TOM OF FINLAND AND THE ADVERTISING WORLD

Tom, who worked as an illustrator in the Finnish advertising business until the early 1970s, when he became a full-time gay propagandist, sold the male body as a pleased, pleasuring and pleasured thing several decades before Calvin Klein thought of it. In the middle of the 20th century, Tom was effectively sketching the blueprint of 21st-century man. And boy, was he blue.
Before Tom no one drew men like he did, making them such unabashed sex objects and sex subjects, giving them such exaggerated male secondary - and primary! - sexual characteristics: big chins, strong jaws, full lips. Masculinity, and virility end up looking so... scrumptious. Buxom. Busty. Tom's men have round firm breasts, saucer-like aureolas and nipples you can adjust your thermostat with.

Mark Simpson
Times Online
Nov 3 2008