Photo from The Romantic Egoists
Many who have seen photographs of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald note that no two images of her resemble each other. She had many different, unforgettable faces, among them the polished and strikingly beautiful one which appeared on the cover of Hearst’s International magazine in the early 1920’s and which she referred to as her Elizabeth Arden face. But the different faces of Zelda, as the Fitzgeralds’ friend Sara Murphy observed shortly after Zelda’s first mental breakdown, had much less to do with subtle changes in makeup or lighting than with inner complexity and mystery that no one, not even her husband Scott, ever touched. There have been many constructions of Zelda Fitzgerald, all hinting at the complexity that Sara Murphy noted. But, not surprisingly, the various constructions like the various photographs of Zelda’s face rarely resemble each other.
From the actual Zelda Sayre of Montgomery, Alabama Scott Fitzgerald constructed a fairy princess,