It's often said that Tom's greatest achievement was in drawing gay men who were masculine, happy and proud at a time when they were supposed to be effeminate, neurotic and shameful.[A major Tom of Finland retrospective is happening in Liverpool, part of that city's annual Homotopia queer culture festival.]
The first time I saw a Tom of Finland drawing was in a well-thumbed, seventh-hand issue of Fiesta, a top-shelf favourite of schoolboys in the 1970s. The image, buried at the back, was in a small ad for more “specialised” publications. But it jumped out at me like an outsized erection.
It depicted a pair of muscular butch young men with big chins and broad grins grabbing each other's bubble butts and straining packets while winking at the reader. I immediately rushed out to the post office to buy as many postal orders as my pocket money would allow.
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