Happy 50th to Hello Kitty, the cat who’s actually a little girl

When I was in elementary and middle school, I couldn’t walk through the school hallway without spotting Hello Kitty.
She was on T-shirts, binders, pencil cases, folders, agendas, socks, backpacks and water bottles. She was on stickers, purses and shoes.
And, evidently, she was also in the hearts of every preteen girl across the globe.
We didn’t know much about Hello Kitty. We only knew that she was cute, always wore a red bow and her head was maybe too big for her body.
We vaguely knew she had friends — a frog, maybe? — and that she was a cat. That much was a given.
You, too, probably thought Hello Kitty is a cat. I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we both are very much mistaken.
In 2014, the Los Angeles Times interviewed Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii and author of “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific.”
Yano revealed that when she was researching her book, she was “very firmly” corrected by Sanrio, the company that produces Hello Kitty, when she said the character was a cat.
“Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl,” Yano told the LA Times. “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.”
Hello Kitty — a little girl who is maybe dressed up as a cat, but definitely just looks like a cat — turns 50 on Friday.
In honor of Hello Kitty’s 50th anniversary, here’s a look back at how she was created — and her legacy.
According to The Associated Press, Hello Kitty “didn’t start as a cartoon.” Yuko Shimizu, a young illustrator working at Sanrio, “drew her in 1974 as a decoration for stationery, tote bags, cups and other small accessories.”
Hello Kitty made her debut on coin purses across Japan in 1975 and was “an instant hit,” the article said.
As Hello Kitty became more popular across the globe, Sanrio expanded her “personal profile,” per AP.
According to the LA Times, Hello Kitty has “a full back story.”
As Yano told the publication, Hello Kitty’s real name is Kitty White. Kitty and her family — including her twin sister, Mimmy — live outside of London. The twins are in third grade. Apparently, Kitty loves apple pie.
Coincidentally, she is also “five apples tall,” according to the AP — a unit of measurement that creates more questions than answers. (She’s an 8-year-old girl that’s the size of a toddler? OK, sure.)
Hello Kitty was born on Nov. 1, the same day as Shimizu.
“The main theme of Hello Kitty is friendship,” Shimizu told the BBC earlier this year, per AP. “When I first created it, I made a family of which Kitty was a part.”
According to Yano, Hello Kitty’s anglophilic background reflects the Japanese cultural obsession with Britain at the time she was created.
“It’s interesting because Hello Kitty emerged in the 1970s, when the Japanese and Japanese women were into Britain,” Yano told the LA Times. “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 been a global hit for decades.
According to Business Standard, she’s fetched Sanrio a profit of over $84.5 billion. For reference, Pokemon and Mickey Mouse, the “highest-grossing media franchises in the world,” have generated $119 billion and $83 billion, respectively.
The embodiment of “kawaii” — which, according to The Associated Press, is “Japanese for ‘cute’ but also connotes a lovable or adorable essence” — Hello Kitty has inspired multiple music artists (including Lady Gaga and Avril Lavigne), been the subject of many animated TV shows since 1987 and, of course, graced the backpacks and binders of girls all over the world.
But Hello Kitty isn’t a mere cartoon. In 1983, she was named the United States’ UNICEF Children’s Ambassador, according to Business Standard. She was also “appointed as a Children’s Goodwill Ambassador by the Japan Committee for UNICEF” in 1994.
Even King Charles III has recognized Hello Kitty’s impact. During a speech in June, which celebrated “Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako’s visit to Buckingham Palace,” according to Tokyo Weekender, Charles gave Hello Kitty a shoutout on her 50th anniversary.
“Perhaps you would allow me to note one particular individual who turns fifty this year,” he said. “Raised in a London suburb with her twin sister, a self-made entrepreneur worth billions of dollars, and a UNICEF Children’s Ambassador on top of all that. So I can only wish a very happy birthday to … Hello Kitty!”
While Hello Kitty is somewhat of an enigma — how can she be an 8-year-old girl, who looks like a cat, who is also the size of a human baby? — according to Joyce S. Cheng, art historian and associate professor at the University of Oregon, all the uncertainty adds to her appeal.
“She is supposed to be Kitty White and English. But this is part of the enigma: Who is Hello Kitty? We can’t figure it out. We don’t even know if she is a cat,” Cheng told the AP. “There is an unresolved indeterminacy about her that is so amazing.”