Tom of Finland

Based on Wikipedia: Tom of Finland

The Man Who Drew Gay Men Into Existence

In the 1950s, if you were a gay man in America, your cultural mirror was broken. The images that existed of men like you came from vaudeville stages and Hollywood comedies—limp wrists, lisping voices, figures of ridicule. You were, according to the medical establishment, mentally ill. According to the law, a criminal. And according to popular culture, a joke.

Then, in the spring of 1957, a drawing appeared on the cover of a small magazine called Physique Pictorial. It showed two lumberjacks at work, their bodies muscular and confident, while a third man watched them with unmistakable interest. The artist was credited simply as "Tom of Finland."

That drawing—and the thousands that followed—would help reshape how gay men saw themselves and how the world saw them. The cultural historian Joseph W. Slade would later call the artist behind them "the most influential creator of gay pornographic images" in history.

A Schoolteacher's Son in a School Building

Touko Valio Laaksonen was born on May 8, 1920, in Kaarina, a small town in southwestern Finland near the city of Turku. His parents, Suoma and Edwin, were both schoolteachers at the local grammar school—and the family literally lived in the building, in attached living quarters. It was a thoroughly respectable, middle-class Finnish upbringing.

Young Touko showed artistic talent early. By his late teens, he had moved to Helsinki to study advertising. But in his spare time, he was making other kinds of drawings entirely—images of the male laborers he'd observed since childhood, rendered in ways that made their appeal explicit. He kept these drawings hidden. When he was called to military service, he destroyed them.

Finland's relationship to World War Two was complicated. The country found itself fighting the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939-1940, and then became a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany against the Soviets—not out of ideological alignment, but out of desperate necessity. Laaksonen was conscripted in February 1940 and served as an anti-aircraft officer, eventually holding the rank of second lieutenant.

The war gave him something unexpected: a fetish for uniforms.

Uniforms and Contradictions

German soldiers were stationed in Finland during the war, and Laaksonen found himself drawn to them—or rather, to what they wore. Later in life, he would address this directly, with a frankness that still startles.

"In my drawings I have no political statements to make, no ideology. I am thinking only about the picture itself. The whole Nazi philosophy, the racism and all that, is hateful to me, but of course I drew them anyway—they had the sexiest uniforms!"

This would become a recurring tension in his work and reputation. A small portion of his drawings depicted men in Nazi uniforms in an erotic context. Critics have debated what to make of this ever since. Laaksonen himself, later in his career, disavowed these images and worked to distance himself from any association with fascism or racism. Most recent anthologies of his work omit them entirely.

But the question lingers: Can you separate the aesthetic appeal of power from the reality of what that power does? Laaksonen's answer was essentially yes—the drawing exists in its own realm, independent of history. Many viewers have disagreed.

The Rise of Beefcake

To understand how Tom of Finland's art found an audience, you need to understand the strange, coded world of mid-century gay publishing.

In the 1930s, a peculiar genre had emerged: the "physique magazine." These publications featured photographs of muscular young men in athletic poses, often demonstrating exercises or flexing for the camera. They were marketed as health and fitness magazines. They were purchased almost exclusively by gay men.

This was a survival strategy. Explicit gay content was illegal. Pornography laws were strict. But pictures of men in posing straps, ostensibly for the purpose of physical culture? That existed in a gray zone. The magazines carried names like Physique Pictorial, Vim, and Tomorrow's Man. They featured men named with pseudonyms like "Lance" and "Troy." And for countless isolated gay men across America, they were the only connection to their own sexuality.

It was into this world that Laaksonen submitted his first drawings in 1956.

Tom Is Born

Physique Pictorial was published in Los Angeles by a man named Bob Mizer, who also ran the Athletic Model Guild and photographed many of the models himself. When Mizer received Laaksonen's drawings, he was impressed enough to publish them.

The first appeared in the spring 1957 issue, credited simply to "Tom"—a name chosen because it sounded like "Touko." By the winter issue, Mizer had expanded the credit to "Tom of Finland," and a pseudonym was born that would outlive the man behind it.

That first cover image was carefully crafted. The lumberjacks weren't just erotic figures—they were icons of Finnish masculinity. In Finland, the profession of log driving (floating timber down rivers) carried cultural weight similar to the American cowboy. Laaksonen was taking a symbol of heterosexual national identity and, as scholars would later put it, "relocating it in a gay context."

