‘Cause I wuv you!’ Pet dog fashion and emotional consumption

Abstract

Researchers have analysed how pets fuel marketing and consumption and what kind of role emotions play in these areas. Yet there is no research on how commodities are used in negotiating the emotional relationship between humans and pet dogs. This article contributes a new perspective to the discussion on pet consumerism by focusing on the role of emotions. It examines how pet dog commodities define and materialise the ideal emotional bond between the human and the pet dog: how consumption is justified and rationalised by appealing to emotions, how emotions are mobilised in pet markets, and how value is ascribed to the human–pet dog bond through material objects. As a tangible example of affective capitalism, pet dog fashions indicate how the need to establish a relationship between a human and a dog is transformed into material goods and services.

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the author(s) 2016
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‘Cause I wuv you!’ Pet dog fashion and emotional
consumption
Annamari Vänskä
abstract
Researchers have analysed how pets fuel marketing and consumption and what kind of
role emotions play in these areas. Yet there is no research on how commodities are used
in negotiating the emotional relationship between humans and pet dogs. This article
contributes a new perspective to the discussion on pet consumerism by focusing on the
role of emotions. It examines how pet dog commodities define and materialise the ideal
emotional bond between the human and the pet dog: how consumption is justified and
rationalised by appealing to emotions, how emotions are mobilised in pet markets, and
how value is ascribed to the human–pet dog bond through material objects. As a tangible
example of affective capitalism, pet dog fashions indicate how the need to establish a
relationship between a human and a dog is transformed into material goods and services.
I love and treat my puppies as if they were my own children. I have to admit, I may
have spoiled them a little too much. But how can I not? Just look at those sweet lil'
faces, they deserve to be treated like my lil' prince and princesses  I love my
babies. (Daily Mail Reporter, 2009)
This excerpt is from an on-line article about Paris Hilton. It reports about
Hilton’s ‘Mini Doggie Mansion’, a miniature version of her own Beverly Hills
mansion, which she has constructed for her lap dogs, the now deceased
Tinkerbell, Marilyn Monroe, Dolce, Prada and two other pooches. The double
storey pink chateau, estimated to be worth $325 000 in a biography about Paris
Hilton (Gurvis, 2011: 67), covers about 300 square feet, boasts miniature Philip
Starck furniture, heating and air-conditioning, as well as a crystal chandelier and
ceiling mouldings. Downstairs it has a living room and in the upstairs bedroom

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it has a car-shaped ‘Furcedes’ bed with luxurious ‘Chewy Vuitton’ bedding. The
dogs also have a closet: it is filled with haute-couture outfits for them, including,
for example, a pink angora sweater, ‘gaudy pink high-heeled Louis Vuitton dog
booties’ and other accessories ‘that cost probably more than your car’ (Hilton and
Resin, 2004).
The Daily Mail article is one of many articles that have reported on the socialite’s
conspicuous spending habits on her lap dogs. While Paris Hilton and her
fashionably dressed pooches may be among the most followed celebrities in the
world of entertainment, they are by no means the only ones. Throughout the
2000s, a growing number of female celebrities have been photographed carrying
a fashionably dressed and extravagantly accessorised little lap dog (e.g. Bettany
and Daly, 2008: 409). A Google-search ‘fashionable celebrity lap dogs’ produces
almost 1 000 000 hits in 0,8 seconds, and features sites such as ‘dog fashion
spa’, ‘Cindy Crawford dressing her dogs’ and ‘Pugs and Kisses Celebrity Dog
Fashion Show’. Celebrities and their fashionably dressed lap dogs are visible in
entertainment media but they have also successfully marketed certain dog breeds
and luxurious dog fashions to ordinary people: while spending on other areas of
life has decreased, spending on pet dogs has steadily increased in the 2000s.1
This is evident in statistics. In the United States, for example, pet dog
consumerism has increased by over 70 % from 2004-2014; from 34 billion
dollars to 58 billion dollars (Bettany and Daly, 2008: 409; APPA National Pet
Owners Survey, 2013/2014: webpage). The same applies to Finland. Spending on
pet paraphernalia has increased more than spending on any other area of leisure
from 2006‒2012 (Nurmela, 2014). At the beginning of 2014, the Finnish journal
of economics, Talouselämä, reported that in the previous year, the biggest Finnish
pet shop chain Musti ja Mirri had doubled its profit and grown the popularity of
the company’s customer loyalty program by 20%. For this reason, the magazine
gave the company the title ‘gainer of the year’ (Talouselämä, 2014).
Researchers have analysed how pets fuel marketing and consumption and what
kind of role emotions play in these areas (e.g. Brockman et al., 2008: 397-405;
Holbrook, 2008: 546-552; Kennedy and McGarvey, 2008: 424-430; Hsee and
Kunreuthner, 2000; 141-159; Aylesworth et al., 1999: 385-391). Yet there is no
research on how commodities are used in negotiating the emotional relationship
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1 As David Redmalm (2014: 93-94) has pointed out, Tinkerbell’s – and other celebrity
lap dogs’ – fame increased the demand for small laps dogs, especially Chihuahuas.
This has resulted in a large amount of abandoned lap dogs, and even created a
diagnosis called ‘the Paris Hilton syndrome’. The term refers to people who take a
lap dog without properly understanding what acquiring a dog means. When the pet
turns out not to be only a cute little accessory, but a dog with a will of its own, it is
abandoned.

