Muscles are so big that chests prove almost Olympian, mythological meatheads that openly and unashamedly indulge in behaviour that was only whispered about, keen to enjoy the palpable homoeroticism felt by men who spent months and months together in isolation. Shoebox jaws aren't the exception they're the rule. So masculine are they, that Tom Of Finland's subjects veer on the cusp of sexually-charged caricature. Tom Of Finland's art showed that men who desired other men could be masculine, virile, and powerful – a response to a culture that so often told gay men they could never be 'real men'." "He was an object of ridicule and derision, a failed example of masculinity. "The image of gay men that dominated mainstream representation at this time was the 'pansy' or the 'sissy'," says Bengry. What's more, Tom Of Finland's inkling for the hyper-masculine helped shape gay men's perceptions of self, and those around them. However, the kinds of physique magazines where Tom Of Finland's art was published had a wide distribution among gay men, surpassing by far the reach of activist publications." This meant that American titles like Physique Pictorial – an early proto-porn title to which Finland contributed – were a way to explore intrinsic desires under the heavy cloud of national censorship. "Men who wanted to find gay materials could do so in pulp novels and under-the-counter magazines, but none of this was mainstream. Most mainstream discussion of homosexuality presented men as perverts or criminals at best, they were sad victims," says Dr Justin Bengry, a history lecturer at London's Goldsmiths, and course convenor of the university's Queer History MA programme. "Even as conversations about sexuality and homosexuality were expanding in the press, gay materials only circulated on the fringes in the mid-twentieth century. It's authentic, undoctored – even more so as queerness itself only ever did exist on the fringes. These are pieces plucked from the carnal fringes when Pride began as a riot in response to police raids of the gay-friendly Stonewall Inn. And this collection, by very token of Anderson's brand capital, is a visible counter to the Disneyfied garb labels cynically peddle. JW Anderson is one of the few homegrown British designers to command a large fandom with his own name. And in comparison to some other works, these are far tamer waters – though a continuation of the designer's penis keyring is not for the pearl-clutcher, with a Tom Of Finlandification of studs and piercings upon black leather, with JW Anderson donating 20 per cent of sales of the signature accessory in all colours to UK Black Pride and LGBTQ+ youth homeless charity Akt.
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Upon felt tote bags and neoprene visors, Tom Of Finland's brigade of burly men are doing what they've always done: tying one another up, refusing shirts, half-smiling as muscles are grabbed and zippers undone. This stuff isn't for the sanitised Citibank float, either. Though this is no cookie-cutter rainbow-edged 'capsule', or a knee-jerk signal to profess 'allyship' when so many brands fail to even make a contribution to LGBTQ+ charities despite co-opting the flag. Anderson himself is a collector of the artist. Just recently, it was British designer JW Anderson's turn to re-home Finland's landmark work into a limited edition collection to coincide with Pride (another ever-important event placed on ice by Covid-19), and a very important birthday (Tom would've been 100 this year). For Laaksonen is more famous by his pen name, a pseudonym that came to define several strands of gay culture before paddling in the mainstream: Tom Of Finland. But you may've seen his work in its purest form, and you've certainly seen it in the epochal wardrobe of Freddie Mercury, and the Village People, and every tweet that refers to a semi-famous handsome man as 'zaddy'. It's likely you've never heard of Touko Laaksonen. On the surface, the army was not so welcoming of such expression. As global conflict called time on academia, the young Laaksonen was enlisted to fight right after the Winter War against the USSR and served in the Continuation War during WWII, and he destroyed all traces of his work. And yet the dream was abruptly cut short.
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They were attractive young men, so muscled and chiselled that they were barely contained in their labourer's uniform, loaf-like hands firmly planted on the smalls of narrow backs, among other places. The naughtiest part being an illegal one: those that came to the artist in his REM-induced euphoria were not young attractive women.
#Hyper masculine gay men archive
In-between classes, the 19-year-old sketched what came to him in dreams – the vivid, breathless ones that shock our consciousness when the sun rises – and soon assembled a small archive of "naughty drawings". In 1939, a young Finnish student by the name of Touko Laaksonen had a secret.