Frida Kahlo's Presidential Fluctuation

Mexico's presidential fluctuation addresses the countries constant struggle to adjust in order to appease the nationals and foreign influences simultaneously, most notably with the Mexican Revolution of 1910 that forced 35-year dictator Porfirio Diaz out of power. In order to return to the countries roots, post-revolutionary leaders took to raising the importance of indigenismo, or Mexico’s original indigenous people and their traditions. Born in 1907, Frida Kahlo, child of the revolution and arguably the most recognizable female Mexican artist, was heavily invested and influenced in the revolutionary reforms of Mexico. During her lifetime Kahlo experience the fluctuation between nationalism and industrialism, and her attire evidently portrayed this. Frida's pre-Columbian vestments were clearly premeditated

Yet, despite the feminist idealism aligned with her name in present day culture, American mass media production has consistently depoliticized Frida Kahlo’s persona. Two images embody the disparagement between the portrayal of the artist and her true ideals. Condé Nast, the million-dollar mass media company who created the fashion bible, Vogue, have taken Frida’s name and aligned it with misrepresented personifications. The difference between the context of pictures taken of or inspired by Kahlo for mass consumption and those taken of the artist by fellow photographers displays the drastic misrepresentation of Frida Kahlo. In sum, Frida Kahlo resolutely groomed herself (both in life and in paintings) with indigenous Mexican garbs which she used to provoke awareness to the revolutionary cause; despite her tenaciousness Vogue magazine repeatedly dismissed her political ideals and interchanged it with simple and powerless images of what they took to calling Frida’s “savage beauty”, in turn diminishing Frida’s feminine strength and