Tattooed Sailors Towel

Drawings such as this were first published in American ‘fitness’ or ‘beefcake’ magazines; homoerotic publications which tailored their images to avoid strict censorship laws. Though Tom of Finland’s work was heavily based in fantasy and designed to titillate, the artist fundamentally aimed to produce images of gay men that counteracted the atmosphere of oppression and stereotypes of effeminacy he had grown up with. In contrast, Tom’s lasciviously smiling actors are explicitly strong, happy and sexual. Tom amplified the figures and attributes of the men he drew with tight, narrow waists, broad shoulders, jutting jaws and bulging jodhpurs. Though adhering to a specific ideal, the artist’s overtly sexual images subverted heteronormative tropes of masculinity and authority, indelibly changing how gay men could be seen, and see themselves. Often set in forests and parks, on roadsides and in bars, his images recall cruising sites but also represent gay men openly and publicly engaging in pleasure without fear or censure. The radical promise that underpinned Tom’s work was a reality in which gay men were emboldened to fully and freely express desire.