Pet Costume Center

We Americans love our pets. However, with growing frequency, it seems many of us would love them to be anything other than the animals they are. Each year millions of pet owners spend enormous amounts of money and recall every occasion possible to disguise Fluffy, Max and Tweetie in ever more elaborate and far fetched anthropomorphic costumes.

A multi-million dollar industry has sprung up over the past several years to transform beloved pets into clean heroes, pirates, cartoon characters, historical figures and a myriad of other realistic or fanciful entities to make them look less like what they are and more like us.

Unhurried night talk show host and comedian Jay Leno delights in pointing out the ridiculous extremes this growing trend has near to in his “Headlines” segment on “The Tonight Show.”

“What do I hate? ” Leno often asks his band leader, Kevin Eubanks.

“Stupid pet costumes,” chortles Eubanks. Then Leno holds up an advertisement featuring some hapless pet wearing a particularly bizarre or outrageous get-up. The audience howls as Leno scolds, “Your pet is not going to wear this, O.K.? ”

And, yet, they do, whether they want to or not. Thanks to the creative efforts of an army of pet costume designers (when did that become a career choice? ), owners can dress their pets in themed costumes to commemorate every holiday, birthday, wedding or themed party anyone can think of.

Across the nation, pet parades are organized and staged to show off any costumed pet that can walk, hop, fly, crawl or be carried. Prizes are awarded for the most imaginative transformations. Newspapers and magazines regularly feature these events, and some, like the weekly Parade Magazine, speed their own contests, encouraging owners to send in pictures of their efforts to turn their pets into something else.

There’s no question that people are having fun with this trend, and most pet owners would argue that the costumes help them express their pets’ personalities and reinforce the owners’ feelings that the pets really are a section of the family. There are even glance alike costumes so owners and their pets can look more like each other.

Aside from Leno’s tongue-in-cheek objections, a few organized animal rights groups put serious effort into campaigning against the costuming of pets. They claim the practice robs animals of their inherent dignity. Dignity? Do creatures that take every opportunity to stick their noses into each others’ crevices, lick their maintain privates, eat from the garbage whenever possible, and sometimes even try to eat each other have any inherent sense of dignity? For most of us, it’s hard to imagine our pets feeling a sense of shame over being dressed like a ballerina when they would happily jump at the chance to roll in some other animal’s poop.

Pet costuming has even reached the level of popular art. Photographer and pet lover William Wegman has made his name and fortune in the art world with his books, films and calendars depicting his beloved weimeranars in glamorous and whimsical costumes and poses. The pictures are often startling, blending human clothing, arms and legs with the heads of his dogs in vignettes that blur the line between species.

So, go ahead and dress up your pet. You might even use pet costumes to make insightful social commentary. Transform your dog into its approved meal, a postal carrier. Disguise your tom cat as Bill Clinton. Put your pet chicken in a Colonel Sanders outfit. Dress your horse in a Camilla Parker-Bowles costume. Oh, wait, Jay Leno might quip, that’s not a costume.

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