You pretty well nailed it. They whimper and whine about “male gaze” and so on but where does the apparent pressure to look good cone from? Partly from within and heavily from other women mean-girling them. Biologically women are programmed to want to be desirable for reproduction, and part of that involves competition. It always made me laugh how women could complain about how it’s men demanding they look good, and yet there is also the universal joke about the woman coming home with a makeover or new hairstyle and the husband doesn’t notice. I’m married, this has quite literally happened in real life. Men have preferences but we don’t care half so much about what women look like as women do, both themselves and other women.