions of an Othered group are simplified by external forces. The symbols of authenticity for Frida are not so much about her physical appearance, but her symbols which are used to mark her out as a Latina (e.g., shawls, Mexican themed

“Find your favourite Frida!” -A sociological study of the commodified faces of Frida Kahlo