I was wandering down Oxford Street the other day when I stumbled upon this poster featuring Christina Aguilera attempting to flog Sketchers products to no doubt impressionable youth-type people. My first reaction was to think that the pose looked really familiar and after a fair amount of brain-searching, I’m thinking maybe it’s been ripped off from a piece by Tom of Finland. Now I’m really interested in finding the piece that inspired this advert – particularly because if it is Tom of Finland then there’s probably someone out there who should be writing a book on the way his bizarre sexualised gay imagery is being repurposed to sell shoes to a teen audience.
If anyone knows of the advert’s influences then please leave a comment below – and if you happen to have a URL for an ‘original’ somewhere on the web, that would be bloody awesome too.
4 replies on “Christina of Finland?”
The girl on the left reminds me of the Lou Reed image:
http://www.osnabrueck-net.de/splitscreen/Bilder/lou_reed1.jpg
It is probably not referential, but rather is simply that the HOT men of Tom of Finland are part of the zeitgeist, and you see all things in their image.
more people should use tom of finland for inspiration…what a fantastic illustrator and well before his time…yes that pose looks very familular…..
I know this was a long time ago, but please check out the “Americas Next Top Model” season 3 where they did a “double” photo shoot. Among others was a session where they have the exact same scene as in the Aguilera ad.