Why was everyone obsessed with Hello Kitty?

Including me

There was a time during the direct aftermath of the pandemic that everyone became obsessed with Hello Kitty and other Sanrio characters. Even though Sanrio is a whole world on itself, I will only be talking about Hello Kitty in this post.

I was one of these people, I must admit and it was quite the phase. Even though I still love Hello Kitty to this day, I just don’t feel like it’s absolutely necessary to buy everything in my sight that has her face on it. At the time I didn’t really think about it, but now I ask myself, why was that?

Was I trying to recover some part of lost childhood? Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a horrible childhood. Maybe I was just accepting a more feminine facet of myself that I hadn’t fully developed yet at the time, while being completely influenced to engage in over-consumption. Fortunately, I didn’t engage that much as most of my trinkets were found, thrifted or a gift. So yeah maybe I wasn’t that bad in that sense.

But the question remains the same. I will tell you, I’m not and I never was a colourful girl. I mostly wear black, crafted and thrifted stuff, I like horror and the obscure. Why would I want to engage with such a pink colourful character?

I read a thesis on Japan’s kawaii culture by Kimberlee Coombes at the time and it stuck with me ever since. Sanrio characters are famous for their obvious cuteness, but Hello Kitty in particular is very popular because of her lack of expression. Meaning that anyone can see themselves in this little cat girl. She has no mouth and expressionless eyes so, her feelings become your own. You can directly attribute your mood to her because she is a blank canvas. To quote Coombes on her thesis Consuming Hello Kitty: Cuteness in Japanese Society,

“Her lack of a mouth strips away her ability to interact with the viewer, making her an emotional sponge.”

You can literally imprint your emotions on her and imagine her having the same feelings as you, like a kitty cat mirror.

“As a mirror the object is perfect, precisely because it sends back not real images, but desired ones... What is more, you can look at an object without it looking back at you.”

Pink Globalization by Christine Yano

That is a very effective method for someone who feels lonely and in need of their emotions being validated, like me. Or like anyone else, really. I feel like it is unfortunately very common to feel lonely these days. And the thing people search for is validation in any shape or form, doing anything to have it.

When a cutesy pink Japanese toy like Hello Kitty emerges on the internet (once again) and becomes viral, it becomes the perfect coping tool for some girls and young women. Hello Kitty can be cute, baddie, a fashion icon. She can be you and you can be her. Barbie has nothing on this cat, I dare to say.

For me personally, this was not only about emotional support and validation. It was about the effort of reclaiming a part I lost during my childhood.

As a child, I wasn’t very engaged with media popular at the time and I wasn’t obsessed with anything in particular. I didn’t have a favourite toy or franchise or animated cartoon.

Except for Courage the Cowardly Dog whom I called O Cão Cor-de-rosa (the pink dog, in Portuguese), but that didn’t last very long, as my parents believed it was too much of a creepy cartoon for a child (oh boy if they even knew what would I become…poor them).

Now that I think of it, not engaging too much with media was quite strange, given that I’m young and I had TV and Internet most of my childhood. I was born in 2002 and I’m 23 at this exact moment that I’m writing. I was a child when Barbie, Monster High, Bratz, Hot Wheels, Polly Pocket, Doraemon, Pokémon, Little’s Pet Shop, Yu-Gi-Oh, Winx and anything you can think of (if you’re around my age) were at their absolute prime. Prior to soulless 3D redesigns no one asked for, but I digress. All my friends talked about cartoons, my brother watched a lot of TV and it seemed everyone had something favourite, while I was a bit (just a tiny bit) out of the loop, like I was distracted.

I wasn’t a Barbie girly, I wasn’t a Bratz girly and I wasn’t a Winx girly or even a Monster High girly. I was just a girl who was obsessed with animals and animal plushies. The closest I got to engaging with a franchise was playing Club Penguin or “collecting” some Little’s Pet Shop (I have like 5 and my parents bought a total of 0).

I didn’t have much toys. I constructed the world of my imagination through knock off Legos, random plushies and toys I made with my own hands like a talking sock or a corn cob doll with a dress I sewed by hand. From childhood, I crafted my own world building, my characters and my stories. I also didn’t watch much TV, I spent most of the time on my iconic childhood pc provided by the government playing SuperTux, drawing on Ms Paint and taking pictures and videos rambling about my day.

The one and only

So, Hello kitty was not very present during my childhood, or any other pink girly thing from the 2000s. It was there, but I didn’t pay much attention. And during 2022, this character became viral on TikTok and many young women implemented Hello Kitty on their day-to-day lives and I wasn’t exception. I felt longing and nostalgia, as well as a cuteness overload, a phenomenon many people go through.

I’m not on TikTok anymore, so I don’t know if it’s still a trend or if it was just a phase for some people and it has passed already. Personally, I still love Hello Kitty, but I was still discovering myself. Since 2022 I obviously changed and now I have a completely different perspective about all of this. I’m more selective about the things I buy and wear because I already know what I want. Not that I don’t want Hello Kitty, she’s an icon obviously. I just don’t feel the need to have everything Hello Kitty anymore. With that said, please enjoy my hello kitty collection!

This is not including all the stickers I have scattered around my belongings and other small trinkets.
I would love to read your thoughts and experiences regarding this topic if you have them and are willing to share them.

Cheers

mai