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between humans and pet dogs. This article contributes a new perspective to the
discussion on pet consumerism by focusing on the role of emotions. I examine
how pet dog commodities define and materialise the ideal emotional bond
between the human and the pet dog: how consumption is justified and
rationalised by appealing to emotions, how emotions are mobilised in pet
markets, and how value is ascribed to the human–pet dog bond through material
objects. As a tangible example of affective capitalism, pet dog fashions indicate
how the need to establish a relationship between a human and a dog is
transformed into material goods and services.
The wider theoretical framework of this article is posthumanism. I use it to
explain how pet dogs have been included in the history of humans and how
consumer culture is built on and how it capitalises on this inclusion. I find
posthumanist theory particularly useful for this task, because it helps to explicate
how pet consumerism and pet commodities materialise a change in humanity’s
status. I contend that pet commodities and services display how emotions not
only fuel capitalism, but how they also transform the pet, the human and the
market itself. An important frame of reference in this sense is emotional
capitalism. Eva Illouz (2007: 5) has used it to describe capitalism as a culture
where emotional and economic discourses and practices shape each other. This
is noticeable in the human‒pet discourse, for example, in the language of
emotional attachment and humanisation, and in the pet commodities
themselves.
The article is structured as follows: I first outline the posthumanist theoretical
framework. Second, I trace the cultural history of the pet dog as a ‘love machine’;
as a source and mediator of positive emotions. Third, I discuss how the
emotional bond between dogs and humans has been intertwined with capitalism
from the beginning and how it materialises in pet fashions in contemporary
culture. In doing so, I use detailed examples of marketing approaches by a
British (Love My Dog) and a Finnish (Musti ja Mirri) company to demonstrate
how emotions are utilised in the language of marketing and how they are
rationalised and transformed into commodities. In the final section, I discuss
how pet consumerism and pet fashions deconstruct the dichotomy between
humans and animals and how affective capitalism capitalises on this
deconstruction.
Framing pet dogs and humans: Posthumanism
Paris Hilton regularly states in interviews that she ‘spoils’ her pet dogs because
they are her ‘babies’. In her biography, Hilton claims that ‘Tink doesn’t even like

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other dogs – she acts just like a human!’ (Hilton, 2006: 166). Pet shops, on the
other hand, market dog fashions by appealing to the customer’s sentiments by
claiming to offer tools for ‘caring’, ‘loving’ and promoting the dog’s overall ‘well-
being’. The focus on positive feelings and the promotion of a warm affectionate
bond between the human and the pet dog constructs an ideal view of pet
ownership. It also opens up a viewpoint to the wider theoretical framework of
this article: posthumanist theory that re-conceptualises the relationship between
humans and non-human animals (e.g. Haraway, 2003; 2008; Derrida, 2008;
Wolfe, 2003; 2009) and acknowledges non-human animals as an integral part of
human history, experience, and, in the framework of this article, consumerism.
Posthumanism is an umbrella term for studies that re-configure the relationship
between humans and non-humans, humans and technology, and humans and
the environment (Hassan, 1977: 201-217). Posthumanist approaches aim to
challenge classical humanist anthropocentrism and its dichotomies – such as
human / animal and nature / culture – the uniqueness of ‘the human’ as the
crown of the creation, and the position of the human as an autonomous, rational
being in contrast to irrational, instinctual ‘animals’ (Wolfe, 2009). In this article,
posthumanism is understood as a set of questions and as a tool for dealing with
those questions, when ‘the human’ is not the only autonomous, rational being
who knows or consumes.
Of course, a discourse on pet dogs is not the same as a discourse on animals.
Animals and pets are conceptualised contradictorily, and they occupy different
social positions and conceptual categories. Some argue that pets are privileged
animals: that they are favoured, remain close to humans and occupy a
hierarchically higher status than other non-human animals (Thomas, 1983: 100-
120). Others see pets as degraded animals: while an ‘animal’ is conceptualised as
wild and self-sufficient, the ‘pet’ lacks these qualities (Fudge, 2008). A pet is
literally a tamed animal – it is by definition not an animal. A pet’s animality has
been removed through domestication and breeding (Fudge, 2008; Haraway
2003; 2008). Still, a pet it is not a human either. It is a grey area or a category in-
between humans and animals. A pet is an ambiguous category as it crosses and
challenges the categorical boundaries between ‘human’ and ‘animal’ (Leach,
1966: 45). But it is also ambiguous because it invites us to see the continuity of
these categories instead of their opposition.2 As I see it, the human and the
animal merge in the pet: the pet is a mediating category between the human and
the animal. The ambiguity of the pet materialises in pet commodities, and
concretely so in pet clothes. They are situated in the in-between space of the
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2 David Redmalm (2014, 93-109) underlines the ambiguousness of the Chihuahua and
defines it as ‘a holy anomaly’.

