Marcel Winatschek

Tottie Came In Like a Wrecking Ball

A pug named Tottie just won $25,000 at a costume contest by dressing as Miley Cyrus on the wrecking ball. Her owner McKenna built the whole apparatus around a naked Barbie doll and some foam padding. It is exactly as unhinged as it sounds and it is completely perfect.

The "Wrecking Ball" video had only been out a few weeks at this point and had already achieved that rare cultural saturation where the image—Miley, naked, swinging on a demolition ball, performing devastation—was simultaneously sincere and infinitely mockable. That’s the sweet spot almost nothing reaches. Most viral moments collapse into one or the other within days.

Dressing pets in costume is as old as the internet itself, but every few years something arrives that feels like a genuine high-water mark. Tottie on her wrecking ball might be it. The $25,000 is real money. Tottie has accomplished more than most of us.