For me, Frida’s personal story will forever be an inspiration.  Unfortunately, I haven’t studied art to sufficiently recognize the genius of her painting, but in reading her story, I’m drawn to her strength and courage to live each day to the fullest.  She lived a life on her terms. This semester, my students and I will read Mexican author F.G Haghenbeck’s novel of fiction, The Secret Life of Frida Kahlo. Frida loved, she suffered, and her self-portraits convey her passion and identity. Much of her life was spent in traction or a wheelchair. She also grew up with polio which significantly weakened her right leg. She was a lover. She was a fighter.  A painter.  A rebel.   She connected to her roots, and she embraced her death. Through her art, she overcame incredible physical and emotional pain.   Clearly, Frida’s courage and spirit has inspired Mexican actor Salma Hayek.  She brought Frida’s story to the big screen.

In this movie poster image (above) we see Salma’s representation of Frida on the right dressed up in traditional Mexican dress,  a Tehuana blouse and skirt.  The choice of dress clearly reflects Frida’s pride for her Mexican culture and roots.   This look was known to be admired and respected by her lover Diego Rivera. In this dress, Frida looks happy. On the right-hand side, Frida looks more confident, like she knows where she has come from and where she is headed. The Frida on the left represents her feminist side.  Frida is dressed in manly clothes. She’s wearing a large dark suit with her shirt buttoned up to the chin.  Frida looks defiant.  Her mouth is turned downward. Her legs are spread like she’s ready to pounce if you won’t accept the way she is.  Clearly this image is drawn from her famous Self-portrait with Cropped Hair.  At one point of her life, Frida felt she was admired only for her feminine characteristics, so she cut of her hair.  She wanted to be loved for her mind and spirit.  Here she looks rebellious.

The first thing that drew my attention to the poster was its resemblance to Frida’s famous self-portrait The Two Fridas.   The painting was created shortly after Frida’s divorce from Diego after a ten-year marriage. By the time my students see this, they will have come across Frida’s famous  quote about her fat, cheating husband:  “There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worse.” 

Following the divorce, Frida was crushed, but that didn’t stop her from painting; in fact, in this period, she may have been more prolific than ever.   Maybe, it was personal pain and divided nature that drove her.   Under a stormy blue sky, the two Fridas are seated on what could be a park bench on a Sunday afternoon.  I say this, because they are both sitting upright.  Calm, cool,  their faces show little emotion; like if Diego expects them to wither and cry, that’s not going to happen.   Instead, the message she seems exude a hint of violence. There are scissors and blood and body parts.  The hearts of the two women are exposed.  One of the Fridas represents the Frida that Diego loves. She’s holding in her hand an amulet that preserves her memory of her former husband.  The other Frida is holding the scissors and dripping blood over her pearl white Victorian dress.  She represents the Frida that drives him away. Fuck Him!

OK, that’s Jay’s Sample Reaction to one of Frida’s paintings.  This Spring  Semester 2026, I will ask my students to develop a research paper to explore the relationship between Frida’s life and her art.  Beyond the novel we read, students will scour our campus databases for articles that explain how Frida’s art expressed her identity, sexuality, culture, and pain.  Our research activities will help them develop and  incorporate a detailed analysis of one of Frida’s paintings into their essay.   For example, I imagine more than a few of my students will see elements of her bisexuality in her self-portraits.   For Frida, her self-portraits helped her explore her own identity.  “I paint myself because I am so often alone,” she once said, “and because I am the subject I know best.”  She was  probably all alone when she painted Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair.  In fact, it’s known that she was separated from Diego during this time.  Her creation of this work follows her heart-crushing discovery that her husband was sleeping with her sister.  During this period, she had left the couple’s home in Coyacan and moved into her own apartment in the center of Mexico City.  In Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, Frida appears in an over-sized, darkly-colored man’s suit.  She has cut off all her hair.  It’s strewn all over the floor.  The scissors are still in her hand.    

This appearance of Frida’s short hair in the Salma Hayek movie poster leads me to bring up Harvey Weinstein.  This won’t be the first time I have introduced this man in classroom discussions.  In a few of my courses, my students research the Women’s Movement of the 1960s.  They write research papers about Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, and Dolores Huerta.  They define feminism and examine a woman’s right to choose.   Reading about the courage of these civil rights activists and what they fought for appears to inspire my students.   For many of them, they just wouldn’t be in college, free to pursue their dreams, without the sacrifice of bold, Frida-like women that paved their way.    In their essays, they often compare the Women’s Movement of the sixties with the MeToo Movement of today.

Before Salma, I always talked about Angelina Jolie.   My students knew of her, for we read the memoir Girl, Interrupted.  Angelina starred in the movie version and won the Oscar for best supporting actor. She was also one of the first Hollywood women who stood up to this cabron, Harvey Weinstein.   Early in her career, she claims the powerful producer attempted to assault her, and she vowed never to work with him again.  She knew speaking out about the incident could hurt her career, but that couldn’t stop her.  Her courage inspired other actresses to follow suit.  This is how the MeToo Movement began.  Salma, too.  She’s in.  In 2017, she published an opinion piece in the New York Times: “Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too.”  I will make this required reading.   In this article, she detailed the assault and intimidation she encountered during the production of Frida.  Bringing Frida to world-wide attention was her dream.  Working with a sexual predator like Harvey Weinstein was not.  Throughout she found herself backing him off at all hours of the day and night.  She kept saying, No, No, NO:

“No to me taking a shower with him.

No to letting him watch me take a shower.

No to letting him give me a massage.

No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.

No to letting him give me oral sex.

No to my getting naked with another woman.

No, no, no, no, no …”

Why am I bringing this up here?  On the brink of our army’s recent invasion of Venezuela, I imagine that we will begin speaking LESS of the president’s history as a sexual predator, and MORE of his current status as a war criminal.  One of the reasons I began this Frida Kahlo project was to engage a healthy student discussion about social equality and empowerment.  The concealment and/or redaction Epstein Files by powerful people reflect the need for more and more women to stand up and speak out. I’m not entirely sure where or how my students access their news, but they all appear rather reluctant to talk about current events in the classroom.  In my opinion, no event could be more current than evidence of our own president preying on under-aged women.  Teens. Children. More than a few of the Epstein survivors were as young as fourteen-years-old. I’m not saying that my students don’t care to participate in these discussions; I’m saying that they are not used to these types of discussions. I imagine their teachers in other classes feel the same pressure I do not not to talk about it. This is one thing that we can all agree on: Anything we say about Trump in the classroom is bound not to turn out well.

In studying Frida’s art, we will all see a woman who had no fear to express herself.   Frida was a feminist before the word was ever invented.  She was way ahead of her time speaking up for Gay Rights.  Angelina Jolie was more than a pretty face. Her courage to stand up to Harvey Weinstein strengthened a movement and inspired a generation to follow.  Around the same time, Salma seconded the motion: “ I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long.” According to Salma, powerful men have always abused women men because they could, but now things are different. “Women are talking today, she says, “because, in this new era, we finally can.”

Viva la Frida!