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human-animal continuum that brings together human and animals traits. This is
why I propose that pet fashions are an instance of posthumanist fashion. But how
are they linked to emotions and to emotional capitalism?
The making of the pet dog: Well-dressed love machines
One essential feature of a pet lies in its assumed and desired capacity of raising
strong (positive) emotions in humans. The ideal of the ‘unnecessary dog’, ‘toy
breed’, and ‘the lady’s lap dog’, i.e. a dog that does not have any other function
than to accompany and please the human, has a long cultural and emotional
history. Already in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of Modernity, the lap
dog was connected to positive affects and bodily sensuality. It was defined as the
essential ingredient for constructing the identity of the erotic and fashionable
noble woman (Thomas, 1983: 107-108).
In the 19th century, the habit of keeping lap dogs had trickled down from the
upper to the middle classes. This process also thoroughly sentimentalised the
dog. The pet dog was defined as an important symbol of ideal love and a love-
fulfilled family life. The pet dog was linked with a new sensibility, a modern
secular ethic of kindness to animals. Pet keeping was justified as a means to
teach compassion towards others and to children (Grier, 2006: 24; Smith, 2012:
24), which also granted the pet dog a position as a sentient being entitled to care
and devotion.
Caring for the pet dog and caring for children went hand in hand: both were
civilised through education. The newly established industries of child and pet
pedagogies produced educational books on how to raise children and puppies to
become decent adult beings by controlling their sexuality, behaviour, and
obedience. In other words, through education, children became decent middle-
class humans and dogs became human-like pets. The aim of pedagogy was to
remove the animal-like features in the child’s and in the pet’s behaviour, and to
replace them with signs of humanness. To be more precise, the aim was to
attribute signs of middle-class propriety to the child and the dog (Kete, 1994: 82).
The process also transformed the child and the pet dog into sources and
mediators of positive emotions of love, loyalty, and care within the family. By the
early 20th century, the child had become ‘economically useless and emotionally
priceless’ (Zelizer, 1985) and the family pet dog a ‘love machine’: an affective end
in itself (Kete, 1994: 46, 48-55).
The first scientific steps towards understanding the emotional relationship
between people and pets were taken by Charles Darwin in 1872 in The expression

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of the emotions in man and animal. While René Descartes had argued that
nonhuman animals are machines, devoid of mind and consciousness, and hence
lacking in sentience, Darwin proposed that emotional expressions serve an
important communicative function in the welfare of any species, including dogs.
More recently, scholars have recognised that companion animals such as pet
dogs share in-depth emotional relationships with humans (Sanders and Arluke,
1993), and that the ways in which humans and their canine companions interact
are very similar (e.g. Müller et al., 2014: 601-605).
The civilising process of the dog and the recognition of an emotional relationship
between humans and dogs have been thoroughly intertwined with capitalism
from the beginning. Already in the 1860s, dog biscuits were marketed to pet dog
owners, and fashionable outfits were sold in separate pet fashion stores in Paris.
Pet foods and clothing became important tools in ‘embourgeoising the beast’
(Kete 1994: 84). They also became important tools in constructing,
communicating, and negotiating the emotional bond between the pet and the
human.
Pet–human relationship: A total consumer experience
Pet consumption is a popularised and commercialised version of the findings
made by biologists and animal studies scholars about emotions and their
function. The pet market builds on and fortifies the idea that a certain amount of
commodities and services are required in order to be a caring pet owner. Relating
with pets has become a total consumer experience, providing such ordinary
amenities as veterinary care, and more advanced services such as doggy day care,
dog hotels with Skyping possibilities, spas, gyms, funeral services, fashionable
clothes, and specialised diets (e.g. Coote, 2012; Winter and Harris, 2013; Grimm,
2014). Many of these human-like services for dogs are beginning to be a norm.
Pet dogs have also become important targets of marketing. Pet marketing experts
constantly use the language of care in normalising and rationalising the use of
commodities and services. They construct the pet dog as an individual and as a
family member who has the right to consume and whose wellbeing is dependent
on commodities. This is strengthened by statistics: over 92 % of American pet
owners say that they see their pets as family members and as providers of love,
companionship, company, and affection (APPA National Pet Owners Survey,
2013/2014: webpage). The relationship and the love pets provide are nurtured
with commodities.

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Marketers who increasingly address consumers through pets have also
recognised these characteristics. Advertisements that associate a brand with dogs
are known to favourably influence consumers’ attitudes towards the brand
(Lancendorfer et al., 2008: 384-391). Currently, so-called neuromarketing and
sensory marketing increasingly use different kinds of brain-tracking tools in
determining why consumers prefer some advertisements and products over
others, and how they respond to marketing cognitively and affectively (e.g.
Georges et al., 2014; Hultén et al., 2009). Researchers have been able to indicate
that the human brain activates more when there is a dog in an advertisement
than when there is an inanimate doll in it, for example (Looser et al., 2013: 799-
805). The use of dogs in advertising thus follows ideas set forth by Vance Packard
(1977/1957) already in the late-1950s: advertisers use psychological methods to
tap into the unconscious desires of consumers in order to persuade them to buy
products.
Current marketing trends utilise the idea of the dog as a ‘love machine’
effectively. Although the mechanical quality of the pet as a ‘love machine’ may
invoke negative Cartesian interpretations about animals as machines, this was
not the intention when the term was launched at the turn of the 20th century.
The metaphor was connected to positive expectations about a better future that
the newly industrialised society represented. In this discourse, the mechanical
quality of the pet symbolised the ways in which new technological advancements,
humans, and nature worked together to produce a better future. In contemporary
marketing, the idea of creating a better future has shifted. The aim is now to find
increasingly effective ways to convince consumers that buying into the world of
dog commodities and services guarantees a better relationship with the dog.
Love fashion, love dogs! Or, on normalising pet dog consumerism
One area of consumerism where dogs have long been visible as marketers of
desirable lifestyles and commodities is fashion. Humanising pets and
constructing the emotional bond between dogs and humans has been part of
fashion industry marketing since the early days. Dog clothing was and still is
marketed to consumers as protection against the cold. Contemporary and
historical accounts of dog clothing suggest, however, that most outfits were
much more than protection (Kete, 1994: 84-85). Dogs have hardly ever worn
underwear, shirts, handkerchiefs, dressing gowns, silk jackets, or rubber boots
merely because they need protection. Rather, these and other unnecessary
garments have been part of the project of humanising the pet dog. Garments and
their marketing have produced the clothed dog as the middle-class family

