If you want to make an animated character look beautiful, you draw them with big, bulging eyes with dilating pupils. But it is a more Italian concept than Japanese. During the 1590s, the city of Florence had recently started promoting prostitution as a way of preventing sodomy (!). the Florentine women used a “trick of trade” to appear “wide-eyed beautiful”, more inviting to the Enlightened bachelors and infidels strutting about the streets. They used a kind of oil in their eyes, extracted from a flower, with the known property of diluting the pupils, and restricting your body’s nervous systems in general. Which means no sweating (so your make up stays on longer), no urination and salivation, and increased heart rate to help with “faking it” with the customers.
It didn’t take long for people to realise how deadly those side-effects could be. And soon, this oil became famous as the “fair lady poison”. As Italians were, they decided to name it so. And thus the flower was called Belladonna. From “bella-“ (beautiful) and “donna” (woman, as also seen in words like prima donna, and Madonna). Since then this deadly nightshade has found mentions by Shakespeare, macho Elizabeth who rarely took a bath, conniving ophthalmologists, and the Witches Three. Point is, “drop dead gorgeous” is foreshadowing, and the next time somebody tells you that, take the hint and go wash your face or something.
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