You're (Apparently) Nevet Too Old For A Spanking

The February issue of Vanity Fair had an article that so shocked a friend of mine down in Texas, that she e'd me about it in horror.  It's note worthy that very little ever shocks a native-born Texan, male or female. 

By coincidence VF had arrived just that day and while I'd seen the headline on the front cover, I hadn't had time to peruse the article about the 83 year old woman who is France's acknowledged dominatrix.  Let that sink in for a moment.

I'm stunned that:

any country would have an "acknowledged dominatrix.  My mind runs more to perhaps a Poet Laureate such as the late Robert Frost or something else benign like that. 
 
That an 83 year old woman won (but she'd been practicing for the past 60 years)  She is also tiny - 4 ft. 11 in. and 89 lbs., and wears rimless glasses like a nun.

The French think this is cool.  On the other hand, many of them also admired the late Francoise Sagan, considered by some to be the J.D. Salinger of France.  "It was such a beautiful day - if it had not been, she would have killed herself" would be a typical Sagan-esque entry. 

Catherine Robbe-Grillet is the widow of the noted sadist (only in France) Alain Robbe-Grillet.  Her companion in crime is a 51 yea old woman named Beverly Charpentier.  This odd couple live in a "secret location" chateau in Normandy (Chateau du Mesnil-au-Grain) and have adjoining apartments in Paris.

They are adamant that they are not sadists which they define as deliberately harming another against their will (what about the guy who wound up in ER gushing blood?)   They say that dominance is all about giving yourself freely to the will of another.  Robbe-Grillet says, "It is not about pain.  It is about how to suffer beautifully like Saint Sebastian."  (If I'm remembering the correct saint, he looked like a porcupine with all of those arrows stuck in him.) 

The French are famous for adopting a pose - nihilist - existentialist - always something "intellectual" and they happily parade around in the flowing robes of their newly-found obsession. 

The bonus for Robbe-Grillet is that her "acolytes" do the housework (including window washing) and her chef is well known in Parisian gourmet circles.  How painful is that?