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member, blurred the difference between dogs and humans, and strengthened the
emotional bond between the pet and humans.
Fashion media rationalised dog clothing as common sense and the glamorous
fashion magazine Vogue associated certain dog breeds with certain fashions and
luxurious life-styles. The magazine argued, for example, that a dog is an
important ingredient in communicating the dog owner’s fashion sense.3 In the
1920s, stylish terriers and greyhounds were agents in constructing the idea of the
modern, independent and fashionable ‘new woman’, but as the century
progressed, and ideas about desirable femininity changed, smaller dogs became
increasingly popular. In the 1950s fashion images, for example, the decorative
qualities of small lap dogs such as pugs, poodles, Pekinese and other Asian
breeds, represented the idea of feminine sensuousness, luxuriousness and
stylish living (Franklin, 1999: 88). Vogue also published several dog fashion
advertisements and articles over the course of the 20th century with titles such as
‘Love fashion, love her dog’ (Watt, 2009), equating love for the dog with love for
fashionable commodities.
Vogue also normalised the new inter-species family ideal by publishing
sentimental articles and photographs of contemporary fashionable celebrities
accompanying by their equally fashionable dogs. These stories regularly celebrate
the emotional bond and the closeness between the human and the dog, which is
visualised by dressing the human and the dog in matching outfits.
Simultaneously, these articles and the accompanied images also enhance the pet
owner’s star status and desirability. Contemporary celebrity pet dogs are thus
part of a longer historical continuum. The pet dog’s decorative qualities and
cuteness accentuate the celebrity’s feminine sensuousness, luxuriousness and
stylish living. The dog also enhances the celebrity’s desirability and supports a
reading of her image as soft and humane while also accentuating her
conspicuous consumption habits. Together the celebrity and the dog normalise
the practice of dressing one’s dog and make it into an emotional endeavour.
Dogs and celebrities are thus important marketers and ambassadors of style,
fashion, dog breeds and the assumedly unique emotional relationship between
humans and pet dogs.
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3 Dog breeding, which had become increasingly popular since the late-19th century,
was primarily determined by fashion rather than function (Ghirlanda et al., 2013).
The bred and fashionably dressed decorative pet dog showcased the idea of human’s
godlike capability to mould nature. Breeding dogs and fashioning them was
paralleled with creating new species that pleased the human.

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Objectification or humanisation?
All this makes a good case for seeing dog fashions as an extreme example of the
objectification of non-human animals for commercial purposes. Fancy clothes
and dog accessories hide a harsh reality where pet dogs are easily abandoned
because they fail to fulfil the idealised bond and present unwanted behaviour:
hyperactivity, unwanted chewing, aggressiveness, or separation anxiety (e.g.
Patronek et al., 1996: 572-581; Mondelli et al., 2004: 253-266).
Indeed, pet clothes may be seen as evidence of how pets fulfil human intentions,
needs and fantasies, and how pets are always constructed for (and by) the
human. It is easy to see the clothed pet dog as an extreme example of the ‘tamed
animal’. A fashioned pet dog is a creature that is not, by definition and in
appearance, an animal. It is therefore no wonder that Donna Haraway (2008: 52)
has claimed that the whole commodity culture targeting pet dogs has
transformed the dog into a valuable commodity that solely serves the purposes of
the capitalist market system. Haraway fears that providing pets with human-like
services and things may result in forgetting the ‘doggish needs’ of the pet dog. It
is true that a pet’s human-like status rests on a paradox. Making pets more
human-like by providing them with commodities and services familiar from the
human world objectifies them. This, in turn, may make the dog as easily
disposable as any other commodity – a matter which is supported by the gloomy
statistics of abandoned, sheltered and killed pets (e.g. Fudge, 2008: 107-109).
However, the posthumanist perspective on pet dog commodities provides a
thought provoking and perhaps a more positive viewpoint to dog consumerism.
As I see it, pet dog commodities such as fashionable clothes are central tools
through which humans communicate with, relate to, and negotiate with the pet.
They are tools that help humans understand the pet, care for it, and, ultimately,
recognise that pets and humans may not be as different as the Western humanist
thought has thus far suggested. Dog fashions challenge the traditional
hierarchical superiority of the human and highlight the nebulousness and
porosity of the categories ‘human’ and ‘animal’. Dog clothes accentuate the dog’s
petness, not its animality. By doing so they also construct it as a creature that
needs to be cared for. The pet clothes make the pet visible in a new way. It is no
longer just a silent creature that follows the human, but a being that does similar
things as the human: dresses up and consumes. Living with humans in a
consumerist culture transforms the pet dog like it has changed the human. The
act of dressing the dog and buying into the pet commodity culture also
transforms the relationship between the pet and the human. In materialist
culture, clothing the pet shows dedication: a desire to make the pet feel at home.

