For Hello Kitty fanatics, free tattoos at the icon’s 40th-anniversary celebration are just another benchmark in a lifetime of nostalgia, identity, and devotion
Diana Torres showed up at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles last Thursday morning at 3:45 A.M. It wasn’t colder than hoodie weather, even in the three hours of pre-dawn darkness. The Riverside, California, native and her sister-in-law didn’t have to bother with typical urban campout gear
like blankets or lawn chairs. The Geffen plaza was completely deserted when they arrived, so the pair had time to grab coffee and return to take the first place in line, but only just enough—minutes after they returned, a few more shrewd faithfuls showed up to queue behind them. Six hours later, in the bright, summer-hot sun, the line would stretch around the block, but only the first 50 or so would be rewarded. Their dedication would earn them with a free tattoo, designed by artists set up for the weekend at HK Ink, a small pop-up shop at the heart of the warehouse space where only the most hard-core fans visiting the inaugural Hello Kitty Convention would be inked on a first-come, first-served basis.
This ritual played out every morning of the four-day convention, hosted by Hello Kitty parent company Sanrio in celebration of their star feline’s 40th anniversary. Hello Kitty actually began as a marketing strategy in Japan in 1974, when the then-fledgling maker of small gifts realized it would be cheaper to create its own characters than license others’ intellectual property. Her first appearance was on a tiny coin purse. Today, she may represent the ultimate intersection between design and commerce. Even after a recent sales slump in Japan, Sanrio continues to rake in roughly $7 billion annually, mostly off Hello Kitty.
Plenty of other extreme fandoms exist, of course. Star Trek and superhero comics have driven some of their acolytes to the far edges of sanity, where logos emblazoned on one’s skin are lifelong social Bat Signals. We fall in love with characters in movies and books because we experience their epic heroism or empathize with their journeys. But Torres and the hundreds of others lining up weren’t there to be tatted with the insignia of epic heroes, or even anything with a discernible narrative. More than 25,000 fans of every age and background imaginable—including celebs such as Katy Perry, Ireland Baldwin, and Tyra Banks, and international fans from as far away as Australia and Peru—packed like sardines into the Geffen over the weekend to celebrate a cartoon cat without a mouth whose fans know her not from the silver screen, but from pencil boxes and notebooks. (Sanrio did later add a few TV shows, but they never did as well as the school-supply swag.) Name any household item, and you can bet there is a Hello Kitty version available for purchase today.
And, yes, that includes skin. Hello Kitty tattoos are more common than one might think. In fact, tattoos are perhaps the most fitting manifestation of Hello Kitty fandom of all: she’s a decoration first and foremost, and there’s nothing more personal to a lifelong fan than adorning one’s body—a blank canvas, just like the blank canvas of Hello Kitty’s personality that has allowed her empire to flourish—with the designs that helped shape one’s self image, interpersonal bonds, and even national identity. And hey, unlike a tiny stationery set, these tats are free.
HK Ink was actually the brainchild of convention curator Roger Gastman. Tattoos in Japan are nowhere near as accepted as they are here, but the HK Ink tattoo artists said the ever-business-savvy Sanrio green-lit the inclusion on the (well-founded) promise that it would be an attractive draw for American fans.
“My mom is a housekeeper, and when I was a kid, one of [her clients] would give me Hello Kitty gifts,” said Torres, wearing that familiar, slightly distracted expression of tattoo-getters that says, I am trying to be cool about the fact that are many tiny needles being dragged across my skin right now. Chicago-based artist Mario Desa was inking one of the most complex designs he created for the weekend, a light-blue calavera the size of a baked potato with bright, multicolored flowers on its cheeks and Hello Kitty’s face emblazoned like a Drake tattoo on its forehead, onto Torres’s left shoulder.
“It’s the first Hello Kitty convention, and I’m Mexican, and it’s Dia de los Muertos this weekend—it’s just a once-in-a-lifetime occasion,” she said.
Most of the fans who snagged an appointment this weekend, including Torres, weren’t tattoo virgins; many even had Sanrio ink already and were adding to a lifelong collection of cute, mouthless faces. One convention-goer I met couldn’t even bother with the tattoo shop. Norma Martinez, 31, has no room left on her back, which she’s been covering in a mural of Sanrio characters since age 17. (Her best friend, Lorena, has Kitty ink, too: the pair has each other’s names tattooed [“on their bodies,”] along with their favorite characters.)
“It seems like it’s almost a competition,” said Desa, who’s done a handful of paid Kitty tats in the past, in between sessions. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, L.A. artist Jeffery Page, set up in the next stall, said they’re especially popular here.) “Like, people have to prove that they’re real fans.”
Like any tattoo, each piece—whether a “HUG LIFE” Tupac parody or a classic Kitty head—came with a story of personal identity or relationship somehow tied to that little girl-cat has maintained such a viselike grip on fans’ imaginations into adulthood. The stories usually start with school supplies.
