I often read from progressive and feminist circles that our society is making girls and women too focused on their appearance (pretty pressure) and that we need to do something to reverse this trend but personally I doubt it's realistic or possible (at least not to the extent wished by those above mentioned progressives) to grow a new generation of girls less focused on their looks and more interested in science or other things for two reasons, one intrinsic to human nature and the other contingent to our culture/economy:

  1. women are attracted to Chads and Chad generally doesn't care much if you are good at playing any musical instrument or playing chess, basketball or if you are professionally accomplished. he values looks over anything else so women start from an early age, as a mating strategy, to spend time and energy to cure their outward appearance to impress him. that's one of the main reason why if you look for any tutorial on YT on how to use after effects or how to tune your motorcycle or to slap on a bass guitar you'll find that 95% of those tutorials are from male users but if you look for any make up tutorial you can be sure 99% of the times those are from women.
  2. the industry manufacturing and advertising products traditionally aimed to a female audience like make up, clothes, fashion, shoes, bags, gossip etc. will fight tooth and nail before giving up any of its market share.