A strange little side quest
Before the next round of Princess Culture of Cuteness, here is a piece of the bigger picture. During much of the 19th century in the United States, visibly painted cosmetics became socially unacceptable even though beauty practices never disappeared. There is another connection worth keeping in the same mental pocket: Street Fighter II, released in 1991, turned head-to-head arcade fighting into a worldwide phenomenon and helped define the modern fighting-game genre. That gives Princess Culture of Cuteness a little more company than it first appears to have.
