Let’s be real– every little girl went through a Hello Kitty phase. We collected the dolls and excitedly prepared for school with Hello Kitty backpacks and pencil boxes, fussing over how cute she is. What none of us knew is that she is not a cat.
The confusion first broke out in the development of the Hello Kitty exhibit in Los Angeles. Christine Yano, the woman in charge of the exhibit, reports that Sanrio, the company that developed Hello Kitty, looked over her plans and corrected her.
According to Yano, Sanrio insisted, “She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat.”
The evidence even lies in the official Sanrio website, www.sanrio.com, where one can find Hello Kitty’s biography. The description reads, “as tall as five apples, and as heavy as three, Hello Kitty is a bright little girl with a heart of gold.”
According to the interactive timeline on the website, Sanrio developed the story-line in the early 2000s, as Hello Kitty received a Persian cat, Charmmykitty, as a gift.
Khanh Nguyen, a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Boston, reacted passionately to the news.
“My brother told me. I may not be the biggest Hello Kitty fan, but I grew up with it as a child,” she said. “Apparently it’s a human. NO SHE’S NOT! Stop trying to ruin my life!”
Another UMass Boston student, Haoyi Ruan, shared Nguyen’s sentiments. “I found out on the news,” the senior said. “I’m surprised. As a child I thought she was a kitty and never knew she was a human. So weird.”
The weirdest thing about the situation is the fact that “kitty” is in her name. How is a character with whiskers, cat ears, and a name like Hello Kitty not a cat?
Her cutesy appearance was designed to symbolize a certain ideal of the 1970s.
“She is a perpetual third-grader. She lives outside of London,” Yano told the New York Post, “[It was a time] when the Japanese and Japanese women were into Britain. They loved the idea of Britain. It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, almost like a white picket fence.”
Brendan, a junior at UMass Boston, agreed. “It’s pretty distressing. It’s ruined my world, I would have to say. I’m going to look at every Hello Kitty fan differently now.”
