October 2026: A Left Wing Rebellion of art directors: how Brünnhilde the cat went viral

In 1936, the trade journal Advertising & Selling published an article exploring how advertisers tried to attract customers and which testimonials they chose. Comparing humans to animals such as tropical fish, crocodiles and butterflies, the author George Bijur claimed that, of course, a pretty girl had until then been the way to go. But apparently, a shift was underway, driven by “a Left Wing Rebellion of art directors who bank on puppies or kittens, who can cite impressive case histories to prove the reign of the pretty girl is over, and that from now on, it’s going to be reigning cats and dogs” (Advertising & Selling 27, 1936: 37). One of his examples: photographs of a cat dressed in opera costumes, displayed in the window of the Snapshot store on New York’s West 40th Street.

Two of those photographs accompanied the article, showing the cat costumed as Minnie and Ramerrez from The Girl of the Golden West. But a third photograph, showing the same cat wearing a breastplate and a winged helmet and labeled “Brünnhilde”, had its big moment decades later. Kept at the Library of Congress, it was exhibited as a digital copy in “Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America’s Library” at the Annenberg Space for Photography in 2018. Because of its popularity, the library digitized a second photograph of Brünnhilde and posted both on Twitter in 2023 – a tweet that went viral.

Today, this cat costumed as Brünnhilde from Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen can be found all over the internet. There are tattoos, people have painted her and digitally colorized the photographs, and of course there is a range of reproductions on cards, pillows and mugs to be bought online. But her popularity also obscures the ideological baggage of the original: Wagner’s use of Old Norse mythology was tied to his vision of a shared Germanic past, his antisemitism and his national chauvinism. Through meme culture and the digital spread of the two photographs, that subtext is blurred and Brünnhilde becomes a cute, funny cat in a helmet, loosely tied to some opera character.

Far less known than Brünnhilde are the cat’s alter egos Minnie and Ramerrezas well as the background story of “Kitty Weidhaas”, as the 1936 article calls her. She was a stray cat, adopted by Adolph Edward Weidhaas (1891-1971), who worked for the Metropolitan Opera at the time. According to the article, she just showed up at his house one day and, after drinking a whole bowl of milk and sleeping for 24 hours (who could blame her), she dove into the bath that a family member had drawn for themselves. After an unsuccessful attempt to deliver her to “a local cat fancier of repute” (A&S 1936: 52), the cat is said to have jumped on Weidhaas’ shoulder, licking his cheek all the way back home. But besides enriching family life with voluntary baths and even waking Weidhaas when a lightning strike set the radio on fire, she was discovered to be a great photo model. Dressed up in custom-tailored outfits, she would sit still long enough to be photographed a dozen times – as long as it was just Weidhaas in the room, taking her pictures. Besides the three costumes mentioned already, there seem to have been many more. Public copyright records show entries for photographs by Weidhaas titled “Musetta”, “Carmen”, and “Cow Girl” in 1936.

In the end, it seems that Bijur’s imaginary Left Wing Rebellion of art directors only partly prevailed. Brünnhilde, a.k.a. Kitty Weidhaas, might be an internet star today and cat memes have been a longtime favorite online, but advertising still leans heavily on patriarchal beauty standards.

Thank you to Rick Prelinger of the Prelinger Library for research help and for providing scans of Advertising & Selling.