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Humanisation may be at the heart of dressing the dog, but it does not have to
mean anthropocentrism. Humanisation means recognising the pet and its needs
and acknowledging it as a full member of the household. The pet clothes
materialise the posthuman idea according to which humans and pet dogs are
inextricably entangled with each other. The human no longer is at the centre of
the action calling the shots. Pet clothes de-centralise the idea of what it means to
be human – and definitely, what it means to be a pet dog.
Posthumanist analysis of pet clothing accentuates the mutuality of the human–
dog relationship. A good point of reference is Donna Haraway’s (2008) idea of
humans and dogs as companion species. Companionship means friendship and all
the feelings that go with it. Companionship also means that humans and dogs
produce each other. Mutuality and companionship materialise in garments. Even
though their fabrics, colours, patterns, styles and functions follow largely those of
human clothes, the designs, cuts and fits follow the contours and body shape of
the dog. The human and the animal intersect in the garments. This poses
questions about the very structures of humanness, dogness and their shared
identities as parents, children, and families. (Figures 1‒2)
The garments are also love objects (Moran and O’Brien, 2014), shaped by the
feelings constructed between the dog and the human. Dog-things embed the
emotional potency of inter-species feelings. They are symbols and active
participants in mediating the human–pet dog relationship. In this sense, they are
parade examples of emotional capitalism: how the fashion industry mobilises the
ideal emotional relationship constructed between the human and the pet, and
gives it materialised and commodified form.
Figure 1. Dog clothing challenges the categorical boundaries of human–animal.
Fashionable winter clothing for dogs, Tokyo, Japan, 2014. Photograph: Annamari
Vänskä.

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Figure 2. The erected mannequin dolls and a Peanut-outfit underline the dog’s
humanness. Tokyo, Japan 2014. Photograph: Annamari Vänskä.
Figures 1‒2: While the styles, colours, and materials of dog fashions, often
modelled on human mannequin dolls, underline the ‘humanness’ of the clothes
(figure 1), the cuts, fits and designs of the clothes construct the garments as dog
clothes (figure 2). Photographs: Annamari Vänskä.
‘7 tips for a happy dog’ – Or, the emotional language of pet consumerism
Emotional capitalism does not only materialise in dog clothes. The entire pet
market is consumed by emotional and passionate language. It is the glue that
binds humans, pet dogs and commodities together through persuasion. As Paris
Hilton puts it, she indulges her doggies because she finds them sweet, loves them,
and because they deserve the best. This kind of reasoning is not uncommon to

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ordinary dog companies either. They also invite the consumer into the world of
dog fashions by using affective and emotional language.
One example thereof is an English dog fashion brand Love My Dog. The
affectionate relationship is already present in the name of the company and its
founding narrative. Love My Dog was established in 2003 by the designer Lilly
Shahravesh to cater for ‘people who want to give their dogs the very best’. The
kind of love the company talks about is entirely materialistic: on offer is
everything from dog coats and hand-knitted sweaters made of pure new wool to
‘dog beds and dog toys in original design in gorgeous fabrics…hand-cut and
pinned, individually stitched and hand-finished’(LoveMyDog, 2015: webpage).
The ‘very best’ thus refers to high-quality materials and to a production process,
in which every little detail from the selection of fabrics to design and the
individually hand-finished outcome has been thoroughly weighed. The message
of the company is that it conceptualises the dog as an individual, as a persona
with its own right who we, the humans, should cherish and respect. The personal
and the affectionate touch materialise in the well-designed and hand-finished dog
clothes. Individual garments and the presence of the loving human handiwork
become semiotic-material symbols of love, care and affection. They also become
the building blocks in constructing and strengthening the emotional bond that
ties the human and the pet dog seamlessly together.
To support its brand value as a caring company, Love My Dog has also published
a manual for dog owners: 7 top tips for a happy dog (Shahravesh, 2012). According
to it, one can recognise a ‘happy dog’ by looking at its ‘body language’. A happy
dog stands up straight with bright and shining eyes, and looks the human in the
eye. A happy dog wags or sways its tail with ‘gently parted lips – as if it were
smiling’. The manual also cleverly intertwines happiness with its products that
are defined as tools that keep the dog happy and content. These ‘top tips’ include,
for example, giving the dog a specific toy if it suffers from separation anxiety;
sprinkling ‘a few drops of lavender oil onto a handkerchief and popping it in a
cloth bag near his bed’; giving the dog a ‘gentle massage’ on returning home;
creating a ‘private territory and sanctuary’ where the dog can relax; teaching the
dog who is the pack-leader (‘a happy dog knows its place’) and dressing it ‘for
success’, i.e. in weather-appropriate coats and ‘wool or cashmere sweaters’ that
the company provides (Shahravesh, 2012: 1-9).
The peculiarity of the advice is that it sounds strikingly similar to the advice
women’s magazines conventionally provide on ‘how to please your man’. Only
here the pampered and pleased individual is the dog. In this scenario, the human
becomes the servant of the dog. It is the human’s duty to make the dog feel calm
and relaxed, to make it a happy dog. This kind of dedication to making the pet