“When my older sister enlisted in the Army, she gave me all her Hello Kitty stuff,” said Martinez, now 31. “Everyone [at my school] was into Looney Tunes or Disney; nobody was into Hello Kitty then. I liked being the only one.”
Lesly Navarro, 29, of Alhambra, and her friend Kristin Maciel, 28, of Monterey Park, the latter of whom grimaced through her first-ever tattoo (a Kitty holding a tiny cake on her rib cage), met in college thanks to Maciel’s Keroppi folder. For Luisa Fonseca, 26, of Lake Balboa (a Hello Kitty in a rose on her ankle) it was Sanrio’s popular and cheap “grab bags,” which her mother bought for her and her siblings when the family was tight on money. A trip to the Sanrio store to buy the Japanese cat’s merchandise was 32-year-old Terry Ortega’s first memory of America when she emigrated from Mexico to re-unite with her mother, in Los Angeles, at age six.
On Day One, Thursday, Christine Yano, an anthropologist and Harvard professor gave a lecture to a room full of costumed fans about her recent book, Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific. Yano’s work explores the economic, political, and social dynamics of Japanese culture. She sees the mouthless, relatively story-less Hello Kitty as a sort of blank canvas, a “contact zone” where people of all different backgrounds, especially across national borders, can establish their own personal identities with merchandise while also bonding with family members, who buy Kitty items as gifts. (“Everyone knows what to get me for my birthday” was a common refrain at HK Ink this weekend.) They might also make new friends who might identify with a completely different vision of the canvas, like punk Hello Kitty or StormtrooperKitty. One tattoo contestant had a Bob Ross–themed Hello Kitty tattoo.
As one of the most prominent, universally inviting representations of Japan’s kawaii (or “cute”culture), which many academics and historians have noted is a not just a cultural craze but a diplomatic tool that wields influence worldwide (another Harvard professor, Joseph Nye, calls it “soft power”), Hello Kitty—once just a face used to sell coin purses—has become an official Japanese ambassador . . . even in space.
“I like that she doesn’t have a mouth,” said Carey Jones, a morning-show D.J. from San Luis Obispo, California, who got her third Kitty tattoo, a “Tupac Sha-Kitty” on her ankle, on Saturday. She bonded with her grandmother over Hello Kitty items on childhood trips to the mall. “I don’t need her to talk after-school special at me. I think she lasted because she’s simple.”
Diana Torres showed up at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles last Thursday morning at 3:45 A.M. It wasn’t colder than hoodie weather, even in the three hours of pre-dawn darkness. The Riverside, California, native and her sister-in-law didn’t have to bother with typical urban campout gear
like blankets or lawn chairs. The Geffen plaza was completely deserted when they arrived, so the pair had time to grab coffee and return to take the first place in line, but only just enough—minutes after they returned, a few more shrewd faithfuls showed up to queue behind them. Six hours later, in the bright, summer-hot sun, the line would stretch around the block, but only the first 50 or so would be rewarded. Their dedication would earn them with a free tattoo, designed by artists set up for the weekend at HK Ink, a small pop-up shop at the heart of the warehouse space where only the most hard-core fans visiting the inaugural Hello Kitty Convention would be inked on a first-come, first-served basis.
This ritual played out every morning of the four-day convention, hosted by Hello Kitty parent company Sanrio in celebration of their star feline’s 40th anniversary. Hello Kitty actually began as a marketing strategy in Japan in 1974, when the then-fledgling maker of small gifts realized it would be cheaper to create its own characters than license others’ intellectual property. Her first appearance was on a tiny coin purse. Today, she may represent the ultimate intersection between design and commerce. Even after a recent sales slump in Japan, Sanrio continues to rake in roughly $7 billion annually, mostly off Hello Kitty.
Plenty of other extreme fandoms exist, of course. Star Trek and superhero comics have driven some of their acolytes to the far edges of sanity, where logos emblazoned on one’s skin are lifelong social Bat Signals. We fall in love with characters in movies and books because we experience their epic heroism or empathize with their journeys. But Torres and the hundreds of others lining up weren’t there to be tatted with the insignia of epic heroes, or even anything with a discernible narrative. More than 25,000 fans of every age and background imaginable—including celebs such as Katy Perry, Ireland Baldwin, and Tyra Banks, and international fans from as far away as Australia and Peru—packed like sardines into the Geffen over the weekend to celebrate a cartoon cat without a mouth whose fans know her not from the silver screen, but from pencil boxes and notebooks. (Sanrio did later add a few TV shows, but they never did as well as the school-supply swag.) Name any household item, and you can bet there is a Hello Kitty version available for purchase today.
