Vintage Magazine

Tom of Finland’s works were first published in American ‘fitness’ or ‘beefcake’ magazines; homoerotic publications which tailored their images to avoid strict censorship laws. Tom of Finland – who was then signing his works as ‘Tom’ – first submitted his drawings to Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial at the urging of a friend. His images of cheerful, half-naked loggers were openly suggestive, but close enough to ‘wholesome’ masculine tropes to circumvent censorship. When they featured in Physique Pictorial’s Spring 1957 issue, Mizer had added an addendum, coining the now famed moniker ‘Tom of Finland’. This retitling followed a common practice of the period to obscure the identity of the artist, with some of Tom's contemporaries including Bruce of L.A., Lon of New York and Vince of London. As censorship eased and laws changed in the 60s so did the imagery in these magazines, becoming far more overt and explicit as time went on.