He would do this again and again throughout his career—taking figures associated with rugged masculinity and making them available for gay desire.

Leather, Denim, and Rebellion

The 1950s saw the rise of another cultural phenomenon that would prove crucial to Laaksonen's work: the biker.

After World War Two, some returning veterans found they couldn't settle back into civilian life. They formed motorcycle clubs, wore leather jackets, and cultivated an image of danger and rebellion. Films like "The Wild One" (1953), starring Marlon Brando, brought this image into popular consciousness.

For gay men, the biker offered something revolutionary: a model of masculinity that was neither respectable nor effeminate. The leather jacket, the boots, the denim—these weren't just clothes. They were a rejection of the prevailing stereotype of the gay man as weak, passive, and sad.

Laaksonen began drawing bikers and leathermen with obsessive attention to their uniforms. The leather was tight and shining. The denim was worn and faded. The men inside these clothes were muscular, confident, and very clearly interested in each other.

He wasn't inventing this aesthetic—he was consolidating it. Other artists, like George Quaintance and Etienne (whose real name was Dom Orejudos), were working in similar territory. But Laaksonen's drawings had a particular power. His men weren't just attractive; they were joyful. They weren't ashamed of their desires; they celebrated them.

The End of Pretense

In 1962, the United States Supreme Court made a ruling that would transform gay publishing. The case, MANual Enterprises v. Day, determined that photographs of nude men were not inherently obscene.

Almost overnight, the pretense fell away. Magazines that had claimed to be about "physical culture" began publishing fully nude photographs. Some models were shown tumescent. The market for coded beefcake collapsed—why buy hints when you could have the real thing?

For Laaksonen, this meant freedom. He no longer had to suggest; he could depict. His drawings became more explicit, his figures more exaggerated. The muscles grew larger. The genitals grew larger still. He developed a recurring character named Kake—a leather-clad everyman who appeared in 26 comic books between 1968 and 1986, having sexual adventures across various scenarios.

By 1973, Laaksonen felt confident enough to quit his day job at the Helsinki office of McCann, the advertising agency where he'd worked for years. "Since then I've lived in jeans and lived on my drawings," he said.

The Art of Exaggeration

What made Tom of Finland's drawings distinctive wasn't just their subject matter—it was their style.

Laaksonen worked primarily in pencil, creating drawings of remarkable technical precision. Many were based on photographs, but none were simple reproductions. He would take the photographic reference and transform it—making the muscles more defined, the bulges more prominent, the expressions more alive.

The result was a kind of heightened reality. His men were human enough to be recognizable, fantastical enough to be aspirational. They existed in a world where every encounter promised pleasure, where physical desire was uncomplicated by shame or fear.

A documentary from the 1990s, "Daddy and the Muscle Academy," showed photographs alongside the drawings they inspired. The comparison reveals both Laaksonen's skill and his agenda. The photographs are attractive; the drawings are idealized. The photographs show men; the drawings show the men we might want to be, or want to be with.

The Clone Look

By the mid-1970s, something remarkable had happened. Laaksonen's drawings weren't just reflecting gay culture—they were shaping it.

In urban gay neighborhoods across America and Europe, a particular look had become dominant: the "clone." Short hair. Mustache. Muscular body. Tight jeans. Leather jacket or flannel shirt. Work boots. It was, in effect, a Tom of Finland drawing come to life.

Some of this influence was direct. Men saw his drawings and consciously adopted the style. But much of it was more diffuse—Laaksonen's images had helped create a visual vocabulary for gay masculinity, and that vocabulary spread through leather bars, bathhouses, and the pages of countless magazines.

The leather subculture, in particular, embraced him. His drawings hung in leather bars. They advertised parties and events. They provided a shared reference point for men who were building a community around shared desires.

Masturbation Pieces

Not everyone treated Tom of Finland's work as art.

Rob Meijer, who owned a leather shop and art gallery in Amsterdam, put it bluntly: "These works are not conversation pieces, they're masturbation pieces."

Laaksonen himself didn't disagree. He called his work "dirty drawings" and understood that their primary purpose was to arouse. Many of his pieces were published in explicitly sexual contexts—erotic magazines, advertisements for bathhouses, murals in leather clubs. These weren't images meant for gallery walls and critical analysis. They were meant to get men off.

