• dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Not quite…

      In 2014 an anthropologist was told by Sanrio that Kitty White was not simply a cat (i.e. “depicted on all fours”), describing her as a little English girl called Kitty White, from outside London.[10] Following reports that interpreted this to mean she was human, a Sanrio PR representative said that the organization had “never said she was a human”, explaining anthropomorphization by comparing the character to Mickey Mouse: “No one would mistake the Disney character for a human–but at the same time he’s not quite a mouse. Just like Hello Kitty isn’t a human, she’s not quite a cat either.”[48] Sanrio stated further, “Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It’s going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat.”[11] Source

      Still a cat, as much as Mickey is still a mouse. They just have human traits mixed in.

      Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. Source