Don't fool yourself, anon - there was never a time when women were not competing for looks. Even when men do not care, women will compete among themselves for perceived notions.
Case in point? I remember the 90s and girls were starving themselves to audition for extras at concentration camps. Guys told them it was nonsense. It was the girls tearing each other up over a bit of flab.
Then internet porn happened along with social media and girls immediately started implanting silicon in their ass and thighs to exaggerate the hourglass figure. Because that is more true to the base drive of men than annorexia and liposuction.
I have argued for some time that women don't have much in the way of developed culture. Whereas men have long tried to culture each other in how to treat women and how to look out for the future - women have not been generally imbued with a comparable culture. We just thought that if we turned them loose like bachelors, they would somehow divine their way to the fulfilling lives they want.
What happened was they started eviscerating each other over any little thing they could find to pick at each other over, blamed it on men (because they were competing for male attention in the first place, but they can't admit this because then other girls will pounce on the opportunity to call them a whore) - all the while, they secretly want a loving partner and children, which they will be accused of being a sellout for womens' rights if they actually admitted they would be perfectly happy focusing on raising kids and letting her husband go take care of that boring and tedious work thing.
Not that every woman is to be content with 'just that' - it's just that finding out you don't care about a career when you're 35 and damn near barren sucks when compared to taking up a career as the kids are old enough to stop putting things in their mouth.