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relaxed is in many ways shocking, but it is also a logical outcome when humans
and companion animals are not seen as opposites but as creatures whose needs
and wants overlap. It is also the outcome of the insistence on seeing humanity in
companion animals, which contains the idea of equality between species.
The idea of equality is of course a problem when thinking about fashionable
commodities that are not within every pet owner’s reach. Love My Dog is not an
exception – it is a high-end retailer of dog commodities. This is reflected in the
price: A dog carrier bag, for example costs £ 220. However, the marketing
language of Love My Dog is similar to the language that mainstream and more
affordable companies use. The Finnish pet store chain Musti ja Mirri, for
example, also markets its products by appealing to emotions and rationalising
the wellbeing of dogs. Musti ja Mirri was established in 1988, and in the mid-
1990s, it began expanding. In the new millennium, it franchised its business
operations and it is now the largest chain of pet shops in Scandinavia. The
company specialises in pet foods and accessories for dogs and other pets – like
Love My Dog, it does not sell pets. Musti ja Mirri has many ‘how-to’ videos for pet
owners on YouTube. The videos market food and clothing but they masquerade
as educational videos where a ‘dog expert’ explains why the goods discussed are
necessary for the dog. Some of the videos provide advice on what to feed the dog,
others explain how and why to dress it. The videos centre on care and rationalise
it by intertwining it with commodities.
For example, dressing a Boxer in a winter coat is justified by referring to the
dog’s short fur. In the video, the dog expert Annika explains:
It is a misconception that a large dog would not freeze. Especially, if we talk about
shorthaired dogs that are not bred for Finnish weather conditions…It is very
important that we, humans, take care of our dog that cannot tell us whether they
are freezing or not. A coat is mandatory under -5° Celsius for any dog…and when
the weather is -15° Celsius or lower, the paws should definitely be protected with,
for example, rubber boots like these. (Musti ja Mirri, 2014: webpage)
Both Love My Dog and Musti ja Mirri exemplify how taking care of the pet dog is
commercialised, and how the inter-species companionship is constructed as
affectionate and caring through commodities. The examples also indicate how
the emotional tie is measured in cash, how the pet market rests on appealing to
the pet owner’s affectionate relationship, and how the market is instrumental in
commodifying it. The pet commodities and the various marketing strategies tap
into emotions and create, circulate and imprint an ideal narrative with a
message: the more we spend money on our dogs, the more we love and care for
them. This kind of ‘dog-talk’ reveals something essential about the logic of pet

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consumption specifically, but perhaps also about consumption more generally.
Consuming is emoting.
Pet fashions as emotional consumption
Isn’t it a fabulous feeling to see your dog looking happy and full of life? As dog
owners ourselves here at LoveMyDog we thought it would be great to share some
of the special ways that we make our dogs feel contented…Your dog is part of the
family, and a happy dog makes for a happy home. Over the years…we’ve
discovered some easy ways to help your dog feel contented and loved. (Shahravesh,
2012: 1)
As dog owners know, a happy dog makes a happy home, and, as the quote above
indicates, the pet dog consumer culture is happy to wrap love, commodities, and
a happy home together.
The idea of meshing emotions with commodities is by no means new, but pet
fashion and its marketing language explicate how consumption builds on,
creates, and materialises emotions. Pet consumerism is largely about happy
emotions and their materialisation. My thought here follows ideas about
emotions and capitalism put forth by Eva Illouz (1997, 2007), who calls the
contemporary phase of capitalism as emotional capitalism. Illouz points out that
what Marx (1990/1867) and his followers have defined as the a-emotionality of
capitalism actually refers to negative emotions: anxiety, indifference, and guilt
(2007: 2). She emphasises that emotions are not outside the capitalist logic as
has been assumed. On the contrary, emotions are deeply ingrained in the
language of economics. The making of capitalism went hand in hand with the
making of an intensely specialised emotional culture and emotions became an
indispensable part of economic conduct.
This is very tangible in the pet fashion industry, as I have shown above. It builds
on the assumed and real emotions of pet owners, transforms them into
commodities and services, and suggests that emoting is dependent on both. The
whole industry builds on and capitalises on ideas about romantic love and the
family – themes that Illouz positions at the core of consumerism. In her book
Consuming the romantic utopia (1997), she argues that commodities have played a
central role in the constitution of ‘romantic love’ between humans. Illouz
demonstrates how, since the early-20th century, industries began promoting
commodity-centred definitions of romance in furthering their own economic
interests.
The key to the rise of romantic love lies in two major changes: in the social
change from rigid class-based societies into more flexible, modern, individualist,

