I agree. I went to university in the early 90s and there were lots of straight boys (and gay boys) in makeup. Kurt Kobain was their role model. Nobody gave a fuck. Or actually there was plenty of that! anybody remember the James song "Laid"? "Dressed me up in women's clothes, messed around with gender roles, lined my eyes ans called me pretty" was about a male/female relationship afaik and was our mantra. Fun times.
Yep. It's easy to rationalize as, oh, we miss those days because we were younger then, but I think that it really was a more joyous time to be that age and what teens/twenties are dealing with now in terms of how het relationships are expected to work is pretty shit, comparatively speaking. The compulsive gendering of every single aspect of appearance or behavior has led us to the point where nobody can just be themselves, except the fetishists, who've figured out how to manipulate everyone else into allowing them to act out their fetish in public spaces while pretending that that's social justice. Regular old gender non-conformity gets you concerned questions about your pronouns, because god forbid a woman get a buzzcut or a man paint his nails.
I remember Caitlyn Jenner saying that, that now that he'd transitioned he could finally paint his nails, and I was just going...look, I know that men can paint their nails because I went out with some who did, and was friends with others. I've helped them do it! Their balls didn't shrivel up and fall off as a result, honest.