Hello Kitty: An Ever-Present Figure of Femininity

Hello Kitty, the anthropomorphic white cat with a red bow, was created by Japanese company Sanrio in 1974. Initially marketed to young girls, she soon gained popularity among women worldwide. Hello Kitty has since become a global phenomenon, with over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries. She represents friendship, happiness, youthfulness, and femininity. Her simplicity and adaptability allow people to project their own feelings onto her. Hello Kitty's popularity in the United States grew through celebrity endorsements and natural newsworthiness. Sanrio focuses on maintaining their fan base rather than generating new fans. While her popularity has declined in Japan, Hello Kitty remains instantly recognizable and continues to symbolize happiness and friendship. Many people are familiar with the anthropomorphic white cat with her iconic red bow. She lives in London, is the height of 5 apples and the weight of 3, and has a boyfriend named Dear Daniel. In 1974, Japanese company Sanrio created Hello Kitty. Her first product was a vinyl coin purse upon which she was depicted sitting next to a fish and a milk glass. The epitome of Japanese kawaii, or cute, culture, she was originally marketed to young girls, but her audience soon spread to women across the world. By the mid-80s, she had become an international phenomenon. Hello, I'm Ariana, I'm Emery, and I'm Viridiana. And this is how Hello Kitty spread from Japan to the United States, becoming the ever-present figure that she is today. Since 1974, Sanrio has created countless Hello Kitty branded products, including clothing items, stationery, menstrual products, computer equipment, and even condoms. There are Hello Kitty TV shows and comics, cafes and theme parks, even a maternity hospital in Taiwan. In 2014, The Guardian estimated there were over 50,000 Hello Kitty product lines, available in more than 130 countries. If you want Hello Kitty anything, you can get it. But how did this lovable cat-like character reach this level of international fame? And why? It all begins in Japan. Hello Kitty stands for many things in the minds of her fans. She stands for friendship, happiness, youthfulness, and, perhaps most expressly, femininity. These ideas, but especially her relation to girlhood, marked Kitty from the moment of her creation, as she emerged with the development of Japanese girl culture in the 1970s and 80s. The 70s and 80s were a time of increasing affluence for the Japanese public that coincided with a decreasing birth rate. This created a concentration of wealth, expanding the Japanese middle class and allowing children, particularly young girls, to join the market through their parents, grandparents, and other family members. These young girls developed a subculture, as they rejected a refined, elegant womanhood in favor of something more innocent and playful. Hello Kitty rode this cultural wave by marketing to girls with the likeness of something to match. A cute, mouthless cat, branded on stationery items, coin purses, and other such small items. Kawaii is an apt description of Hello Kitty, and the subculture her popularity rode on. The Japanese word kawaii most directly translates to cute, but has connotations of vulnerability, youth, and innocence. Hello Kitty's kawaii appeal allowed her audience to expand to include adult women. For many women, Hello Kitty represented girlhood, albeit a nostalgic, idealized version of it. By surrounding oneself with her, women could experience a temporary escape from the obligations of adult life. In this way, femininity is inherent to Hello Kitty, and it was through this feminine appeal that Sanrio was able to expand her audience beyond young girls. Hello Kitty's representation of femininity is not the only reason she has become so ubiquitous. Her simple design lacks individuality, especially as seen in her lack of mouth. When Hello Kitty designer Yuko Yamaguchi was asked why Kitty had no mouth, she responded, It's so that people can project their own feelings onto her face, because she has an expressionless face. Kitty looks happy when people are happy, she looks sad when they are sad. Hello Kitty is intended to reflect her audience. Anyone can project anything onto her, allowing them to essentially become Hello Kitty. Her simplicity, in turn, allows her to become anything. It's this flexibility that allows her to be a dumpling in Yokohama's Chinatown, the Statue of Liberty in New York's Times Square, and a pineapple in Hawaii. She is simultaneously always the same, yet always new. Girls and women are the primary consumers of the serious character. However, why is it that a white cat is considered an icon to those consumers? Perhaps for the same reason Mickey Mouse might be. Mickey Mouse is a simple mouse created in the United States but recognized