Who would have thunk it?

[gategrrl]

A couple of centuries ago, it was the in thing for a highly placed woman (in the nobility) to have an acknowledged public lover/male attendant/gigilo who paid her attention her husband presumably...did not. It's a fascinating piece of history that you rarely hear about. Mistresses, sure. Kept male lovers of highly ranked women? Not so much. A male mistress was called a cicisbeo. And the husbands? They had to put up and shut-up about it.

Comments

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

That's one of those things you have to wonder about. What exactly do you call them? Would a male mistress be a mister? ;) My mom is in her 70's, and she always said it felt a little odd calling her 80 year old boyfriend "her boyfriend." She always associated that word with teenagers. Maybe it's in the same category?

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Well, they were called "cicisbeo", a slang term evolved from something Italian, according to the wikipedia page.

;-)

And gigilo, which denotes a male party-boy.