I love walking around Chinatown, browsing through tiny, sparkly, inexpensive Asian goods while some pop star sings a poignant love song. I suspect it takes me back to when I was a 6-year-old girl, when it was okay to live in a world of sparkly pink and purple toys.
After careful consideration, I believe Japanese icon Hello Kitty’s incredible popularity boils down to this nebulous power of pinkness and cuteness. Born in 1974, by the hand of designer Shimizu Yuko for Sanrio Co, the no-mouthed cat with the oversized head and blank-yet-cute facial expression was noted for having a positive effect on handbag sales. That effect was put to good use and thirty some years later, about 500 000 different Hello Kitty products are sold worldwide, making her one hell of a branding whore.
Sanrio Co. created parents, twin sisters, even a boyfriend for Hello Kitty. But no one really cared about them. It’s her and her alone girls want, on their purses, their notebooks, their toasters, their cameras, their crockpots, their fingernails. Although she was designed with little girls in mind, since the 90s, it’s female office workers who have become Kitira or “Kitty freaks.”
Most recently, she’s become a laptop and she’s gotten naughtier, showing off her underpants to adult consumers. But not everything goes for this dreamy kitty. Her image of innocence won’t be sullied by selling knives, cigarettes or ashtrays. Not officially, in any case. Sanrio invests about 1.5 billion yen (9 million euros) on measures against unauthorized copyrighting.
But one thing Sanrio Co can‘t do is stop you from dreaming. Unlike her anime or manga colleagues, the magic of Hello Kitty is that she has no storyline attached to her. As a blank-faced retail product, Hello Kitty gives her fans the possibility of projecting their own feelings and fantasies onto her. Here are a few:
Sadistic Hello Kitty outing Santa as your dad
One dad blogs furiously about the fact that Hello Kitty’s Christmas video has the feline discovering that all that talk about a big fat man mysteriously leaving gifts in your house overnight was just a North American scam. No more Sanrio products for this family! Bad, Hello Kitty, bad!
Silent victim Hello Kitty in dire need of feminist intervention
femilicious.com’s author worries what messages girls are picking up from “this quiet puss with no mouth.”. She invites women to “Take Back the Mouth” and help Hello Kitty become less quiet and passive. Meow!
Hello Kitty as Punisher of Cops
The truth is Hello Kitty needs no mouth to wield her pink power. This past summer, the Thai police force decided to use her to humiliate rule-breaking police officers. Cops caught committing misdemeanors such as littering, parking in prohibited areas or arriving late were forced to wear pink armbands featuring Hello Kitty sitting atop two hearts while working at the office. The chief officer was certain the humiliation of enforced pinkness would humble his officers into following the rules.
That’s saying something about the power of pinkness and cuteness. When a little animated mouthless cat can make cops shudder in shame and fear, need we question her supremacy any further?
This article was published Friday, November 9, 2007
