SELF-PORTRAIT WITH CROPPED HAIR
FRIDA KAHLO, 1940
So. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera get divorced. Ten years of affairs on both sides, and it finally cracks. A few months later, she paints this. A breakup haircut. You know the scene. In a bathroom, at some terrible hour, with whatever scissors are in the drawer. And in the movies, that cut becomes the montage. New hair, new clothes, music comes up, out walks a brand new person. Everybody claps. Frida skips the montage and shoots the scene after. Chair dragged into the middle of the floor. She did the cutting herself. The scissors are still in her hand. She's still kinda holding a hank of it. Nothing's been cleaned up. And the hair won't lie still. It crawls across the floor, winds around the chair legs, one piece hangs off the chair back like it's trying to climb up and reattach. You cut it off. It doesn't go away. Now, the costume: a man's suit, way too big. Maybe his. Because the whole Frida look, the braids, the flowers, the long dresses, that was the look Diego loved. He brought the dresses home from his trips. She kept the earrings, though. The soundtrack is painted right in. Actual sheet music across the top, from a real song: "Look, if I loved you, it was for your hair. Now that you're bald, I don't love you anymore." The meanest track she could find, hung over her own head. And her face gives the camera nothing. No grief, no triumph. Nothing to perform. Because she's not the actress in this scene. She's the director. Then the ending nobody puts on the tote bag: a year later, they remarried. On his birthday. The divorce lasted thirteen months. The painting's still here.