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and capitalist societies in the aftermath of the French revolution, and in the
decrease of human mortality (Illouz, 1997: 25-26). Some researchers (Hunt and
Jacob, 2001) have even argued that the French revolution stirred an affective
revolution, releasing ‘a kind of seismic affective energy’, which changed the
political order of Europe and the ways in which humans conversed with each
other. The demise of the feudal society facilitated the rise of ‘affective
individualism’: a less authoritarian and a more companionate relationship
between men, women, and children (Hunt and Jacob, 2001: 496-497).
Developments in medicine made human life less precarious, and, in effect,
stabilised emotional bonds between people and family members.
The pet consumer culture clearly follows this pattern. It taps into the emergence
of breeding as a science and a tool for configuring the dog’s bodily shape and
character to fit human needs. The pet consumer culture was also integral to the
formation of the modern middle-class nuclear family in the 19th century. In the
20th century, it also played an important role in the demise of the traditional
(monogamous, heterosexual) family structure and in the reduced number of
childbirths in the West. In fact, some argued in the 1960s that pets substituted
‘real’ i.e. human relationships and affected a decline in married life and the
(human) family (Serpell, 1986). Interestingly, the critique coincided with great
social upheavals and the revolution of social norms: second-wave feminism, gay
liberation movement, sexual liberation, the pill, drug and popular culture. They
changed the pet dog’s function. It was no longer only linked to the middle-class
nuclear family, but it was also seen as a symbol of new social relationships
outside the traditional heterosexual family unit. It was also suggested that the pet
dog resulted from the loss of communal life, anonymisation in the urban
environment, from changed relationships between humans, and from increasing
insecurity. In a changing social environment, pets are seen to provide comfort
and to commit to long-term relationships with humans. Their love is defined as
permanent and as unconditional, unlike the commitment and love of humans
(Franklin, 1999: 84-85)4. In many cases, the lap dog is the new baby (Vänskä,
2014: 263-272): the change in the family structure has also changed the ways in
which humans communicate with other species and who they see as being be
part of their immediate family.
4 Donna Haraway (2003: 33-35) disagrees. She argues that the common understanding
of a dog’s capacity for ‘unconditional love’ is a misconception that is abusive to both
dogs and humans since both have a vast range of ways of relating to each other. She
points out that the relationship involves aims to inhabit an inter-subjective world and
to meet the other. Sometimes this relationship may earn the name of love. Further,
Haraway (2003: 38) argues that dog’s life as a pet is a demanding duty. The human
may abandon the dog if it fails to deliver the fantasy of ‘unconditional love’.

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In capitalism, these ideas of the babyfied dog or the posthuman baby receive
imaginary materialisations: doggie prams and dog diapers (Figures 3‒4). The dog
also affects larger purchases. In 2014, one of the main attractions of the annual
Finnish housing fair was ‘HauHaus’, a house where the floor design, material
choices and garden design were dictated by the dog’s needs (HauHaus, 2014:
webpage; Paljakka, 2014). HauHaus is a concrete example of how acknowledging
the dog as a full member of the household leads to the transformation of the
home to suit the pet dog.
The pet dog challenges conventional humanist assumptions about families,
parenting, and childhood. It also redefines the understanding of the consumer.
The human is no longer the only consumer in the pet–human relationship, even
though she or he may make the monetary transaction. The pet dog and the
human are constructed as a unit that co-consumes and that has mutual
consumer experiences. The human consumes in order to take the pet dog and its
needs into account and the pet dog experiences, for good or for worse, the
pleasures and pains of the commodities and services purchased for it.
Pet consumerism is also part of a new kind of consumer ethic described by Colin
Campbell (1987: 8, 25). He argues that the ideology of Romanticism in the 19th
century facilitated the emergence of the new, highly emotional, modern middle-
class consumer. This new type of a consumer was not solely driven by reason, or
by the so-called protestant ethic or asceticism. Romantic consumerism was – and
it still is, perhaps more now than ever before – a hedonistic activity, legitimated
by the search for pleasure and the need to experience imaginary gratification in
material form (Campbell, 1987: 99-201). This is clearly an important underlying
ideology and a driving force in pet consumerism as well.
Figure 3. A doggie sofa for Christmas? Tokyo, Japan 2014. Photograph: Annamari
Vänskä.

Annamari Vänskä ‘Cause I wuv you!’
article | 91
Figure 4. In a dog beauty salon. After trimming which takes 3–4 hours, a portrait of the
new look is taken. Tokyo, Japan 2014. Photograph: Annamari Vänskä.
To summarise: if the emergence of consumer culture promoted romance and sex
that made the (heterosexual) domestic family in the 19th century, the
contemporary pet dog consumer culture deconstructs the family and its
anthropocentrism. It also challenges the idea of emotion as a human-centred
concept and promotes inter-species love by widening and altering the modern
concepts of ‘family’, ‘parenting’, the ‘child’ and the ‘home’. Pet dog fashions
construct dogs as co-consuming love machines and as eternal children who never
grow out of their original innocence. Pet dogs function as the promise that the
human – the adult in the pet dog relationship – can reach out to this nostalgic,
ever-lost original state of natural being, which is common to all inhabitants of
this planet. Pet consumerism highlights the nature-culture continuum and
capitalises on it. It also helps to shift the focus to thinking about the post-
naturalistic order of the world and inter-species relations. In this world, pet dog
fashions are not only posthuman commodities; they are also post-romantic
commodities that materialise the promise of fulfilling and permanent inter-
species love. This makes dog clothing ‘positional goods’, appreciated precisely for
their emotional value (Frank and Cook, 1995). It also makes pet keeping
essentially an emotional culture.
Pet consumerism and affective capitalism
But how do pet dog commodities and the marketing language connect to
affective capitalism? First, by explaining how emotions are distributed between
humans and dogs through material objects and second, by drawing attention to
the ways in which the emotional attachment between humans and pet dogs is
constructed in marketing speak. Pet commodity culture indicates that emotions

