Frida Kahlo is a Tory icon
When Theresa May coughed into her hand during her painful conference speech back in 2017, adorning her wrist was a chunky Frida Kahlo bracelet. Some left-wingers were outraged that a Tory would ‘appropriate’ the image of ‘a Communist, bisexual artist who was also a disabled woman of colour’. The Guardian described it as ‘a surprising statement’ given that Kahlo ‘spent her career concerned with the plight of the impoverished, our connectedness to self, nature and the universe, the relationship between pain and identity, and imagined, one day, we could live in a classless society’. She was as much a materialist as a Marxist But I believe it was an apt choice for my fellow Conservative. Kahlo is a capitalist icon, a right-wing poster girl.