And, yes, that includes skin. Hello Kitty tattoos are more common than one might think. In fact, tattoos are perhaps the most fitting manifestation of Hello Kitty fandom of all: she’s a decoration first and foremost, and there’s nothing more personal to a lifelong fan than adorning one’s body—a blank canvas, just like the blank canvas of Hello Kitty’s personality that has allowed her empire to flourish—with the designs that helped shape one’s self image, interpersonal bonds, and even national identity. And hey, unlike a tiny stationery set, these tats are free.
HK Ink was actually the brainchild of convention curator Roger Gastman. Tattoos in Japan are nowhere near as accepted as they are here, but the HK Ink tattoo artists said the ever-business-savvy Sanrio green-lit the inclusion on the (well-founded) promise that it would be an attractive draw for American fans.
“My mom is a housekeeper, and when I was a kid, one of [her clients] would give me Hello Kitty gifts,” said Torres, wearing that familiar, slightly distracted expression of tattoo-getters that says, I am trying to be cool about the fact that are many tiny needles being dragged across my skin right now. Chicago-based artist Mario Desa was inking one of the most complex designs he created for the weekend, a light-blue calavera the size of a baked potato with bright, multicolored flowers on its cheeks and Hello Kitty’s face emblazoned like a Drake tattoo on its forehead, onto Torres’s left shoulder.
“It’s the first Hello Kitty convention, and I’m Mexican, and it’s Dia de los Muertos this weekend—it’s just a once-in-a-lifetime occasion,” she said.
Most of the fans who snagged an appointment this weekend, including Torres, weren’t tattoo virgins; many even had Sanrio ink already and were adding to a lifelong collection of cute, mouthless faces. One convention-goer I met couldn’t even bother with the tattoo shop. Norma Martinez, 31, has no room left on her back, which she’s been covering in a mural of Sanrio characters since age 17. (Her best friend, Lorena, has Kitty ink, too: the pair has each other’s names tattooed [“on their bodies,”] along with their favorite characters.)
“It seems like it’s almost a competition,” said Desa, who’s done a handful of paid Kitty tats in the past, in between sessions. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, L.A. artist Jeffery Page, set up in the next stall, said they’re especially popular here.) “Like, people have to prove that they’re real fans.”
Like any tattoo, each piece—whether a “HUG LIFE” Tupac parody or a classic Kitty head—came with a story of personal identity or relationship somehow tied to that little girl-cat has maintained such a viselike grip on fans’ imaginations into adulthood. The stories usually start with school supplies.
“When my older sister enlisted in the Army, she gave me all her Hello Kitty stuff,” said Martinez, now 31. “Everyone [at my school] was into Looney Tunes or Disney; nobody was into Hello Kitty then. I liked being the only one.”
Lesly Navarro, 29, of Alhambra, and her friend Kristin Maciel, 28, of Monterey Park, the latter of whom grimaced through her first-ever tattoo (a Kitty holding a tiny cake on her rib cage), met in college thanks to Maciel’s Keroppi folder. For Luisa Fonseca, 26, of Lake Balboa (a Hello Kitty in a rose on her ankle) it was Sanrio’s popular and cheap “grab bags,” which her mother bought for her and her siblings when the family was tight on money. A trip to the Sanrio store to buy the Japanese cat’s merchandise was 32-year-old Terry Ortega’s first memory of America when she emigrated from Mexico to re-unite with her mother, in Los Angeles, at age six.
On Day One, Thursday, Christine Yano, an anthropologist and Harvard professor gave a lecture to a room full of costumed fans about her recent book, Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific. Yano’s work explores the economic, political, and social dynamics of Japanese culture. She sees the mouthless, relatively story-less Hello Kitty as a sort of blank canvas, a “contact zone” where people of all different backgrounds, especially across national borders, can establish their own personal identities with merchandise while also bonding with family members, who buy Kitty items as gifts. (“Everyone knows what to get me for my birthday” was a common refrain at HK Ink this weekend.) They might also make new friends who might identify with a completely different vision of the canvas, like punk Hello Kitty or StormtrooperKitty. One tattoo contestant had a Bob Ross–themed Hello Kitty tattoo.
As one of the most prominent, universally inviting representations of Japan’s kawaii (or “cute”culture), which many academics and historians have noted is a not just a cultural craze but a diplomatic tool that wields influence worldwide (another Harvard professor, Joseph Nye, calls it “soft power”), Hello Kitty—once just a face used to sell coin purses—has become an official Japanese ambassador . . . even in space.
“I like that she doesn’t have a mouth,” said Carey Jones, a morning-show D.J. from San Luis Obispo, California, who got her third Kitty tattoo, a “Tupac Sha-Kitty” on her ankle, on Saturday. She bonded with her grandmother over Hello Kitty items on childhood trips to the mall. “I don’t need her to talk after-school special at me. I think she lasted because she’s simple.”
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