Hello Kitty Is NOT A Cat! Internet Erupts At Reveal That Beloved Cartoon Character Little Girl… and British

"A bright little girl with a heart of gold." This is how the Japanese company that created Hello Kitty describes their world-renowned character.

A recent Los Angeles Times article effectively blew the minds of countless Hello Kitty devotees when it revealed that the famous feline was, in truth, not a cat at all.

And Twitter exploded.

When the LA Times published an interview with Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii who studied the phenomenon of Hello Kitty, a host of revelations about the red bow-wearing character came to light.

Yano, who penned the book "Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek Across the Pacific" and is curating an upcoming exhibit on the Japanese icon for Los Angeles's Japanese American National Museum, explained that she "was corrected" when she referred to the character as a feline during her research.

"That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show Hello Kitty is not a cat," said Yano. "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."

"She has a twin sister," adds the anthropologist. "She's a perpetual third-grader. She lives outside of London. I could go on. A lot of people don't know the story and a lot don't care. But it's interesting because 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."

Leagues of fans Hello Kitty followers took to Twitter to express their shock at the news.

Katy Perry even spoke out on the scandal:

And “Jeopardy” star Ken Jennings had a little fun with the announcement:

Regardless of Hello Kitty’s technical species, one truth remains. A lot of people love her.

Tags
hello kitty
Japanese
British
Katy Perry
ken jennings
Join the Discussion

Latest Photo Gallery

Real Time Analytics