throughout the world. Like Kitty, Mickey does not hold a singular meaning, rather, he is adaptable to many situations and cultures. Hello Kitty is flexible and it is her adaptability that allows consumers to project onto her. Her variations make her popular, but even through her variations, there is some consistency. She is feminine and cute, and she makes her friends happy regardless of her form. But does she make everyone happy? Hello Kitty is considered a character for the masses, but her girl powers might have a limit. Just as Hello Kitty holds a fanbase, the character is also a subject to criticism. Haters such as Angela Choi, a first-generation Chinese American author of the 2010 novel titled, Hello Kitty Must Die, wrote, I hate Hello Kitty. I hate her for not having a mouth or fangs like a proper kitty. She can eat, bite off a nipple or a finger, she has no eyebrows, so she can look angry. She is just clueless, fangless, voiceless, with a classic blank expression topped by a ribbon. No. Hello Kitty is not universally beloved. Even so, her popularity continues to grow. Hello Kitty crossed national borders in 1976. She made her way to the United States beginning in small Chinatown shops, gradually spreading to big box stores such as Walmart and Target. By the 1990s and 2000s, she has become an ever-present figure in the public consciousness, where she remains to this day. Though Japan's soft power campaigning through their promotion of national culture to the rest of the world, such as through other kawaii characters, anime, and their natural geography, coincides with the rising popularity of Hello Kitty, former marketing director of Sanrio Inc., Bill Hensley, denies it as responsible for Kitty's global success. Instead, Sanrio relied on Hello Kitty becoming newsworthy. As Hensley explained, We kind of build friends through celebrity outreach and then let someone else discover the story. We don't do a whole lot of marketing in the traditional Western sense of big ad budgets and all. This year, we're really not spending any ad dollars. We put our primary emphasis in getting the new product story out to magazines, newspapers across the country, television stations, leveraging that story because the news media is celebrity obsessed. So if we can say that, yes, Mariah Carey is a big Hello Kitty fan. And it's not just us saying it because she's not a paid spokesperson for us. But here's the proof. Because she's on MTV showing her Hello Kitty t-shirt. Because she's photographed in People and Us carrying her Hello Kitty boombox. We kind of spin that back and then that story feeds on itself. Sanrio avoids using aggressive advertising in favor of a more natural feeling manner of promotion. By having celebrities promote Hello Kitty and become naturally newsworthy, audiences receive a sense of authenticity that wouldn't be possible with overt corporate heavy handedness. Additionally, Sanrio seeks to be more in touch with their customer base. Rather than trying to generate more Hello Kitty fans, they focus on maintaining their fan base, which allows for Hello Kitty to stay in the public consciousness consistently. Before losing her spot on the character databank popularity chart in Japan in 2002, Hello Kitty was one of the highest grossing characters for a considerable amount of time. She came in third after Anpanman and Pikachu in a 2010 survey. Her marketing has always been measured to avoid a boom and bust period, according to the New York Times. But analysts argue that her popularity has waned for the very reasons she may have become so popular. Her lack of mouth and much of a discernible personality that made it so easy for fans to project onto her have hindered her appeal as an animated TV character, depriving Sanrio of additional revenue and marketing. Perhaps this is reflected further in her placement in Japan's character databank. In 2013, Hello Kitty was the third highest grossing character, but she dropped to the fifth in 2019 and 2020, and finally lost her place in the top five in 2021. Despite her apparent decline in recent years, in the U.S., Hello Kitty is instantly recognizable on clothing, stationery, and bags. People loved the adorable caricature, even pushing Sanrio itself to some amount of recognition. Hello Kitty's design is simple, and maybe that's what makes it so powerful. People use Hello Kitty as a way to form identity, both individually and as a part of a group of people who love her. Today, Hello Kitty is almost 50 years old. Even as she loses rank in some places, she is ever present in the public consciousness as a girlish icon of happiness and friendship. Her popularity has spread across several generations and across the globe. Regardless of how Hello Kitty, the character, the icon, and all she represents gain the household presence she has today, she clearly intends to stay. Thank you for watching!