Whoever said you can't be everything to everyone clearly never said it to Hello Kitty.

As the cute little kitty with the bow on her ear turns 30, she is everywhere, all the time, in every style or setting imaginable.

Hello Kitty is a pencil, a computer, a toaster. She is a Happy Meal toy, a taxicab in Japan, and a theme park there, too.

She is at once mass market and underground, a girl and a grown woman.

If she has no mouth, it's all the better to make her what you want her to be, and make her that much more a world icon.

"She doesn't have a mouth, so I think that when you're a child, and you're drawn to the character, she is feeling the same emotions that you're feeling, so she becomes your friend," said Marie Moss, author of "Hello Kitty, Hello Everywhere."

Hello Kitty turns 30 next month with her appeal as broad as ever. What's it all about? Hello Kitty isn't talking - remember, no mouth - but her fans have plenty to say.

Ask a 6-year-old like Sheri Hladky what it is about Hello Kitty and you risk an exasperated look that says: "What part of small and cute and pink and kitty don't you get, fella?"

For every girl who grows out of Hello Kitty, there's a grown woman walking around with a purse full of kitty kitsch.

"What's in my purse right now?" said Pearl Palmer, 25, a lifelong fan. "Oh, man … I have a wallet, makeup bag, change purses, cell-phone charms. I tried to get the cell phone, but it doesn't work with my cell-phone company."

A registered nurse, Palmer wears Hello Kitty scrubs to her job at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. "I always get comments - 'Oh, how cute!"'

Jonica Motoike, 38, stops by the store at least once a week.

"I'm bad," she said. "If I see it and really want it, I buy it, because it might get sold and not be there next time."

Even celebrities sport the cute cat. There are Paris and Nicky Hilton, Cameron Diaz, Mariah Carey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwen Stefani and on and on, wearing Hello Kitty T-shirts and jewelry, making Hello Kitty waffles and toast.

"I think celebrities are now wanting to break out and create their own personal style, and not be dictated to by their stylists," said Tarina Tarantino, a Los Angeles-based accessories designer whose celebrity-favored products include the Pink Head Hello Kitty line, which portrays Kitty with the bright fuchsia hair the designer wears.

"Wearing something like … Hello Kitty shows they have their own sense of style," said Tarantino. Her own love for Hello Kitty dates back to childhood visits to Bullocks department store.

"My mom tells me that the minute I saw the kiosk, I saw this little coin purse and grabbed it," Tarantino said. "That was the first thing I ever saw and I still have it somewhere. After that, that was the big thing my mom used: 'If you're good, we'll go to the Hello Kitty shop at Bullocks.' "