Questions on appearances

We are told that wearing makeup is a sin, along with dying our hair and piercing our ears. When I was a child I accepted this blindly and recognized "the unbelievers" by their dyed hair, make up and pierced ears. I avoided them. I thought they had special germs. I could not share my soda with them because they had "unbeliever" germs. I was afraid it was contagious. I don't want to catch it!
Look how gross they look, my mother would say to me. Don't they just look worldly? Aren't you glad we don't do that? Yes, I would respond obediently. Secretly I admired the dangly earrings and pretty painted nails of those unbelievers and was caught many times having colored the nails of my dolls with permanent marker and had been taunted by my friends for leaving my Barbies earrings in their ears.
One day I asked why we don't pierce our ears and received this answer; "because if God wanted us to have holes in our ears we would have been born with holes in our ears." Easy enough to accept as a child.
Over the years I became friends with a "heretic girl" at school. She complained one day that she had to sneak her hair straightener to school because she was not allowed to straighten her hair. "How strange, I thought..." And I asked her why. She responded "My mom says if God wanted my hair to be straight, I would have been born with straight hair."
This came as a bit of a shock to me. How could her mom have come up with such a similar response if they are wrong and we are right? I decided to bring it up at a discussion. I was told again, we don't know the ways of the Holy Spirit and the gospel was preached. I decided to move on and to accept and be obedient.
One night this discussion came to mind... I decided to allow myself to think about it. Many more questions began to arise. If God wanted our hair to be short, wouldn't He just stop it from growing? If God wanted us to have curly hair, would it be curly? Finally, and most hilariously, if God wanted us to wear clothes, wouldn't we be born with them?
While talking to a "Christian" friend (who knows far more about the Bible than I do) I brought up this topic. Her response: "well that's just silly. The Lord judges one by their heart not their appearance. In the Old Testament the women wore pearls and silk for their husbands to look good for them. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good, it's the intention behind it. What kind of attention are you trying to attract? Or are you simply wanting to look pretty, which is natural for most girls and women?" This was a very comforting response after so many years of trying to convince myself that wanting to do those things was surely evil.