JAPAN-HELLOKITTY/
A 4-cm (1.6-inch) tall Hello Kitty figurine placed under a scrolling display in front of a window of the Hodoyoshi-3 satellite, is seen in what Sanrio Co. said is a still image from a video, made available to Reuters on August 14, 2014. Hello Kitty, Japan's ambassador of cute, is on a government-funded mission to space. The project to launch Sanrio Co Ltd's popular character, a white cat with a pink bow, into orbit is part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to promote Japan's high-tech industry and engineer economic growth. Picture taken August 7, 2014. Reuters

It has been recently revealed that famous cartoon character Hello Kitty, which has turned 40, is not a cat. Christine R. Yano, author of "Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek Across the Pacific," has revealed in an interview that Hello Kitty is a little girl.

"Hello Kitty is not a cat. 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," Yano said to LA Times.

The author also revealed some unknown facts about the cartoon character. He said that she belongs to Britain and is a Scorpion. George and Mary White are her parents and she even has a twin sister.

"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," Yano said about Hello Kitty.

For many till now, Hello Kitty was a beautiful looking cat, with whiskers. Yano's book is expected to change that and kill many perceptions about the character. The books also tells that Hello Kitty's first name is Kitty and she sits and dresses up like a girl. Reportedly, Kitty could be given a range of expressions and range of styling. She could be given a guitar or any other prop due to her expressionless face. Hello Kitty does not have a mouth and that is her unique selling proposition (USP) and a part of marketing strategy, according to reports.