I'm not sure where to put this Guardian article, although it's historically related, so I decided here. There are a few more paragraphs.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/23/medieval-christian-misogyny-shapes-how-we-judge-women-today-says-scholar
Some called the women who put on makeup and dyed their hair, deceptive and artificial. Others said women who wore jewels and fine clothes could not be trusted, even by their husbands. But they all agreed: if a man ever encountered one of these unchristian women, and wanted to rape her, it was her fault – not his.
According to a talk at the University of Cambridge it was in the third-century that the Christian idea that “real” beauty is within was first used by influential male writers to try to control how women dressed.
“Many of the ideas that govern how we perceive women’s appearance today have their roots in the middle ages,” said Cambridge scholar Alexandra Zhirnova who is giving her talk on 23 March as part of the Cambridge Festival – a showcase of the research under way at the university.
^Zhirnova’s PhD thesis shines a spotlight on the misogynistic attitudes of medieval Christian men towards women’s makeup, clothing and adornments.
“One of the fundamental teachings in Christianity is the need to turn away from materialistic values and focus on spiritual things. But when Christianity becomes integrated into the patriarchal society of late antiquity and the early middle ages, the idea is used as a means of social control over women.”^
While the Romans thought it “much more normal” for upper-class women to wear makeup, lots of jewellery, and “very elaborate” hairstyles, Zhirnova said this behaviour was perceived to be in conflict with Christian ideals.
She thinks many early Christian male writers seemed to fear that women could excite a man’s lust using makeup and artfulness: “Women who have this power over men can control them and disrupt the male order of the world.”
Many “very influential” writers of the early church, such as Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, wrote letters and made speeches denouncing women who wore makeup and fine clothing as akin to “prostitutes”, while praising “respectable” women who did not. Yet if, as the Bible suggests, God sees beauty in one’s “inner self”, not “outward adornments”, then it should not matter what a Christian woman wears.