this is kind of a cop out because we don't have to mindlessly obey this shit, no one is forcing women to buy all that shit, like the average male doesn't care if you have 20 palettes of the most popular eye-shadow or fashionable clothes
It's not mindlessly obey at all, women are very aware of the standards they have to meet.
The worst part is contained in your post: men will deny deny deny that they care about makeup or fashion. And in a way, it's true. They don't give a shit about which specific eyeshadow colour, or who designed your handbag.
But we women know this. We
know men don't care about details.
What they do care about is the end result. They leave the finer details up to women to organise, but they want an attractive woman to look at, if they're going to look at a woman at all.
The fact is that in most situations, men will trust another man before he trusts a woman.
In order for a woman to compete, she has to perform at well above the standard of a man to even be noticed and heard, never mind considered an equal.
How do you get noticed and heard by the disinclined male? An easy way is to appeal to a man's visual preferences (really, his dick). The more attractive you are as a woman, the more likely you are to get the attention of a man.
I won't contest that this attention is not going to be truly helpful in the long run, but if you want to get hired somewhere, if you want to get treated well as a customer, if you want fucking anything as a woman, and a male is a gatekeeper to what you want, you already know the playing field is unfair and stacked against you.
Wearing makeup and investing time and money into clothes which accentuate your best features is simply a way of trying to level that playing field.
they don't care if you wear a dress that's considered uncool now as long as it looks hot
Looking 'hot' is so closely intertwined with culture and time that an individual might not even be aware of how much his preferences are shaped by the time he grew up in.
Don't believe me? Go check out men's fashions of the early 1800s, dress your favourite moid in that outfit, and tell me how he gets on.
You might also try going on a date in one of these snazzy threads:

Once upon a time, moids would've been thrilled with such a finely dressed lady to show off to his clan.