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do not reside in commodities, pets or humans, and that emotions are merely
expressed. Feelings are produced as material effects, as commodities. As Sarah
Ahmed (2004: 120-121) writes, ‘feelings appear in objects, or indeed as objects’.
They are also constituted in and through language, which explains the necessity
of these objects for pet owners. Emotions do things. They are powerful
performative tools. Pet commodities and the language that defines them are
materialised instances of emotions and include the promise of a future happy
life.
The fashionable value-added pet dog is central to the history and presence of
emotional capitalism. Pet dog commodities are an instance of emotional
capitalism in that they transform the emotional and the intimate relationship
between the pet dog and the human into an object that can be evaluated,
quantified, and measured in economic terms. Following Illouz (2007), pet dog
commodities and their marketing language open up a space for analysing the
deeply emotional nature of pet consumerism and how feelings are mobilised in
emotional capitalism. The human-pet dyad is defined simultaneously as
emotional and economic, which means that they define and shape each other.
This dual process exemplifies emotional capitalism.
The commodified emotions and dog fashions explain how pets and humans are
linked together by capitalism. They undo the categories of human and dog and
show, very concretely, how dogs and humans form a continuum and are, thus,
not opposites. They also show that humans and dogs share emotions, and
suggest that emotionality is not limited to the human. Pet commodity marketers
capitalise on the posthumanist idea that humans and dogs are inseparable. Pets
and humans are linked in many ways, and under the rules of contemporary
global capitalism, they are glued together and transformed into co-consumers by
appealing to emotions. Emotions are the driving force of capitalism, but they are
also tools that verbalise, rationalise, commodify, and commercialise the
intermediate space between humans and pet dogs.
The pet dog commodity culture also draws attention to how fashion deconstructs
and reassembles the categories of the human and the pet. Pet clothes are but the
latest consumerist example indicating how the human has always co-evolved, co-
existed, and collaborated with non-human animals, especially with dogs. They are
also tangible reminders of how the human is characterised precisely by this
indistinction from the dog (see also Haraway 2003). If pet dogs can open up a
space for analysing and undoing the anthropocentric order of humanism, then
the co-consuming pet dog opens up a space for analysing and undoing the
anthropocentric order of capitalism. It shows their similarity: how both with their
emotional bonds are cleverly produced in the well-oiled machinery of the

Annamari Vänskä ‘Cause I wuv you!’
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capitalist system. Their agency is also similarly limited to choosing from a
predetermined set of commodities and services that have already been ascribed
with value, meaning, and emotion.
Should we then conclude that emotional capitalism has finally deconstructed the
dichotomy between human and non-human animals? Does the agency-
possessing and co-consuming pedigree pet represent a posthumanist happy
ending? Indeed, pet dog commodity culture prompts us to see dogs as creatures
that possess human qualities.5 Personification, which the fashionable pet clothes
so well materialise, is one way to overcome the hierarchy between humans and
pets. They transform the pet into a fully-fledged family member with an equal
right to consume and to lead a happy life. It remains to be seen whether the
continuous expansion of the pet market ultimately remodels the pet dog as the
new consumer citizen.
Of course, the image of a pet dog liberated by capitalism is an ironic fantasy –
one that the capitalist system forcefully promotes by appealing to emotions. The
truth is much messier; we are faced with new dichotomies and hierarchies that
demand critical attention. Nicole Shukin (2009) addresses questions about the
complex, historical entanglements of ‘animal’ and ‘capital’ and the current
anthropocentric order of capitalism with the phrase animal capital. According to
Shukin, Marxist and post-Marxist accounts of capitalism have largely ignored the
multiple ways in which non-human animals relate to capitalist biopower. Shukin
points out how modern capitalist societies are literally and symbolically built on
animals: on animals as usable flesh and materiality in the meat and fashion
industries, and on animals as cultural signs or representations in the marketing
of commodities.
The pet commodity business clearly capitalises on animals. But rather than using
pet dogs as usable flesh and materiality, it constructs the dog as a capitalist
animal. The pampered pedigree pooch embodies the triumph of capitalism: it
does not only embody the fantasy of nature as controllable and malleable by the
human hand, but also the fantasy of a liberated new consumer, a model
posthuman citizen who enjoys its postromantic relationships with humans. The
co-consuming pet dog thus also opens up a space for a critique of animal
hierarchies. The pet dog, which is conceptually not an animal, is superior to wild
and farm animals. The pet is a privileged animal, favoured due to its similarity to
humans. The pet’s removed animality is materialised in pet dog fashions and the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5 Personification of the dog is not only a recent development. David Grimm (2014:
179-227) charts the history of the pet dog’s personhood and argues that the first signs
of dog’s subjectivity are to be found in trials against animals in the Middle Ages
when it was common to take any (domestic) animal to court for its ‘bad deeds’.

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clothed pet resembles the human – much like the pigs in Georg Orwell’s novel
Animal farm (1972/1945). The fashioned pet dog summarises Orwell’s idea that
‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ and
encourages further research that gives tools for undoing the unjust dichotomies
between pets and other animals.
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the author
Annamari Vänskä PhD, works as Collegium Researcher at TIAS Turku Institut for
Advanced Studies. She is the Adjunct Professor of Fashion Studies at the University of
Turku and Adjunct Professor of Art History and Gender Studies at the University of
Helsinki. Vänskä has published widely on fashion and visual culture. Her monograph
Fashionable childhood: Children in fashion advertising is forthcoming through Bloomsbury
in fall 2016.
Email: annamari.vanska@utu.fi