The sexed-up cartoon hunks that defined gay culture

They were sexy!

There is a whole group of people who meet and worship those drawings. They have gallery exhibits and meetups. I was on a list at one point.

R1 as someone who just googled it, they still are.

Hot!

Sorry, I always thought they were ugly - simian, identikit, rubber-lipped pretty boy bullshit with a gross fascist undertone. In terms of erotica, something about the whole thing always felt more sleazy than sexy to me. And his inability to draw women and insistence on drawing them anyway didn't help matters much.

Finlayson has lots of ToF items, rather popular here in Finland. If you like his men check it out.

Late Colt model Rex Morgan (Paul Raymond Hayes) had that Tom of Finland look IMHO.

I like the Tom of Finland aesthetic, and have memories of being a horny teen sneaking peeks at drawings in 'art' books in bookshops! The caricatures of male physiques with oversized muscles and dicks was always exciting to me.

Too Gestapo for my taste.

Plus they look like something a bored high School Junior would be doodling during a class lecture.

There is a move about Tom of Finland. It's on Hulu or Amazon.

R10 is it any good?

I’ve always loved his work and feel nostalgia for the gay/leather scene in New York circa 1970 .. even though I was born in Canada in 1985 lol

Kake 1

Kake 13

Jack in the Jungle

I like many of Tom’s pics. Not all but many of them are hot and funny.

Kake 19

There's a new movie series on Men.com that's based on Tom of Finland that are really hot.

[Quote] There's a new movie series on Men.com that's based on Tom of Finland that are really hot.

Tom of Finland's work was important...especially in it's time. It allowed gay men to realize that there could be masculinity in being gay. Most of the stereotypes were of effeminacy, weaklings, etc. Now all of a sudden there were these muscular, butch men having sex with each other, at least in drawings. Some people don't like the Fascist undercurrent in Tom's work...Finland was an ally of Germany in World War II, which many people forget. That is a valid criticism...but on the other hand, it was rather defiant of all that Hitler and the Fascists stood for, which was a decidedly heterosexual ideal. These drawings were in a style taking from popular artists of the depression era and mid-century such as Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Cadmus and others.

My friend Jerry met Tom sometime around 1980 when he visited New York and Jerry took him around to the museums and galleries. I had a letter Tom sent to Jerry later offering to sell him a drawing but Jerry didn't buy it.

Touko, his real name, said if he didn’t have hard on when his picture was ready it wasn’t good enough. R20 You’re right he was unique in his time but I also don’t like those German inspired works. I prefer his multi racial and cowboy themed pics. Many of his leather pics are hot, too, and have no connection to ww2.

I also deplore how offensive Tom of Finland's porn can be. First of all, as someone noted upthread, he can't draw women well , and of course if there's one thing that absolutely makes or breaks gay erotic drawings and paintings, it's how well the women are drawn. That needs to be his top concern! And the Nazi caps offend me deeply--whoever heard of allowing something forbidden and scary in erotic art!? And all that leather must come from the hides of real cows who died for these musclemen's cheap erotic adornment. And plus-- though he does include black men in his drawings, I notice that often their hair is being touched (!) by white men (!!) who have not received their explicit sated permission!

It's just like a whole series of microaggressions committed against the woke! Just like so many things from decades ago, it was not made with our sensibilities in the present explicitly in mind!

HOW DARE HE!!

R12

Was always under the impression Tom of Finland's work was more about Castro district than NYC leather scene. But maybe it was a mixture of both....

Say this because the climate of California seems to have been more conductive to physical fitness including working out. Unlike north east USA where it is cold (or at least was) for good part of year meaning people dressed with more layers; out in CA you get to show more skin for greater portion of year.

That being said SF's leather district is quickly vanishing....

Again Buck Hayes/Rex Morgan was close as one could get to Tom Finland aesthetic come to life.

Not exactly a "muscle Mary", just one fine big ole prime bit of north west manhood.

Until rather recently (and some say still today) the public face of gay culture presented by media has been of white males. T of F and or masculine men like those cartoons were not that much different than their straight counterparts. They were masculine men who worked in "manly" occupations such as LE, the military, lumberjacks, etc.. and were totally opposite of the effeminate lisping and mincing "faeries" that were the usual representation.

I like Etienne.

Did Tom ever live in the US? I'm not clear why his aesthetic would be like NYC or the Castro. I thought it evolved when he was living in his native Finland.

R28

Do not know answer to your query, but T of F was well aware of gay culture in USA since he was commissioned to create content for "beefcake" magazines that began circulating in gay community going back to 1930's or so.

Also T of F was aware of and influenced by various US statues which censored various deemed pornographic or gay publications.

Think also early as 1950's gay culture (though still much of it underground or whatever) was still more freer than many parts of Europe. Again using those beefcake photos that widely circulated in 1950's or 1960's gay circles you can see T of F aesthetic.

Then you had all those muscle/physique magazines that were supposed to be about fitness, but everyone knew their other purposes.

More:

Mr. Richard Dubois, one of the more famous beefcake models from back in the day.

T of F like anyone else could either have these magazines sent to Europe or perhaps they were even sold there, so it isn't as if he wouldn't have been exposed to what was going on in USA even without setting foot in CA or NYC.

I thought this was the hottest image I had ever seen when i came across it in high school. I was certain that the men of the leather culture of NYC would look like this.

As it turned out, they mostly looked like the guys at r25. That was a huge disappointment!

R18

Men.com does that whole "masculine" gay man thing right down to guys wearing suits or dressed in work uniforms (mechanic, chauffeur, stable hand, etc...) so can see them going with a T of F theme type film.

Interestingly Men.com does tend to feature mostly or a good number of European gay models, which is a whole other ball of wax. Plenty of gay men there from various countries are men first, gay second it seems. So you get all those scenes of businessmen who you wouldn't think by looking at them were gay, but never the less.....

Since were going there; honorable mention goes to Chuck Renslow, founder of International Mr. Leather, and also an early promoter of beefcake.

The recent multipart series Matthew Camp did for men.com trying to evoke the Tom of Finland look was actually pretty good. I was actually surpised how much some of the guys (like DeAngelo Jackson) actually looked like Tom of Finland's men.

Some of Gengoroh Tagame's work is nice. Depending on how extreme your tastes are 🤔

The Matthew Camp segment was especially hot. That guy is super cute and I loved the interracial stuff. All the guys in that scene were smoking hot and actually looked like they were into each other. That makes all the difference in porn.

Nice, R36. Similar to the artist "Julius" who illustrated gay magazines.

Cartoon porn is really popular in Asia.

When I see stuff like this, I'm reminded of Jean Genet's cris du Coeur: "A male who fucks another male is a double male!" An extreme reaction to being called a sissy. We shouldn't be surprised that it has faded.

By "Matt".

R39 i think that's called Bara.