What Frida Taught Us

Far beyond the art world, Frida Kahlo's singular image endures as a blueprint for being your own muse.

- By Ella Cerón

I was 11 years old when someone-my brother-pointed out my fuzzy top lip, and 12 when my mom marched me to a nail salon to erase it. The waxer also firmly separated my eyebrows, a pain my mom knew from waxing her own for years. That was the secret of my Mexican American family: My father and my tíos all had mustaches and big, bushy eyebrows, but so did the women. We simply got rid of ours.

When I was growing up, Latina beauty was often stereotypical: Thin eyebrows, frosted eye makeup, and honey highlights. Another option—the strong unibrow and ribbon-braided hair of the artist Frida Kahlo, showcased in murals around my hometown of Los Angeles—seemed out of sync with the times.