The 1920s is often referred as the Jazz Age. Speakeasies (above) illegally sold alcohol during Prohibition
and usually offered live music, food, and dancing.

——————–

Let’s not kid ourselves–everyone loves a good tragedy. Enter Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.

Recently, I find myself intrigued by the Jazz Age’s quintessential flapper. Zelda’s life consisted of everything I love about Gossip Girl: extravagance, romance, scandal, and all the other dramatics of high society.

Constantly in the shadow of her husband, the famous American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda seldom receives the attention she deserves for  leading the Gilded Age revolution, inspiring other young women to adopt her rebellious, fun-loving attitude. Despite society’s conservative norms at the time, flappers wore short dresses and heavy make up, bobbed their hair, frequented speakeasies, and smoked heavily.

Zelda describes herself as not having “a single feeling of inferiority, or shyness, or doubt, and no moral principles.” Her outgoing, carefree personality and crazy antics frequently landed her and her husband in the newspaper. The society section featured the Fitzgerald’s wild adventures, from heavy partying to riding on top of taxis to jumping in fountains.

Towards the end of the decade, Scott wrote, “Sometimes I don’t know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels.” Good things never last, and the Gilded Age It-couple is no exception. Scott descended into alcoholism and eventually died of a heart attack. Zelda developed schizophrenia, victimized by a hospital fire in 1948. Yet, the legend of the Fitzgerald’s lives on.

[Image sources: http://www.jezebel.com, http://www.colab-arts.org]