Ever wonder why our Kahlo roast is called Kahlo? Short answer — because Frida Kahlo is an underdog legend. Long answer — well, buckle up, because her story is part tragedy, part love story, part middle finger to every polite expectation the world had for her. And all wildly inspiring.
Roots of a legend
Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Mexico City, surrounded by color, chaos, and centuries of art and culture. From the jump, life didn’t exactly coddle her. Polio at age six left one of her legs smaller and weaker than the other — and this was just her starter trauma™.
Still, Frida was sharp, charismatic, and had plans to become a doctor. Which would’ve been an inspiring enough story on its own, if fate hadn’t decided to get really creative.
The accident that changed everything
At 18, Frida was in a bus accident so brutal you’d think it came from a bad soap opera script. Metal impaled her pelvis. Her spine and collarbone broke. Her foot was destroyed. She spent months in bed, stitched together with grit and steel.
Trapped in her own body, Frida reached for the only tool that gave her freedom — a paintbrush. What started as boredom therapy turned into her life’s work. She painted herself because, well, she was the only subject always available. And her body, with all its fractures and scars, had a hell of a story to tell.
Self-portraits with teeth
Frida’s self-portraits are famous now — the unibrow, the gaze that could punch through concrete, the surreal animals and broken spines. But at the time, critics didn’t know what to do with her. Her work was too Mexican, too female, too painful, too weird.
And Frida, bless her, did not care. She kept painting — her miscarriages, her surgeries, her politics, her heartbreak. Her life, unfiltered. She made art the way some people make confessions — messy, honest, and absolutely necessary.
An underdog who found her people
Frida didn’t fit the polite, Eurocentric art world mold, but she didn’t need to. She found her own tribe — surrealists, misfits, revolutionaries, anyone who knew what it meant to feel like too much or not enough. Today, she’s everywhere — on t-shirts, murals, and Pinterest boards — but under all that pop culture noise is the story of someone who refused to disappear.
Why we named a roast after her
We named Kahlo after her because she’s a reminder that being stubbornly yourself — even when the world (or your own brain) begs you to tone it down — is an art form. Her story reminds us that life will absolutely body-slam you, but you can still make something beautiful out of the wreckage. Maybe even something that helps someone else survive too.
I know I’m inspired. Building an ecom is H.A.R.D. and trying to build it in a calm way takes discipline, but stories like Frida’s give me something to aim at.
Random Frida facts to impress strangers with
- She claimed she was born in 1910, so her life would align with the Mexican Revolution. Badass.
- Her right leg was amputated in 1953. A month later, she attended her own art exhibit lying in a hospital bed — because being extra was her baseline.
- She married (and divorced, and remarried) muralist Diego Rivera, who was a legendary artist and a legendarily bad husband.
- Frida’s house, La Casa Azul, is now a museum and pilgrimage site for art lovers, feminists, and anyone who’s ever felt like a beautiful mess.
Final thought
Frida’s life was wild, tragic, brilliant, and way too short — but her art is still here, refusing to apologize, reminding the rest of us that being a little broken doesn’t mean you can’t make something amazing. In fact, it may be a requirement.
Buy Some Kahlo in honor of Frida!
