NEW YORK — The United States’ new favourite dog breed — the comical, controversial French bulldog — has never won the nation’s pre-eminent dog show, according to AP.
Yet here, at an ambling trot, comes Winston. The Frenchie with NFL connections is a strong contender at this week’s Westminster Kennel Club dog show, less than two months after the release of rankings showing that his kind has become the country’s most prevalent dog breed.
Frenchies’ rise has been stunning: from 83rd most popular to No. 1 in three decades. It also has been dogged by concerns about their health, debate over the ethics of breeding, denunciations of a gold-rush-like market with ever more “exotic” variations, and a recent spate of high-profile and sometimes fatal robberies.
If all that says something about these stumpy-snouted, pointy-eared, deep-chested, quizzical little bulldogs, what does it say about the culture that loves them?
“Just like humans, dogs get characterised for what they can do, but more importantly what they can symbolise,” says Cameron Whitley, a Western Washington University sociology professor and the chair-elect of the American Sociological Association’s Animals and Society section. Whitley argues that breeds’ popularity depends less on their traits than on their portrayal in media and pop culture.
Indeed, a 2013 study found no indication that longer lifespans, better behaviour or other desirable characteristics make a dog breed more sought-after. One of the authors, Western Carolina University psychology professor Hal Herzog, also has observed that parabolic spikes in dog breeds resemble those in baby names, hit songs and other boom-and-bust commodities of pop culture. In short, they’re canine memes.
“The dogs have become a form of fashion,” says Herzog, who wrote a book about human attitudes and conduct toward animals.
French bulldogs have a colourful, centuries-long history involving English lacemakers, the Parisian demimonde and Gilded Age American tourists who brought the dogs home. (One even died in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. ) But the breed’s US heyday soon ended.
Then Americans got a fresh look at Frenchies in the current century. They turned up on domesticity maven Martha Stewart’s TV show, then in narrative series and movies (such as “Modern Family” and “Due Date”), ads (including Super Bowl spots for Skechers in 2012 and Bud Light this year) and the social media accounts of celebrity owners (Lady Gaga, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and many more).
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