Every single woman wearing make up is adding to the pressure on all other women to bow to societal norms and buy into their value being determined by their appearance.
Everyone, male and female, is judged by their appearance. It’s not right but it’s human nature. We know that humans tend to find certain attributes more aesthetically pleasing and attractive (facial symmetry for example), we have done for many thousands of years. Judging someone’s appearance is one way that we decide who to mate with in order to have the best chance of healthy offspring. There’s extra pressure on women, of course, because of all of the additional means to alter our appearance available to us in our culture (makeup, the choice whether to shave, etc), but it’s by no means a female only issue.
While I think there’s a kernel of truth in your statement, that if all women stopped wearing makeup nobody would feel pressured to wear it, I get the sense (correct me if I’m wrong) that the subtext in what you say is that women should therefore not wear makeup, so as to decrease that pressure?
That, I disagree with completely. It’s everyone’s right to do what they like with their own face. Trying to say that women should stop wearing it for the sake of changing a much bigger societal cultural issue is pretty offensive. Why is it okay to tell anyone to not wear makeup? That’s just as controlling and patronising as saying everyone should wear it.