By Jess McCabe | 16 November 2007, 17:07

Here’s an good story for a Friday afternoon: a cosmetics firm in the US has launched a range of skin care products inspired by the depressive but brilliant artist Frida Kahlo.

They seem to actually have registered Frida Kahlo as a trade mark, as their press release is full of choice uses of the phrase “Frida Kahlo(R) skin care line”. Added to this, the New York company Naturals Skin Care is actually opening “Frida stores” where they can hawk this stuff.

“We feel we have captured the essence and spirit of Frida Kahlo’s work in this line,” said Sciortino, who has been producing premium, natural skin care products since 1992. Last year, the Kahlo family permitted Sciortino to read through the private journal and letters of Frida Kahlo. “Reading her letters was a life changing experience for me. She was very much into aromatherapy herself-mixing and creating her own makeup and lotions,” Sciortino added.

Is Kahlo, the woman who sheltered Trotsky when he fled to Mexico, who married the socialist muralist Diego Rivera, turning in her grave? Frida who pretended she was born in three years later than she really was, not to appear younger, but to more strongly identify herself with the Mexican revolution in 1910.

The range apparently captures Kahlo’s “passion for life”. Let’s just have a look at a typical Frida painting for a moment, and repeat the phrases “passion for life”, “she was into aromotherapy” and “Frida Kahlo(R) skin care line” to ourselves quietly:

Spanish speakers can read more about this over on CNNExpansion, but it’s a bit advanced for me to interpret much for you.

I suppose we should thank heaven for small mercies, and consider that at the very least this skin care range is choosing a woman for an icon who was not beautiful in the conventional sense.

(Via Mi blog es tu blog)

Image from Wikipedia