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Hello Kitty turns 50 soon \u2014 but did you know she\u2019s not a cat?<\/p>\n
According to the Director of Retail Business Development at Sanrio, Hello Kitty\u2019s flagship company, \u201cHello Kitty is not a cat.<\/b> She has a mom and dad, and a twin sister Mimmy who\u2019s also her bestfriend. She enjoys baking cookies and making new friends!\u201d<\/p>\n Fact #1 is Hello Kitty Is NOT a cat, but a little girl originally from London! \ud83c\udf80 pic.twitter.com\/YF7LOvLjKC<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 18, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n She weighs three apples and she\u2019s five apples tall.<\/b> She has a boyfriend, Dear Daniel, and hundreds of other friends!<\/p>\n In a shocking new to many, Hello Kitty isn\u2019t even her real name!<\/b> Though her name has been ubiquitous for five decades, the Hello Kitty character remains something of a enigma. For example, did you know her full name is actually Kitty White?<\/b> And that she was born in London, England? \u201cShe\u2019s actually a little girl born and raised in the suburbs of London.\u201d<\/b>, says Sanrio\u2019s figurehead.<\/p>\n Yano, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii told the Los Angeles Times that\u00a0the Sanrio company \u201cvery firmly\u201d corrected her on the matter<\/b> just before the exhibit opened.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She\u2019s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat,\u201d said Yano. \u201cShe\u2019s 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\u2019s called Charmmy Kitty.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n\n
In 2015, Hello Kitty became the subject of a North American museum exhibition for the first time when a retrospective called \u201cHello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty,\u201d premiered at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibit made headlines and caused a few online meltdowns after its curator, Christine R. Yano, revealed that the Hello Kitty character was, in fact, a little girl and not a cat.<\/b><\/p>\n
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