>Gay Outlawz

>The fifth in a series of posts about Gay Outlaws because I’m bored with all these safe lameasses.

Albertine Sarrazin claims two firsts for our Gay Outlaw series: she’s the first woman and the first subject to not be completely gay. She was only gay when she was in prison. BUT HELLO THAT’S FUCKING AWESOME ANYWAY. Albertine was a French writer and criminal in the vein of Jean Genet. She started off as a simple prostitute but then moved on to holding up stores and banks so that she could live in expensive Paris. In some Bonnie and Clyde type shit, she met this dude Julien Sarrazin and they started robbing shit together. Eventually they both ended up in jail and she wrote all of her famous novels which are incredible because they’re set in women’s prisons and so there aren’t many men in them. Also, while she was boning ladies in prison, she was sending love letters to her husband in the men’s prison. They had an amour fou correspondence between prisons!!! BEAT THAT BITCHES.

>The Sun (and No Fun) King

>It was during the reign of the fat-as-fuck Louis XIV in which fashion was solidified as an institution of state power. Louis XIV is one of the most powerful leaders in the history of Europe, who’s court at Versailles could be called the most exclusive and focused center of power in the history of the European world. Access to that court and to any position of power within his government was regulated by strict sartorial guidelines that changed every season. This model of rapid trend-molting and change was a way in which Louis could determine a courtier’s allegiance to his systems, and a necessary indication of a man or woman’s wealth was their ability to quickly change their feathers. This is much more literal than Anna Wintour’s hold on American fashion; until the death of Marie Antionette and the French Revolution, the French Court’s word on dress was actual law. Nonetheless, our model of cyclical trends and the use of trend to determine someone’s relationship to power seems to have been solidified in the French court of the seventeenth century.

Funny and outrageous results of Louis’s extravagance which have stuck with us to this day: “Louis’s outrageous vanity, sumptuous court and devotion to his own well-being led to growth in the manufacturing of fine clothing and shoes, and the invention of shops in which to buy them, and to celebrity cuisine, cafes and Champagne (a particularly amusing—and explosive—chapter). Louis was enthralled by glitter, which fostered a huge increase in the diamond trade; and the first night streetlights (hence the “City of Lights”). Louis also abhorred mud (so streets were paved with cobblestones) and disliked getting wet (thus umbrellas were invented).”

>Voila

>Platine is the French word for Platinum and its so much more preferable to say than the English version, don’t you agree?

>only the french

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