Annabelle,

One thing I wanted to say here: I've put in bold your words "in threads like this one". One thing I'd like to ask you GG's to kindly bear in mind: we "girls" do have threads like this one, threads that are a bit light-hearted, a bit superficial where we're talking about nothing but clothes and that sort of thing. I can understand that GG's would get a bit miffed here because it can sound like the only thing we think comprises feminity is appearance.
I listened to a podcast yesterday that made me go, "This. Exactly this." It was on a word I had never heard of, 'femmephobia.' (It was on the show, 'stuff Mom never told you,' it's on iTunes and howstuffworks.com for free and it is really good). It put a lot of things into words and articulated them for me.

There is a certain aspect of feminism (and of women around today, in real life) who seem to feel that anything too "girly" and 'feminine' is a disservice to women; if you like polka dots, sparkles, and Hello Kitty past the age of 12 then you are buying into constructs of 'girlhood' and immaturity which leave women powerless, orchestrated by the patriarchy keeping women weak and distracted. It's insidious, because if you're too feminine a lot of women don't take you seriously. There are scads of criticisms about expressing yourself as too girly, from 'you're setting a bad example' and down. It's a nasty mentality, which also completely turns the holder of that view against trans people as well, at least emotionally.

Being a girl who loves pink, polka dots and Hello Kitty, I face this sort of thing sometimes. It totally sucks to not get taken seriously by other women because I am girly and interested in how fashion works. (If I preface any of my clothing knowledge by, 'I interned at the Fashion Museum' I get taken more seriously - because museums are automatically elitist, I guess. It's weird.) To then turn around and feel as though fashion-conscious women are kind of invisible clothes hangers at best, and objects causing pain and misery of jealousy at worst - it hurts. I want to be seen as a person, too, and I want other women like me to get the same respect... But there is little to no mention of these women's personality traits, just their closets. Don't get me wrong, I like window shopping for clothes on people too. But it's second nature to try and see what sort of a person they are as much as it is to see where they got their shoes.

Annabelle, I think when you saw that woman saying 'my dress is green,' the reason that struck you more than anything else until then was that self-expressive freedom she had - and not the green dress she had, which you really couldn't see clearly. Also when a woman is asking for you to pay attention to her clothes, wouldn't it be rude not to?