Dogs, children, fascism, the future

According to the American Kennel Club's website, "the official term for dog shows is conformation — as in, the act of conforming or producing conformity"1. Already this reads like something that Jonathan Swift would write to satirize eugenics. "To conform" is the language of early-2010's young-adult dystopia, of a poster viewed through the They Live glasses. Nevertheless, the paragraph gets up, dusts itself off, attempts to justify its thesis: The official term for dog shows is conformation — as in, the act of conforming or producing conformity. While a dog show may look like a beauty pageant, it’s not. Dogs are not being compared to each other; they’re being measured by how closely they conform to the standard of their particular breed. Why? Because the closer a dog’s appearance is to the breed’s standard, the better that dog’s ability will be to produce puppies that meet the standard. It’s also the reason why mixed breeds and spayed or neutered purebreds are ineligible to compete in…