Dear Frida Kahlo's Leg,

It took me a while to find you.

I happened upon this page in the middle of the night after reaching for my phone amid a bout of sleeplessness. I have no idea exactly how I landed there, but once I did, the images held my attention. (The following photo, incidentally, was not one of them, but I have to wonder, Frida Kahlo’s Leg, if you ever strolled around this inviting courtyard.)

Frida Kahlo’s house; Mexico City; Rod Waddington of Kergunyah, Australia; CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The copy also evoked my curiosity, but not in a good way.

The link states it is a reprint of an article originally published over here. The copy from both pages is identical (including date of publication), with one exception. One lists the author as "Jessica Cole" and the other credits "Joshua Davis." Whoever the writer is, they've managed to pen one of the worst articles I've ever encountered. Frankly, I don't believe either a Jessica or a Joshua wrote the copy. I don't believe a human being wrote the copy. I think it was generated by artificial "intelligence."

The page (take your pick, they are the same) scrolls for so long, a person might expire trying to get to the end of it. The horrendous copy is constantly interrupted by an array of ever-changing ads featuring distractions such as inscrutable objects, videos, and impossibly photoshopped human torsos.

Despite my irritation over the interruptions, bad writing, and lack of photo captions, I kept scrolling Frido Kaho’s Leg, because while I knew your mistress was an artist of note, that’s where it ended for me. I’m a bit embarrassed by that and It’s probably why I clicked the dubious link in the first place.

Hence, I have to admit that the facts about her life in that link, however awkwardly stated, compelled me at every turn: her bout with polio as a child, her close relationship with her father, the terrible bus accident.

When I came upon this paragraph, my interest really ramped up. It’s also where you come in.

30 Surgeries in Total With One Being the Amputation of Her Foot

When you count all of the surgeries Kahlo encountered in her life, it came to a total of 30. That is more than most people experience in their whole lifetime in today's world with all the new and advanced technologies they certainly did not have back then. Out of all the surgeries she endured, the amputation of her foot after contracting gangrene was by far the most severe.

That was it. My brow knitted with irritation. Such awful writing. There had to be more to the “amputation of her foot” story than whatever some automated bot had spit out at me.

I dove in and found you.

Frida Kahlo's prosthetic leg, Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I immediately fell in love.

That red boot … those laces. It was such a sexy object. Somehow this prosthetic leg said more about your mistress than an entire encyclopedia of automated copy ever could.

I had landed here, wherein author Roos van der Tol does a decent job of telling your story. She includes a reference to a 1953 letter Frida wrote to the love of her life, Diego Rivera, as she lay in the hospital just before her gangrenous leg was to be removed.

Some excerpts:

Let’s not fool ourselves, Diego, I gave you everything that is humanly possible to offer and we both know that. But still, how the hell do you manage to seduce so many women when you’re such an ugly son of a bitch?

I’m having a leg cut off (damned thing, it got what it wanted in the end). I told you I’ve counted myself as incomplete for a long time, but why the fuck does everybody else need to know about it too? Now my fragmentation will be obvious for everyone to see, for you to see …

If there is anything I’d enjoy before I die, it’d be not having to see your fucking horrible bastard face wandering around my garden.

That is all, I can now go to be chopped up in peace.

Good bye from somebody who is crazy and vehemently in love with you,

Your Frida

Aside: I can’t help but wonder what your mistress meant by “garden” in the above quote. Methinks it might not have been one populated by oleander and lemon trees.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, unknown date/photographer.

So here's the rub, Frida Kahlo's Leg, we humans are floating in an informational flux, and the likes of that dreadful AI link will become more prevalent as the real stories behind it become harder and harder to unearth, with reliable links locked behind paywalls or just plain dead.

Plenty of tools remain available for nerds like me, but that's not who I'm worried about. I'm worried about the ones who don’t possess my smoldering curiosity, the ones who rely on the likes of TikTok for information. Don't get me wrong—I don't blame anyone who might accept the AI link as good enough when it clearly is no such thing.

If they do, they'll miss images of you, or reading the letter she wrote to Diego as she stared down her short future beyond that hospital bed (Frida died just months after her real leg was amputated and you made the scene). They may never get to read the following quote about you, which I found here:

“[Frida] said, ‘If I have to wear a prosthetic leg it may as well be beautiful,’” reported Gannit Ankori, a Kahlo scholar.

Well then, you certainly are beautiful.

Señoras of Mexico featuring Frida Kahlo, Toni Frissell for Vogue, 1937.

For now, Frida Kahlo's Leg, reliable information about your mistress abounds in the vast land of the internet. May it flourish forever and may readers stay engaged enough to find it.

If and when, however, you are again relegated by some artificial “intelligence” to woefully inadequate copy that’s situated amid a barrage of blinking ads, if that entity fails to properly note your beauty and bittersweet history, I wouldn't blame you if you felt like kicking them in the knee.

Love, Erin

---

ps: I am referring to your mistress in this missive as “mistress” on account of the Warner Brothers’ classic cartoon Feed the Kitty, which features, among others, the character of Marc Anthony’s Mistress, who we see only as a set of drop-dead gorgeous legs complete with proper ankle straps and a set of arrow-straight stocking seams.

rowr

And because I cannot stop myself, Frida Kahlo’s Leg, Marc Anthony’s Mistress was voiced by Bea Benaderet (uncredited), who also played the proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel on the vintage TV sitcom, Petticoat Junction.

pps: If some miserable AI bot ever sends you a letter like this, could you please let me know? Thanks.

ppps: This is personal. Every single word I ever wrote for the Cleveland Free Times was completely scrubbed from the Internet (by humans) years ago. Me being me, of course, I archived it all (those links are just a sampling, but you get the picture).

pppps: Oh for pity’s sake … here’s a detail from a 1000-piece Pomegranate puzzle, Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry Murals, "Production and Manufacture of Engine and Transmission, Detroit Industry," North Wall Automotive Panel, 1932-1933.