Quoting from Michael's comment 448 for truth:

I've often noticed how much more respect the guy in the suit gets in a shop compared to me in my sloppy academic uniform with hair and beard in need of a cut. I think if you ramp that effect up 100 fold you get an idea of how it works for women.

Those two sentences work together to summarize my personal observations. I find I get more attention and respect, from men and women, when I wear jeans with nice shoes compared to wearing the same jeans with worn-out shoes. I used to deny this because long into my adulthood I implicitly carried some adolescent-like notions of how society "should" work, or how society should treat me if "the world" was "fair" (note: all about me). Now I realize my observation of reality was hindered by my adolescent-like intellectualization of "fairness". Eventually I was able to get more perspective, to observe humans more scientifically as social animals. In this thread, focusing on women and their motives for dressing misses this perspective, and misses the balanced observation Michael made above about how society really works.