Prams, Tutus, and Perfect Faces: Reflections on modern identity (#364)

A dog in a pram is more than a dog in a pram.

It is a statement about the relationship between humans and animals, and perhaps more broadly, the relationship between humans and vulnerability.

Some dogs are elderly or disabled, and the pram is practical kindness.

But often, it is something else.

It is the projection of parental instincts onto an animal companion.

It is anthropomorphism at its tenderest extreme.

The dog becomes a child-substitute, and in a world where loneliness is endemic, prams become vessels carrying love, comfort, and reassurance of purpose.

Is this silly, or is this the best of us - our impulse to care for something beyond ourselves?

At its core, it reflects how modern life has changed the human-animal relationship.

Historically, dogs worked alongside us - herding, guarding, hunting. They had purpose and agency.

Today, many people, especially those living alone, seek emotional connection and unconditional love. Pets fulfill this need, but often the relationship becomes skewed: the dog is treated as a surrogate child rather than respected as a dog.

Why is this happening now?

• Urban isolation. In cities, loneliness is epidemic. People crave attachment, and pets become emotional lifelines.

  
  

• Changing family structures. More people live alone or without children; pets fill the role of dependent and companion.

  
  

• Consumer culture. Pet industries market prams, costumes, and accessories as part of being a “good pet parent,” blurring the line between what we want and what animals need.

  
  

• Anthropomorphism. We naturally project human qualities onto animals. Seeing a dog as a baby evokes nurturing instincts, which are deeply rooted in our biology and psychology.

But love is not about projection. It is about seeing and respecting the other as they are. A dog’s happiness is not in being confined to a pram, but in running, sniffing, rolling, and barking with delight.

In a world starved of authentic connection, animals become emotional anchors. The risk is that we love them for how they make us feel, rather than who they truly are.

Respecting an animal’s nature is the highest form of love.

Then there are the men in tutus at the fruit and vegetable shop. To some, it is shocking or comedic, to others, a courageous rejection of conformity. A tutu is a symbol of femininity, of childhood ballet lessons, of performance. A man wearing one in public merges irony with freedom.

Perhaps it is a statement about gender norms?

Perhaps it is simply living out humor and joy?

Philosophically, the tutu becomes armor against dullness.

It says: I refuse to be invisible.

I refuse to abide by rules that were written by someone else.

And what of the women who spend fortunes to look the same?

Smooth faces, identical eyebrows, engineered cheekbones, puffed lips.

This is not to belittle individual choices - for some, beauty rituals are pleasure or art. But it is also a mirror of social pressures, and the deep human need to belong.

Across history and culture, fashion and appearance have been used to signal tribe, status, and identity.

To diverge is to risk exclusion.

To conform is to buy safety, even at great expense.

Underneath lies a yearning: “Will you still accept me if I am different?”

The economy of beauty trades on this fear and builds an empire from it.

What unites these three disparate sights - prams for dogs, tutus at the market and uniformity of makeup - is a desire to be seen and to belong.

Whether we wheel our dog in a pram, wear a tutu to the market, or spend thousands of dollars to mirror a beauty ideal, each is a way of saying:

Here I am.

Please see me.

Please accept me.

We laugh, we judge, we puzzle, but each of these behaviors underlines two great human paradoxes:

Our simultaneous need to express individuality and to belong to the collective.

Our small absurdities reveal our greatest truths.

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