The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Barbie left out Frida Kahlo’s facial hair. Here’s what her family says.

Many embraced the move, but other question if it’s what the artist would have wanted

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March 9, 2018 at 6:16 p.m. EST

Adapted from a story from The Washington Post’s Rachel Siegel.

One of Barbie’s newly unveiled dolls — that of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo — has kick-started a dispute over who gets to use her image in the first place.

In interviews with Mexican media outlets, as well as the BBC, Kahlo’s great-grandniece insists she is the sole owner of the rights to Kahlo’s image. That contradicts the stance of the Florida-based Frida Kahlo Corp., which says it bought the rights to Kahlo’s image from another relative 13 years ago.

The corporation worked on the new doll with Mattel, whose brands include Barbie, Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price.

A family statement given to the BBC said that Kahlo’s grandniece, Mara de Anda Romeo, was the “sole owner of the rights of the image.” The family has also called for a more authentic redesign of the doll.

While many embraced the nod to a Latina painter who often explored issues of race and gender in her work, others questioned what Kahlo — a communist and feminist — would have thought about being immortalized in Barbie plastic.

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Dressed in a billowing blue, red and black dress with a fringe shawl and floral headpiece, the Frida Kahlo Barbie sells for $29.99. But Kahlo’s signature facial hair, critics quickly noted, was missing from her stick-thin incarnation.

In a statement, Mattel said the company worked in close partnership with, and secured permission from, the Frida Kahlo Corp. to create the doll.

The Frida Kahlo Barbie went on sale along with two other historical doll figures: Katherine Johnson, a pioneering African American mathematician whose calculations for NASA helped drive the first American-manned venture into space; and Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

The doll “is a very important reminder than I can be anything I want to be, that I can be my own muse,” Alvarado said.

Whether the actual Frida Kahlo would have found her muse in Barbie form will never be known. She died five years before the first Barbie appeared on shelves in 1959.