Two Fridas, three dresses: Feminist representations of Kahlo’s “White Dress” from print to digital
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Date
2026-06-01
Authors
de la Garza, Armida
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Abstract
The Two Fridas (1939) is considered the most ambitious work by Mexican painter and feminist icon Frida Kahlo, and dress is central to it. It famously depicts two versions of the painter sitting side by side with hearts visible and a vein bleeding, one wearing a traditional Tehuana costume, taken to stand for her Mexican identity, the other a white dress often described as “Victorian,” regarded as alluding to her European heritage. Based on McLuhan’s study of the way that communication technology affects cognitive organization, this article focuses on the white dress that has hitherto received less attention. Taking the dress as an index of the sensory environments McLuhan theorized, the article examines the versions of it on painting, photography and film, contrasting representations produced under print culture, and those crafted under electronic culture, highlighting the ways in which each illustrates McLuhan’s theories and in one case even enables new interpretations of Kahlo’s work.
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© 2026, the Regents of the University of California.
Keywords
Film and fashion , Frida Kahlo , Marshall McLuhan , The Two Fridas , Understanding the media , [EnglishDigitalHumanities] , Gender Studies , History
Citation
de la Garza, A 2026, 'Two Fridas, three dresses: Feminist representations of Kahlo’s “White Dress” from print to digital', Feminist Media Histories, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 128-141. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2026.12.3.128