‘Hello Kitty’ NOT A CAT!?! Wait, WHAAT?
The world is upside down as ‘Hello Kitty’ origin is under question…and no not her origin of being created as a cartoon her origin as a CAT! That’s right she’s NOT A CAT! The walking, talking, cutie pie as we know her clearly seems to be a feline but according to her creator Sanrio she is a little girl and a British one at that. In fact her name is actually Kitty White and she has a twin sister and a mother, father and even her own pet cat! The world stopping debate arose a few days ago when an the author of “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific” Christine R. Yano told the Los Angles Times that…
"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," Yano explained to the Times.
Since the controversy arose the Sanrio company has back peddled a bit and is now saying...
"Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It's going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a personification of a cat."
The specific word that the Sanrio spokesperson used to describe Hello Kitty was "gijinka" (擬人化), which means "anthropomorphization" or "personification."
Cat or Kitty…we may really never know….
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