Hello Kitty is turning 40 this year, but apparently most fans do not know everything about her, including the fact that she is not a cat.
Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii who is also serving as curator for the upcoming Hello Kitty retrospective in Los Angeles at the Japanese American National Museum in October told the Los Angeles Times that Hello Kitty is not a cat.
Yano, who has spent years studying the Hello Kitty phenomenon, admitted that she was corrected by the character's creators at Sanrio when she described her as a cat in the script she made for the forthcoming exhibit.
"I was corrected - very firmly," she said. "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."
Hello Kitty and Charmmy Kitty look almost identical except for the fact that the latter has a lace-trimmed, pink bowtie below her ear. Charmmy Kitty indeed walks on all fours and is not wearing any clothing unlike Hello Kitty who is always dressed, LAist pointed out after doing some investigation.
In the video below, Charmmy Kitty can be seen behaving like a real cat - something that is arguably far from how Hello Kitty is being portrayed.
Hello Kitty is actually a third-grader named Kitty White, and according to Yano, she has a twin sister.
Hello Kitty is not Japanese, as most people think. "She lives outside of London," Yano revealed. "I could go on. A lot of people don't know the story and a lot don't care. But it's interesting. "
"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," she added.
Sanrio confirmed the news to TIME, and provided Hello Kitty's official bio below:
"As tall as five apples, and as heavy as three, Hello Kitty is a bright little girl with a heart of gold. She loves to bake cookies and play the piano, and dreams of one day becoming a pianist or maybe even a poet. She has a gift for music and English, and a soft spot for Mama's apple pie. Hello Kitty and her twin sister Mimmy are the best of friends."
