Maternity Shoot: How This Chihuahua Embodied Beyoncé's Persona

There is a thing happening in our world, and the thing is dog maternity photoshoots, and I want to be clear that I think this is wonderful and also that I do not fully understand it. A dog cannot consent to a photoshoot. A dog cannot review the proofs later and say, no, my left side is better. A dog has exactly one facial expression for being pregnant, and it is the same expression the dog has for being hungry and for hearing a distant truck (these are also the only states a dog has). And yet the photos keep coming, and they are styled, and they are lit, and they have themes.

I am not making this up.

The genre seems to have started when somebody looked at the kind of glamorous, soft-focus maternity portrait that famous people post to announce a pregnancy, the ones with the flowing veils and the artful flowers and the lighting that costs roughly four thousand dollars an hour, and thought: my chihuahua could do that. And here is the part that gets me. The chihuahua absolutely could do that. She has been doing it her whole life. She wakes up looking more composed than I do at any point during a normal Tuesday (or, frankly, at my own wedding, which I have seen the photos of).

The Production Values Are, Frankly, Insulting To Me

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I have seen these photoshoots and the effort involved is ENORMOUS. People are sourcing sheer fabric. People are improvising tiny garments out of ribbon, because no store sells a maternity gown sized for an animal that weighs approximately three and a half pounds. People are arranging flowers in their backyards to match the ambiance of a celebrity garden, which means somewhere out there is a person who studied a famous person's flowers for the sole purpose of recreating them around a small dog (and honestly that person is having a better year than I am).

Meanwhile, the most recent photo of me was taken at the DMV, and in it I appear to be a man who has just learned his number will not be called today.

The dog, for the record, does not care about any of this. She is not aware she is recreating anything. She believes she is sitting in the yard, which she is, and that there is fabric on her, which there is, and that at some point this will end and there may be cheese (the cheese is load-bearing, we will get to the cheese). We have built an artistic homage on top of a creature whose primary goal is to leave.

Why The Chihuahua Is The Perfect Subject

I want to defend the choice of breed here, because the chihuahua is uniquely suited to this work. A chihuahua already carries herself like she is announcing something. A chihuahua already believes she is the most important being in any room, including rooms containing other people, larger dogs, and on one occasion a vacuum cleaner she fought to a draw (the vacuum started it). You do not have to coach drama into a chihuahua. You have to coach drama OUT of her, and you cannot, so you may as well point a camera at it.

She is also, and I say this with love, a profoundly tiny animal who has decided the universe revolves around her. This is exactly the energy of a glamorous announcement photo. The whole point of those photos is "look at me, something significant is occurring." She has been broadcasting that signal since the day she was born. We just finally gave her a veil. I am not making this up, there are dogs out there in veils, and they wear them better than people.

And here is a sincere thing, planted between the jokes because somebody has to do it. There is something genuinely sweet about loving a small animal so much that you want to make a big formal deal out of her about to have puppies. People reach for the grandest visual language they know, which apparently is "celebrity pregnancy announcement," and they apply it to a six-pound dog who has no idea, and the result is ridiculous because it is full of affection. That is not nothing. That is most of it, honestly.

Okay. Moment over.

The Logistics Nobody Talks About

What I keep coming back to is the cooperation required from the model. I have tried to take a single normal photo of my own chihuahua (whose name is technically Pumpkin but who responds only to the sound of a refrigerator door), and the success rate is roughly one usable frame for every forty attempts. She turns away. She walks toward the lens until she is a blurry nose. She lies down at the exact second I press the button, every time, as though she can hear the button, which I am convinced she can.

So when I see a maternity shoot where the dog is posed, draped, surrounded by flowers, and gazing serenely off-camera like she is contemplating motherhood and also her legacy, I do not see a photo. I see a negotiation. I see a human who got down on the ground and made encouraging noises for what I estimate was forty-five minutes. I see treats deployed as a salary. I see, just out of frame, a person holding a piece of cheese aloft like a tiny conductor (told you about the cheese), whispering "stay, stay, you look incredible, please stay."

And the dog stayed. That is the miracle. Not the lighting, not the veil, not the flowers. The fact that a chihuahua held a pose. I cannot get mine to hold still long enough to remove a single piece of ribbon, and I am the one who put it on her, for some reason, after looking at these photos, because I am weak and the internet got to me. I am not making this up either. The veil is in a drawer. I bought a veil.

She has the ribbon off now. She is sitting on the couch looking dignified and slightly betrayed, which, I will admit, would have photographed beautifully if I had been faster. The veil is still in the package. I am keeping it. You never know. Apparently, neither does the dog.