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Destinee Montoya
Profile Essay on Historical Queerness
ENGL 2850-401
4 February 2019
A Brief History about Frida Kahlo and Her Queerness

Most people know Frida Kahlo for her beautiful and inspiring paintings, but not very

many people know too much about her personal life, like the fact that she had multiple

disabilities, or that she was bisexual women and had relationships with her fair share of women.

A lot of aspects of these parts of her life tend to be looked over and not given enough attention,

but it’s extremely important to shine a light on these concepts because they’re hardly ever

focused on or written about in history, so if we try our best to focus on it and normalizing it,

maybe then we can move toward a future where these things won’t be omitted from someone’s

history or history as a whole.

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico and grew up in her family’s

home where it was later referred to as the Blue House or Casa Azul (Frida Kahlo Foundation

organization). Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a German descendant and a photographer, and

when he immigrated to Mexico he met and married her mother, Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez,
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who was half Amerindian and half Spanish. They can both be seen pictured here in Family

portrait (Unfinished) by Frida Kahlo in the middle of the painting under Kahlo’s grandparents.

Also, Frida Kahlo had two older sisters and one younger sister. To give some insight on when

and where Kahlo grew up, the Mexican Revolution began in 1910 when she was only three years

old, but later, however, she claimed that she was born in 1910 so that people would directly

associate her with the revolution (Frida Kahlo Foundation organization). In some of her writings,

she detailed the difficulties that her and her family experienced during the revolution. She wrote

about how her mother would usher her and her sisters inside their house as gunfire echoed in the

streets of her hometown, which was very poor at the time (Frida Kahlo Foundation organization).

Something else that she recalled in those writings was that men would occasionally leap over the

walls into their backyard and sometimes her mother would prepare a meal for the

revolutionaries. These writings show some of the struggles and hardships that her and her family

had to deal with and overcome when she was growing up.

Frida Kahlo had experiences with multiple disabilities and poor health throughout her

entire life, which is hardly talked about in art classes when discussing her work or in the art

community. When she was six years old, she contracted polio and was bedridden for about nine

months. Contracting polio had caused her right leg and foot to grow much thinner than her left

one, and it caused her to walk with a limp after having recovered from it. To cover this up, she

wore long skirts. According to the Frida Kahlo organization, her father encouraged her to play a

variety of sports to help her cover, which led her to swim, wrestle, and play soccer (Frida Kahlo

Organization).
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When she was a teenager, she was in a car accident where a steel handrail impaled into

her hip and came out of the other side. In this accident, her spine and pelvis were damaged

significant, which led her to paint during her recovery. An example of her art, which can be

pictured above, that portrays her disability is The Broken Column (1944), and in this painting she

depicts herself standing on the beach. The beach is in the background while her body is pictured

in the foreground. Her body is open down the middle showing a rod and restrictive medical

corsets, which she had to wear for the majority of her life, and there are nails embedded into her

skin throughout her body (Townes).

Another beautiful painting of hers that highlights her relationship with her disability is

Tree of Hope, Keep Firm, and this self-portrait includes two images of her. The first image

shows her lying with her back toward us on a hospital gurney, her head to the left, and apparently

anesthetized. She is wrapped in a white sheet except for her lower back, which is exposed to

display two large surgical cuts that are dripping blood. The second image of her is sitting and

facing us in a chair in front of the right side of the gurney. This image of her is basically the

familiar Frida Kahlo of many self-portraits, which is beautifully dressed in colorful Mexican
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style, and her face is composed in spite of the tear on her right cheek, but the difference here is

the presence of medical paraphernalia. The upright Kahlo holds a large back brace in her lap, and

she seems to also be wearing the same device under her dress. In her right hand, she holds a

small flag with a Spanish inscription on it that could be translated to “Tree of hope, stay firm”

(Townes).

In both The Broken Column and Tree of Hope, Keep Firm and many other paintings of

hers, they show us how Kahlo came face-to-face with her disabilities and turned them into art.

This is a huge indication that she never let her disability prevent her from pursuing her passion

(Townes). There are studies that have been done that show that many people within the Latinx

community and other marginalized communities hide their disabilities because of the many

stigmas that surround them. Since Kahlo shamelessly illustrated and portrayed hers in her art,

this makes her an inspiration and role model to those within the Latinx community that have

disabilities that they can do anything despite their disability and the stigmas that may surround it.

Something that tends to be overshadowed in Frida Kahlo’s history is her sexual

orientation, which people now refer to her as bisexual, but there is very little information from

her history that shows that she chose to identify that way. Kahlo had affairs with both men and

women, including her husband’s mistresses, and she had been linked to movie stars like Dolores

del Rio, Paulette Goddard and Maria Felix, amongst others (Belge). A famous suspected affair
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that she was supposedly involved in was with Georgia O’Keeffe, but that has never been

confirmed. In her painting Two Nudes in the Forest (The Earth Itself), which can be seen above,

it clearly shows her attraction to and love for women. The two women in this painting symbolize

feminine sexuality as well as Kahlo’s dual identities, which can be seen comforting one another

as European (signified by the figure with the lighter skin) and Mestiza (Hoke). Another symbol

that can be seen in this painting is a monkey, which are common symbols for sin and sexual

promiscuity.

Another hugely suspected affair that Frida Kahlo had was with Josephine Baker, who was

a world-famous entertainer. This was in 1939 and was right after Kahlo had separated from her

husband, Diego. While there is no written correspondence between her and Josephine Baker that

describes their affair, the movie Frida suggests that they met at a nightclub after Josephine

performed (Nicole).

Like many other LGBTQ+ people throughout history, Frida Kahlo’s sexual orientation is

hardly ever written about and doesn’t get the attention that it deserves, even though it was a huge

part of her identity and her relationships. Historians most likely omitted this important

information from her public history because for such a long time, being anything but straight was

demonized and looked down upon. It is pretty difficult to try and find a more in-depth

information about her relationships with women and if she publicly identified as a bisexual

women, which has been the case for so many queer people throughout history. Hopefully, our

society can move towards a future where queerness will be more accepted, not just tolerated, and

won’t be omitted from someone’s history or will erase their entire existence from history in

general. By doing this, it convinces in our society that queer people haven’t existed since the

beginning of time and that it’s just a new “trend” or “fad”.

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Works Cited
Belge, Kathy. Bisexual Painter Frida Kahlo. 2 November 2017. Web. 4 February 2019.
Frida Kahlo Foundation organization. Biography. 2002. Web. 4 February 2019.
Frida Kahlo Organization. Frida Kahlo Biography. 2011. Web. 4 February 2019.
Hoke, Casey. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). 30 March 2017. Web. 4 February 2019.
Kahlo, Frida. Family portrait (Unfinished). Museo Frida Kahlo. Oil on canvas on masonite.
Kahlo, Frida. The Broken Column. Museo Dolores Olmedo. Oil on masonite.
Kahlo, Frida. Tree of Hope, Keep Firm. Daniel Filipacchi Collection, Paris, France. Oil on
masonite.
Kahlo, Frida. Two Nudes in the Forest (The Earth Itself). Mexico. Oil on metal.
Nicole, Corinna. When Frida Kahlo Set Her Eyes on Josephine Baker. 21 August 2018. Web. 4
February 2019.
Townes, Katie. Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait Painter, Showcases Disability in Her Art. 15 October
2017. Web. 4 February 2019.