Anthropologist Christine R. Yano, who has studied the history of Sanrio’s Hello Kitty:
“I was corrected — very firmly,” Yano 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.”
And:
Hello Kitty may not be a cat but she has a surprisingly specific backstory: she is British, her real name is Kitty White (no relation to Breaking Bad’s Walter White), and she’s the daughter of parents George and Mary White. She has a twin sister, is stuck in time as a third grader (even though she turns 40 this year), and lives outside of London. She has a horoscope sign, too: she’s a Scorpio.
There’s more from the Los Angeles Times here.
Via my colleague @shibanimahtani, who summed up, in this tweet, what I’m sure has been a common reaction to the story:
Hello Kitty: not Japanese, not a cat. My life has been a lie http://t.co/LYuh16JKg1 (cc: @stegersaurus )
— Shibani Mahtani (@ShibaniMahtani) August 28, 2014