And yet the critical analysis came anyway. Art historians began examining his technique, which genuinely was masterful. Some called him a "master with a pencil." Others were less impressed—a reviewer for the Dutch newspaper Het Parool described his work as "illustrative but without expressivity."

The critic Kevin Killian, writing for Artforum, found something more nuanced when he saw the original drawings: "a strong respect for his nimble, witty creation."

The debate continues. Is Tom of Finland art or pornography? The answer, of course, is yes.

Influence Beyond the Page

By the 1980s, Tom of Finland's influence had spread far beyond gay magazines and leather bars.

The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose own work depicting S&M and fetish imagery sparked enormous controversy, became a friend. Fashion designers like Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler incorporated his aesthetic into their collections. Freddie Mercury of Queen adopted elements of the leather look for his stage persona.

Artists who worked in entirely different contexts cited him as an influence. His drawings had demonstrated that explicit sexuality could coexist with genuine craftsmanship, that images made for arousal could also be images made with care.

The historian Jack Fritscher proposed a metaphor: "If there is a gay Mount Rushmore of four great pioneer pop artists, the faces would be Chuck Arnett, Etienne, A. Jay, and Tom of Finland."

Building a Legacy

In 1979, Laaksonen took a step that transformed his relationship to his own work. Together with a businessman named Durk Dehner, he founded the Tom of Finland Company.

The immediate purpose was practical: protecting his copyright. Laaksonen's drawings had been widely pirated, reproduced without permission or payment. But the company became something more—a vehicle for ensuring that his work would survive him.

Five years later, in 1984, they established the Tom of Finland Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and exhibiting erotic art. Though it began with Laaksonen's work, the foundation's mission quickly expanded to encompass all kinds of erotic imagery.

Today, the foundation holds approximately 1,500 of Laaksonen's works and more than 100,000 pieces of erotic art in total. It runs an annual competition for emerging artists, hosts events, and maintains an Erotic Artist Hall of Fame that includes figures like H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist best known for designing the creature in the "Alien" films.

Final Years in Echo Park

Laaksonen spent his final decade largely in Los Angeles, living at a house in the Echo Park neighborhood that belonged to Dehner. The visa restrictions meant he could only stay for six months at a time, but he made the most of it. In that house, he created roughly 800 artworks—about 20 percent of his entire output.

He developed a close friendship with the artist Bill Schmeling. The two men set up salons in their homes, sharing techniques and life experiences. Schmeling would later credit Laaksonen with significantly influencing his own artistic development.

In 1988, Laaksonen was diagnosed with emphysema. As the disease progressed, it caused his hands to tremble. He could no longer work in pencil with the precision that had defined his style, so he switched to pastels.

He died on November 7, 1991, from a stroke induced by the emphysema. He was 71 years old.

His romantic partner, a dancer named Veli "Nipa" Mäkinen, had died a decade earlier in 1981. They had been together for 28 years.

A National Hero in Finland

In 2014, the Finnish postal service issued a set of stamps featuring Tom of Finland's art. An artist who had once destroyed his drawings for fear of discovery was now being commemorated by his government.

Today, as the Los Angeles Times noted in 2019, "Finland embraces its artist-son as a national hero." His image appears on merchandise ranging from the predictable (adult products) to the unexpected (holiday ornaments). His estate is carefully managed. His legacy is preserved.

The Echo Park house where he spent his final years is now the headquarters of the Tom of Finland Foundation. His bedroom has been preserved much as it was when he lived there. The 14-room home is filled with erotic art—even the ceilings.

What He Made Possible

The writer Kate Wolf has argued that "Tom of Finland helped pave the way to gay liberation."

This might seem like a large claim for an artist who drew, in his own words, "dirty pictures." But consider what those pictures meant to the men who found them.

In an era when gay men were told they were sick, sinful, and shameful, here were images of men who were strong, confident, and happy. In a culture that depicted gay men as weak and effeminate, here were lumberjacks and bikers and construction workers, unmistakably masculine and unmistakably queer.

In oral histories, gay men repeatedly describe encountering Laaksonen's work as a turning point. For many, these drawings were the first time they had seen their desires reflected back at them as something worth celebrating rather than something to cure.

The images weren't realistic. The muscles were too large, the encounters too perfect, the world too welcoming. But sometimes fantasy is what makes reality bearable—or what gives us the vision to make reality better.

Tom of Finland didn't just draw gay men. He drew them into possibility.