Pre-9am, first-coffee-not-yet-finished thoughts, so bear with me.
I sometimes find myself thinking about the world in terms of invisible mental structures -things that are so much a part of our lives that it's hard to step outside of them or to avoid acting in accordance with them. I think of both the patriarchy, and capitalism, as structures in this sense. To some extent these structures (particularly capitalism) are consciously supported by the people whom they advantage, but for the most part they are unconsciously recreated. I tend to prefer this explanation for patriarchy as a lot of people get very angry at the thought that men as individuals are being accused of consciously and deliberately "keeping women down".
Ok, so, next step. I would argue that the twenty-first century Western world is an inheritor of a certain strand of male-female relations in which a woman's main role was to beautify themselves in order to attract and then keep a spouse. Obviously, this by no means applies across all social strata throughout history (if you were a farmers' daughter in early modern Europe, for example, beauty would probably count for little if you didn't have the capacity and willingness to do a hard day's labour!). However, with industrialisation, you got an increasing movement of economically productive work to outside of the home, and it came to be a marker of solid middle class status for the husband to go out and do the work, and for the woman to stay at home and not have to do ("economically productive") work. So, I think a combination of technological development, and aspiration to higher social status, led to an increasing favouring of a gender division which cast men as "breadwinners" and women as "home-makers", the legacy of which we still aren't entirely free of.
So, when you got to the point when it stopped mattering that women distinguish themselves in terms of their skills or productive capabilities (like that early modern farmer's daughter), women needed to start "proving" themselves in other ways, and I think appearance increasingly became one of them. Industrialisation and the movement of productive labour outside of the household also changed the power dynamic in marriages (between non-aristocratic people) from a position of interdependence within a couple to one of a woman being entirely economically dependent on her husband. So in essence it stops being important if you can bring skills and productive labour to your marriage, and more important to bring pleasure to the husband who is supporting you. So that's the patriarchal structure and (a very rough sketch of) how I think it developed to put a real emphasis on women's appearance.
And then on the other side there's capitalism. As far as I understand it, capitalism is a structure which endeavours to encourage people to part with their money in order that they then need more and are willing to labour for it. The cosmetics and clothing industries are a bit like the diamond ring industry, in that they both create a demand, and then satisfy it (for a hefty price!) Women are encouraged, through advertising etc, to think that their value as people is firmly attached to the clothes they wear and the made-up appearance of their faces. And so, they part with their money. Capitalist and patriarchal forces are working hand-in-hand because the advertisements are just building upon wider expectations of women to beautify themselves for the sake of men.
When talking about women experiencing pressure to police their appearance you often get people pointing out that men are also pressured by advertising to buy the new Gilette Manliness Boosting Super Bristle Blaster razor and to wear fashionable / smart clothing etc. But it's a slightly different set of pressures - with different underlying meanings - from those that women experience. Of course the cosmetics and clothing industries don't want to limit themselves to just the female half of the population, so they target men. But, whilst men might experience corroborating pressure to smarten up (e.g. social expectations that if you work in a certain job you should wear certain things -- expectations women also have to live up to!), they don't have that added message from patriarchal structures that they must look attractive in order to gain a husband, and thus economic stability.
Obviously, we are now past the era when women had to marry in order to have economic stability (and thus making themselves attractive to men was literally a life-making task), but because we are not that long past it, ingrained attitudes which associate women's personal value with appearance haven't yet caught up. The (unsurprising) desire of fashion and cosmetics industries to make money means that this "out of date" message is constantly re-affirmed by advertising, advertising which is increasingly far-reaching and insidious in the midst of a digital age. But it's all a tissue of illusions, really.
Does that make any sense or was that a hugely unhelpful early-morning ramble? Your asking about theoretical frameworks perhaps got me thinking a bit too deeply. 
But I find it helps me to think in terms of the long-term historical factors and "invisible structures" that shape the way people have certain expectations of women vs men and so on.
Also, I freely admit that the above is a very very rough overview and probably contains parts that is a load of balls, but it's my best take at this exact moment. 