Carlos Fuentes writes that Frida "was a broken Cleopatra who hid her tortured body, her dry leg, her crippled foot and her orthopedic corsets under the spectacular luxuries of Mexican peasant women, who for centuries have jealously hidden ancient jewels, protecting them from poverty, showing them only at the great festivals of agrarian communities. The laces, the ribbons, the huipiles, the Tehuana headdresses framing that dark butterfly face like moons, giving them wings: Frida Kahlo, telling all present that suffering would not wither, nor would illness make stale, her infinite feminine variety."
Frida Kahlo fascinated in life and continues to fascinate more than six decades later, now a pop icon. Thus, she inspires teenagers who dress up as her for Carnival as well as fashion greats, who dedicate their latest collections to her. The new Stradivarius season features spectacular models with very bushy eyebrows and flowered headdresses, wearing t-shirts with the artist's face and phrases like "I understand with kisses, sometimes not."
"How could they turn her into that? I can't believe they made a Barbie of our Friducha, who never tried to look like anyone and always celebrated her originality," Salma Hayek protested from her Instagram account. But the actress, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in "Frida" (Julie Taymor, 2002), forgets that Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón brings together all the elements to be fiercely devoured by the market: courage, originality, resilience (one of those fashionable concepts that, according to the RAE, refers to the "capacity for adaptation of a living being in the face of a disturbing agent or an adverse state or situation"), tradition, ambiguity, sensuality, feminism, struggle and color, a lot of color.