Queer Places:
Malmin Hautausmaa
Malmi, Helsinki Municipality, Uusimaa, Finland
Monsieur Mosse (born 26 May 1932 in the rural municipality of Helsinki, now Vantaa; died 22 August 1992 in Helsinki[1]) 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 confess his homosexuality.
Raimo Urmas Jääskeläinen began his career in the 1950s as a make-up artist at the private television channel MTV. In 1964 he opened his own beauty salon in Helsinki, which soon became one of the social centers of the Finnish high society. Jääskeläinen preferred to surround himself with the stars and starlets of the film and pop 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 was decriminalized in Finland, he dared to come out publicly in an interview with Hymy magazine, causing a scandal. Through his permissive confessions in the following issues, homosexuality, which is taboo in Finnish society, was widely discussed for the first time; Jääskeläinen also outed other Finnish celebrities to the magazine, but the names were consistently blacked out, leaving plenty of room for speculation.[2] Shortly after these revelations, his salon went bankrupt. Jääskeläinen then lived in Spain and the United States, and did not return to Finland until 1982 to publish his memoirs Voi pojat, kun tietäisitte! (Oh boys, if only you knew!"). He died in Helsinki in 1992 from complications of heart surgery.
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