In his short story, ‘Investigations of a Dog’, Kafka’s hero (a dog of unspecified breed) conducts a philosophical investigation into food and eating. In the course of his research he reflects on his place among his fellows, raising questions such as ‘What kind of attempts do they make to manage to go on living in spite of everything?’. In this post I will conduct my own investigation into this question, focusing not on food and eating but on models and dogs. Yes, my philosophical research has led me to wonder just why fashion models have such a particular affinity with dogs. Indeed, check out the Instagram of just about any model and chances are you’ll quickly find her snuggling up next to her dog—in bed, on her couch, in her car. So, what is it, then, with models and dogs? What role do dogs play in models’ attempts ‘to go on living in spite of everything’?

First, credit where credit is due: If I have chosen to put an image of Daria Strokous at the head of this post, it is because she, in speaking of Hank, has given me its subtitle: ‘Only Love, No Bullshit’. Daria—whose intelligence matches her beauty, whose humour matches her know-how—has distance (an enabler of intelligence and humour), and that might explain why she knows not only how to be looked at, but also how to look. One has only to peruse her photographs—the ones she makes, as photographer—to see the excellence of her eye. And that is where I shall begin my investigation: with the eye, with looking and being looked at.

John Berger continues: ‘Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The woman turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’ Time have changed, you assert? I grant you that, but only to an extent.

Simply because, in a variant of Kafka’s dog, she is searching for a way to be a woman, for ‘her place among her fellows’. Darian Leader explains: ‘There is no univocal concept of what it is to be a woman, there is no essence of womanhood. According to Lacan, a girl may become a woman, but there is no ready-made answer as to how to do this. In the psyche, there is no pre‑programmed representation of the woman. In the place of feminine identity, there is a gap. No answer is automatically available as to what a woman is. Hence the key question for a girl, ‘What is it to be a woman?’ Is it to behave like one’s mother or one’s mother’s friend? Is it to follow the current trend in fashion? Is it to have children?’

So you see, then, there is something particular to women both in being looked at and in looking. Models experience this more intensely than other women. After all, they earn a handsome living from being looked at. Those who keep their heads on straight balance being looked at by learning how to look (for) themselves: with distance. Hence the irony prevalent in many models’ self-statements.

Only love, no bullshit: The reason models tend to be so fond of dogs, then, now seems obvious: A dog’s love is an antidote to bullshit, and models are subjected to more bullshit than most women. In the context of modelling, ‘bullshit’ necessarily refers to the entanglements of the daring-glass (a trap to catch birds), the excesses of the desiring gaze. For models, every working day is a potential battle where self-belief and inner-direction confront the temptation to internalize outer ascription. Every victory of inner-direction is a victory over alienation, and thus an affirmation of self-belief.

To help her resist the snares of the daring-glass, a model needs something to keep her grounded. I suggest it’s not a coincidence, then, that dogs seem to be found much less often in the Instagrams of older models (who have started their own families) than with younger ones.

A dog’s love is direct—it isn’t filtered, as human love is, through the looking-glass of one’s past. Moreover, it is a pure love, unlike human love which, as anyone versed in psychoanalysis will know, is always and necessarily a mixture of love and hate. (Give a listen to Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate—poets always precede scientists in the getting of wisdom). And finally, a dog’s love, as all dog lovers affirm, is unconditional, whereas human love (except in the case of the parent-child relation) lacks that unconditionality.

It’s easy to see, then, that to the working model logging up miles and miles of travel, engaging in relations that are largely transactional (often entailing a shift in position on the totem pole of fashion) and immersed in the artifice that is essential to art, being able to count on the loyalty of her dog—and the sign in his or her eyes that says ‘no bullshit here’—is invaluable.

With her dog, then, a model can let down her guard (cf. John Berger’s analysis) and she no longer has to wonder what it means to be a woman (cf. Darian Leader’s interpretation). In a word, in the battle between inner-direction and outer ascription, her dog is on her side: he or she increases the model in her self-belief.

If, one can argue, these dog-human dynamics apply to everyone, not just models, there is one domain where the dog-model relation is unique: dogs are not subject to the terror of beauty (see below, Rilke Duino Elegies) nor, when they seat Beauty on their knee, do they find her bitter (see below, Rimbaud, A Season in Hell). To her dog, Daria would be just as beautiful sick-abed in her pajamas as she is flogging Dior at Versailles (though here the little mutt, sick-abed in his pajamas, is reversing roles) And that, to a model, must come as a relief. Woof woof!

Who, if I shouted, among the hierarchy of angels
would hear me? And supposing one of them
took me suddenly to his heart, I would perish
before his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure,
and we admire it so because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
And so I restrain myself and swallow the luring call
of dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we use then?
Not angels, not men, and the shrewd animals
notice that we’re not very much at home
in the world we’ve expounded. Maybe on the hill-slope
some tree or other remains for us, so that
we see it every day; yesterday’s street is left us,
and the gnarled fidelity of an old habit
that was comfortable with us and never wanted to leave.

Translated by C.F. MacIntyre

Long ago, if my memory serves, life was a feast where every heart was open, where every wine flowed.
One night, I sat Beauty on my knee. —And I found her bitter. —And I hurt her.
I took arms against justice.
I fled, entrusting my treasure to you, o witches, o misery, o hate!
I snuffed any hint of human hope from my consciousness. I made the muffled leap of a wild beast onto any hint of joy, to strangle it.
Dying, I called my executioners over so I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called plagues to suffocate me with sand, blood. Misfortune was my god. I lay in the mud. I withered in criminal air. And I even tricked madness more than once.
And spring left me with an idiot’s unbearable laughter.

Translated by Wyatt Mason

The wanderings of the dead my tracks depict, I devour the stars and regurgitate the dawn: Four of day and four of night, alternating in both warp and weft, around my soul my throw interweaves intuition and reason. Woof, woof!

I know the way through the forest, I can see in the dark: I am wrapped in the outward show of my inner being. Woof, woof!

I am the haunter of cross-roads and graveyards, I am the initiator who sustains desire: Earthy, intuitive, maternal, the colour of death on my throw grounds the colour of passage. Woof, woof!

I know you’re inside me
Like poison, like wine
Now there’s no sense in falling
Say you’ll be mine

Give me the world around you
Give me the time
Only a dream without you
Say you’ll be mine

I’ve got you inside me
In darkness entwined
I would be lost without you
Say you’ll be mine

Reflected in water
Imagined by fire
I will be waiting for you
Say you’ll be mine

Give me the world around you
Give me the time
Only a dream without you
Say you’ll be mine

Reflected in water
Imagined by fire
I will be waiting for you
Say you’ll be mine

Beware bête noire, beware bête noire…