“Two Nudes in the Forest” by Frida Kahlo

Note: July 6, 2010. Happy Birthday, Frida. Thanks to Google, you are on the map today.

If you’ve never watched Salma Hayek playing the seductive Frida Kahlo, in a deeply sensual and erotic two-women scene from Frida (2002), you simply must.

Frida Kahlo Tango Scene

One cannot deny the gorgeous beauty of the dance, the already glamorous, provocative nature of tango, enhanced further by its bisexual undertones in Hayek’s visceral interpretation of Kahlo’s spirit.

A woman whose persona screamed “I am” wherever she appeared, the cross-dressing Kahlo was a lover to movie stars Dorlores del Rio, Paulette Goddard and Maria Felix, among others.

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo lived life dramatically, turbulently and on her terms. Coming upon last year’s post of Kahlo, I’m reflecting on her strategy of self-expression, compared to the pursuit of airbrushed ‘perfection’ and body manipulation, embedded in our discussions of the Ralph Lauren, Filippa Hamilton dismissal and Photoshop ad manipulation.

In an age of botox, liposuction, and the relentless pursuit of female ‘perfection’, Frida Kahlo determined her own self, with a “you will deal with me, as I am” attitude. Similarly her cross-dressing and seduction of women — sometimes her husband Diego Rivera’s mistresses — was an expression of power.

Frida Kahlo “The Broken Column”No American woman with any sensitivity to upper lip hair can ignore Kahlo’s refusal to airbrush hers away.

I’m not sure about upper lip standards of beauty in the rest of the world, but in the U.S. they are a subject of ridicule for young women in grammar school.

Even if the artists’s spine was ramrod straight with relentless pain, after a debilitating bus accident that took Kahlo out of medical school, she remained the confident seductress with a full understanding of sensual desire not defined by upper-class good looks but also not her torturous physical existence.

Very much the revolutionary populist, Frida Kahlo did not subscribe to the adage that a woman can never be too rich or too thin. I suspect Kahlo would sign up for generally good health and a pain-free daily life. Erase that. Kahlo believed that discomfort enhanced character, when properly managed. And yet, the onslaught of pain tested her more than she deserved — depending on one’s religious point of view.

I can imagine folks saying that God gave Frida Kahlo everything that she deserved. There’s no doubt she would have been flogged today in many parts of the world.

Frida Kahlo’s multi-cultural senses consumed any natural landscape in her path. Sensuality and psychology meet as tango dancers in her art, capturing intense beauty and a sensual vision in her vision, but also the raw human infrastructures, nakedly open in her psychological escavations.

In spite of Zambian president Rupiah Banda considering childbirth to be pornographic, Frida Kahlo presented the world with: “My Birth”, 1932.

If the subject matter of “My Birth” wasn’t herself, I would argue that Kahlo had bingoed a fundamental tension between men and women — the philosophical construct that women remind men of their mortality — giving life but symbolically taking it away.

Men escape the womb, forever torn up psychologically with the need to return to it, before running again from its mortal grasp.

Feminine principles defined Frida Fahlo’s intellectual landscape. Suffering and perserverance mingle with a reverence for green beings, erotic flowers, and womanly bodies. Kahlo embraces a Cultural Creative lushness of an existence not defined by materialism but by nature and sensualism.

I adore this photo of socialite and model Laura Ponte, photographed a la Kahlo, by Iris Brosch.see more

Note there is no lip hair, but we forgive Brosch — at least I do. Just seeing the photo flooded me with visions of Frida Kahlo’s womanly visions.

Laura Ponte photographed by Iris BroschDigital Magnificence

An artist lives in each of us, and we will find various forms of that creative genius — large or small — by opening our senses to the world around us. We must cast off the spells of style and commercialism when they confine us, contorting our beauty and identity into caricatures — cartoon characters — of ourselves.

Frida Kahlo would look at the Ralph Lauren Polo ads and say “basta!”

Even now — at this moment and long after her death — the digital age spins Frida Kahlo’s spirit and influence all over the world, onto the computer screens of women who love her in this new discovery and those who loathe her decadent refusal to say “I capitulate.”

I understand that Frida Kahlo is despised by the world’s women, as well as adored.

image via Art MonadWe must dig out all the Frida Kahlo women in our desk drawers and old, dusty books.

Let’s put them out in plain view, as a reminder of what real women are like, before our erasure and digital definition in the digital age by 21st century Photoshop masters at brands like Ralph Lauren. Sorry my dears, but our real selves will soon be artifacts for archeologists.

Time is fleeing.

Frida

Speaking of Ralph Lauren Polo, they have some marvelous-loking men in the latest photo shoot, via View on Fashion magazine.

I did have bad dreams about strict implements last night, which tarnished my enthusiasm for the photos just a bit.

When you spend as much time fighting flogging as I do, even a pool cue makes me nervous. Mind you, I was an ace pool player. And no, they did not call me ‘Minnesota Fats’.

I adore impeccably dressed men, but sometimes the suppressed ridigity of the upper class needs a bit of unleashing. The guy on the right has matters in reverse, but this is America, for heavens sake. Our Polo guys are the glue that keeps the Americas economy going. Right???

Ralph Lauren Polo on View on FashionLooking for my old article on tango — all jazzed up over Frida’s birthday on July 6 — I couldn’t help thinking that what every Wall Street wife needs is a bit of tango in her life.

Tango brings out a woman’s inner-vitality and we find the feminine principles languishing inside our true selves. This reality of life is known to every French woman, and don’t ask me how.

It must be a long history of revolutionary tea parties and not just one for the Mayflower folks.

Enjoy a little uptown tango dancing. Oh heck, have a tango or two — uptown, downtown — just start tangoing.

Viva, Frieda, a diehard Smart Sensuality woman!

Love, Anne

Al Pacino - Scent of a Woman

The Power of Self Control

In “Shall We Dance”, we have one of the most sensual moments on film. To every guy who never knew he ‘had it’ in him, I say: “try it; you’ll like it.”

Now I’m thinking about the alleged decadence of Western civilization. You know how my mind wanders, once I start thinking.

I would like to point out that Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez never “got it on” in this film, and Richard Gere’s marriage lived happily ever after, although his wife looked at him with renewed appreciation.

This global notion that men cannot control themselves around a woman is unadulterated poppycock. Anne

Shall We Dance?