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| I complained on the "Stuff to Think About...Fads" section about various Hello Kitty merchandise. Well, I take back everything bad I have said about HK merchandise, because the other day, I saw the most offensive bit of HK merchandise in the entire universe. | ||
 It
looked innocent enough from a distance...well, as innocent as anything
with a picture of Hello Kitty could possibly look in my eyes. It was a
container the size and shape of a small coffee can, with a picture of that
mouthless, eyelashless, eyebrowless face looking eerily at me. I thought
it was surely a container of bath salts.
Upon closer inspection, I found them to be something much more evil. One was one of those awful fiber/ gelatin/ whatever powders that you mix with water and ingest so that it fills up your stomach and fools it into thinking itself full, making you lose your appetite. Another was a container of tea that increases your metabolism. It gives you a sort of artificially induced malabsorption syndrome, I suppose. |
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 That's
right, you evil little feline, tell those pre-teenage girls that their
bodies are in need or work, and that you're going to help them starve their
little bodies so that they can look like Kate Moss, because it is just
absolutely so very important that they be thin, and no one will think they
are cute and they won't be able to find boyfriends otherwise. We already
have more than enough anorexics and bulimics in the population without
you creating more girls obsessed with becoming skinny to the point
of developing a pathologically twisted love/ hate relationship with food.
Some example you are with that chubby little mouthless face of yours.
Come to think of it, wasn't there a Tamagocchi-esque Hello Kitty game?
I don't recall the details, but I do remember the point of the game was
to keep her weight down to that of three apples through diet and exercise...WHATEVER. |
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| But Ayako, I hear you
say, the diet aids are intended for more mature people. Yes, I realize
that. My point is, Hello Kitty is a character intended for little
children. The little girls who are shopping for stationery and lip balm
are going to see the Hello Kitty laxitives and will pick them up, and think
that dieting is what Hello Kitty intends for them. Just because they were
intended
for older consumers doesn't mean that they will not influence the younger
consumers.
I don't need Hello Kitty to tell me my body is imperfect. I already know that. (I also know that I am healthy and fit, which is what really matters, and that I make up for my imperfect body in other areas.) The little pre-teen girls don't need her either. Fine print stuff...the pictures of Hello Kitty have been taken without permission from the Sanrio website. If you (unlike me) are not totally grossed out by Hello Kitty and her friends, or, if you, like me, happen to enjoy grossing yourself out (a strange form of masochism, perhaps), you may want to see it. And yes, swiping pictures off of websites without permission from the site maintainter is copyright infringement, which is why the pictures are coming down if Sanrio even sneezes in my direction. (That shouldn't be too gross, since none of the characters have nostrils.) So enjoy them while you can.
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