Kitty Not Kitty

The character Hello Kitty is not a kitty.

Hello, Kitty!*

Did I just blow your mind? According to the Washington Post, there are folks out there who don't know this – or who have heard it before and are in denial.

I learned the backstory about Hello Kitty in my prior job, when we were writing copy for Charmed Memories, our line of Pandora-like bracelets that featured Sanrio's iconic character. We were provided with an entire list of dos and don'ts, one of them being that Hello Kitty was to be referred to as a little girl, in spite of her catlike visage.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the backstory, the Kitty of Hello Kitty fame is a third-grader named Kitty White, a Londoner who likes making friends, eating cookies and traveling. (No mention of piña coladas, getting caught in the rain, etc.) She has parents (was one a cat? you may wonder), a twin sister called Mimmy and, to further confuse the issue, a pet feline called Charmmy Kitty. 

Don't be fooled by her youthful appearance, however, Hello Kitty was born in 1974, meaning she's got milestone birthday coming up (aka, "The Big 5-0"). How does she maintain her kittenish good looks?

While the folks at Sanrio, who came up with the concept, are adamant about her heritage, like any character, people are going to see it how they want, whatever the real story may be. 

Which is fine when you're talking about fictitious characters. Maybe not so much with real-life people.

But that's a subject for another day.

*Naturally, I couldn't use an actual photo of the subject image without permission, so here's a cute cat waving at you. And here's the attribution: GPS 56 from New Zealand, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons