Monsieur Mosse

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Monsieur Mosse , actually Raimo Urmas Jääskeläinen (born on May 26, 1932 in the rural municipality of Helsinki, today's Vantaa ; died on August 22, 1992 in Helsinki ), was a Finnish make-up artist . He is particularly well-known because in 1971 he was the first and for a long time the only public figure in Finland to admit his homosexuality .

Monsieur Mosse around 1980

Life

Jääskeläinen began his career in the 1950s as a make-up artist for the private television broadcaster MTV . In 1964 he opened his own beauty salon in Helsinki, which soon became one of the social centers of the Finnish upper class . Jääskeläinen preferred to surround himself with the stars and starlets of the film and hit scene, occasionally tried himself as an actor, and cultivated a lifestyle that was quite exalted by Finnish standards, so that the tabloid media often reported on him. In May 1971, shortly after homosexuality in Finland was decriminalized, he ventured in an interview with the magazine Hymy a public coming out and so caused a scandal. Through his revealing confessions in the following numbers, homosexuality, which was taboo in Finnish society, was first widely discussed; Jääskeläinen also outed other Finnish celebrities to the magazine, but the names were all blackened out, leaving plenty of room for speculation.

Shortly after these revelations, his salon went bankrupt. Jääskeläinen then lived in Spain and the USA and did not return to Finland until 1982 to complete his memoir Voi pojat, kun tietäisitte! (Eng. "Oh guys, if you only knew!") to publish. In 1992 he died in Helsinki of complications from heart surgery.

literature

  • Monsieur Mosse: Voi pojat, kun tietäisitte! : eli Raimo Jääskeläisen uskomattomat seikkailut. Kustannus-vaihe, Tampere 1981. ISBN 9519553126 [autobiography]
  • Tuula Juvonen: Jääskeläinen, Raimo. In: Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon (eds.): Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History. Routledge, London 2001. ISBN 041522974X , pp. 209-210.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry by Raimo Jääskeläinen at the Kansallinen audiovisuaalinen instituutti (German National Audiovisual Institute) (Finnish, accessed October 24, 2015)
  2. ↑ cf. Juvonen, p. 209.
personal data
SURNAME Monsieur Mosse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jääskeläinen, Raimo Urmas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish make-up artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Helsinki rural municipality
DATE OF DEATH 22nd August 1992
Place of death Helsinki