I think the fundamental argument FA is making isn't about ethics or self-acceptance, but about the realization women have that beauty is power, power equals success, and success equals happiness.
We can steel our own minds, but we can't change that of others. The world is not a beautiful place where only good people hold power. Frequently, apathetic or terrible people hold power -- and to those people, a woman's beauty often does matter. Aside from people making conscious decisions based on beauty, there is also a common, subconscious edge when establishing friendships (and thus connections), landing employment, mediating disagreements, succeeding in deals, and so on and so forth. The benefits for sexual partners and vanity are really just icing. Beauty extends as a weight to all facets of life. No matter your mindset, you cannot change the world's influence over you -- only how it makes you feel, and in the end, we're only human when it comes to the amount of zen we hold over our lives.
The only thing I'm really in disagreement with is the seeming exclusionary clause for MtF. Not all people assigned male at birth were ignorant of the gripping claws of beauty until womanhood came knocking. There are some of us who have been there right from the beginning, for one reason or another (most probably unusual social circumstances). Anyone who is overweight or has a deformity probably understands this very well, too.
