World’s Ugliest Dog contest: The beauty and the beast in a dog show

In Petaluma, California, they hold the World’s Ugliest Dog contest. The winner gets $1,500, a trophy and a trip to New York. What does this contest, now in its 27th year, tell us? The first part is easy: Americans continue to think they are the world, their marines are the best of the best, their ugly dogs, the ugliest of the world. If we set the superficial aside and go below the skin, which is how deep beauty is supposed to be, things get interesting.

Is being ugly endearing, rather than revolting? After all, every contestant who strutted his or her hideousness on the contest stage was brought there by an owner, mostly of the doting kind. Dogs with hunchbacks, tongues that stuck out all the time and at ridiculous angles, hair missing where it adds grace and luxuriant where it is gross, undulating rolls of hirsute flesh for an upper lip that still offered up a permanent sneer, assorted embodiments of unseemliness, all of them had found someone to love them and care for them.

Perhaps the clue to resolve this apparent paradox lies in another old saying: handsome is as handsome does. Whatever their appearance, these pooches remain quintessentially dog: all unconditional love in full animated display without respite. Our ability to roll beauty into the beast is a measure, perhaps, of our own need for love.