One sensible way to look at it is that making oneself look beauteous(and by well-known coincidence, arousing) is a folk art; like scrimshaw, or oral storytelling, or Role-playing games. If one engages in it to please oneself and/or someone else, within the confines of God's commands and does not obsess about it, it is just another hobby. When it becomes inordinate it is like anything else that becomes inordinate.

Good one, Gina.

If only that were what women wanted to look like, Jason. These days, too many of them just want to look like stick figures.

Besides, if women hate themselves because they don't look like Luthien Tinuviel and have flowers grow at their feet when they dance, men hate themselves if they can't slay mastodons with their bare hands.

And no, I'm not sure who is worse off.

"But how important should beauty be to Christians?"

About as important as the ability to 'change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly' is.

In other words, interesting and useful in it's context and conceivably a way to show love to another person. But nothing to get obsessed about.