Butler’s Gender Theory and Frida Kahlo

Judith Butler’s criticism of the categorization of sex reminded me of Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter from the 20th century. Kahlo is remembered for her impressive paintings but also for the various tragedies she endured during her life, including a bus accident which rendered her disabled and infertile. Now Kahlo is regarded as a feminist icon because of the ways she explored gender in her paintings. While Butler’s gender theory involves feminism, what reminds me most of Butler’s theory is not Kahlo’s feminism, but her sexual ambiguity. Kahlo, a woman, is recognizable by her somewhat masculine features, most noticeably her prominent brow. This feature isn’t a typical characteristic of what we assign as a “normal” female body. Yet Kahlo doesn’t hide this feature of hers in her self-portraits. Furthermore, Kahlo is an example of how categorizing sex can be harmful: her infertility was an obvious source of distress in her life, as some of her paintings detail unborn or dead infants. Perhaps if we didn’t typify humans based on their sex (and their ability to carry children), infertile women wouldn’t feel such distress.