Animal-standpoint criticism is a new vein in literary criticism that questions ideologically-driven representations of animals, their aesthetic exploitation, their absence or silence in literary texts, and the obliviousness of earlier critics to these issues. This article briefly summarizes the main tenets of animal-standpoint criticism to date. Its main focus is then on the question of aesthetic exploitation of animal cruelty, in particular on the pervasive use in contemporary American fiction of the animal proxy, an animal figure whose suffering is largely for aesthetic effect.