http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ar ... tml#page=1
Hello Kitty is not a cat.
You read that right. When Yano was preparing her written texts for the exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, she says she described Hello Kitty as a cat. "I was corrected — very firmly," she says. "That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty."
I grew up with Hello Kitty everything and all I have to say is, MIND BLOWN.
Hello Kitty is British.
Kitty is actually named Kitty White and she has a full back story. She is a Scorpio. She loves apple pie. And she is the daughter of George and Mary White.
"She has a twin sister," adds Yano. "She's a perpetual third-grader. She lives outside of London. I could go on. A lot of people don't know the story and a lot don't care. But it's interesting because Hello Kitty emerged in the 1970s, 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. So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time."
Hello Kitty has special significance to Asian Americans.
Yes, she's worldwide. But Hello Kitty has had special resonance with Asians who grew up in the United States.
"When Hello Kitty arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1970s, it was a commodity mainly in Asian enclaves: Chinatowns, Japantowns, etc.," explains Yano. "In talking to Japanese Americans who grew up in the 1970s, they say, 'That figure means so much to us because she was ours.' It's something they saw as an identity marker. This is why the exhibition is being held at the Japanese American National Museum. It's about reconnecting her to this community. It gives the whole thing a certain poignancy and power."
But here comes Kotaku with a rebuttle:
http://kotaku.com/dont-be-silly-hello-k ... 1627820750
Earlier today, numerous websites reported that Hello Kitty is not a cat. That's not only an oversimplification, it's also not quite true. Hello Kitty is a feline—just an anthropomorphic one, Sanrio told Kotaku.
The whole Hello-Kitty-is-not-a-cat thing was set off by an L.A. Times article on an upcoming Hello Kitty at the Japanese American National Museum. According to Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, prepared a written text for the exhibit. According to Yano:
"I was corrected — very firmly. That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty. "
On[c]e again, to clarify, I asked the Sanrio spokesperson, "Then, it would be going too far to say that Hello Kitty was not a cat?" The spokesperson replied, "Yes, that would be going too far."
In short, you cannot remove the cat element from Hello Kitty. So, i t goes without saying that Hello Kitty is not a house cat like Tom from Tom and Jerry. Well, Mickey Mouse isn't a mouse like Jerry, either. He can drive a car. Over the years, he's had various jobs. He even has a pet—a dog named Pluto. But, Mickey Mouse is indeed a mouse, just like Hello Kitty is a cat.
