keep your eye on the ball. What is the clothes trying to signal? Today not having to work isn´t worth signalling. The poorest members in our society don´t do shit. They´re on wellfare. So purely impractical clothing we can´t work in is not going to signal anything we in today´s modern society value.
That's my point, the impracticality is still completely there for female norms, but it has nothing to do with your historical factors of work and affluence. At every level of affluence, women's clothes are much less practical than men's. Impracticality covaries with gender now rather than with affluence. It signals, that "I am a women, and thus my youth, beauty and sexuality are my only important qualities, and I don't need to be able to do anything useful or even protect myself from my environment because you can just take care of me in exchange for sex."
That is why many women participate in those expectations to as little a degree as they can get away with without thwarting their own social goals. That is why it rather shallow, sexually obsessive, "weird" and not actually "female" for hetero men to want to take on that attire, whereas it is more normal and sensible for women to want to wear most male attire.
Make-up is impractical, costly, and time consuming.
Not that time-consuming nor impractical. Not really.
Um, women spend an average of 30 minutes every day just putting on their make-up that does not count time on their hair or time to take the make-up off, which probably totals around 1 hour every day, (or 6% of their waking existence), which increases their "grooming and hygiene" time by 2-3 fold what it would be otherwise and what it is for the avg. male. So again, cross-dressing males are choosing a time consuming (skin damaging) routine that so many women hate and only do out of social coercion. That's weird.
But it is costly. Which is the point. It signals affluence. As does expensive creams and beauty treatments.
Women of every affluence level wear and are expected to wear make-up. It does not signal affluence. Wearing cheap make-up is less socially punished than wearing no make-up. What matters to the norm is that you demonstrate that you spend lots of time and effort on your appearance, especially in looking "flushed", "full lipped" and sexually receptive. It is costly, yet expected of women of every social standing.
It is interesting how come make-up hasn´t made a comeback among men. Historically men of status have used more make-up than women. I don´t have a good answer.
Its because the "affluence" theory is wrong and doesn't apply today to either clothes or make-up. Its more about gender roles, not economic standing, and those expectations that women of all status must emphasize their beauty and sexuality are onerous, impractical, and costly for women and many resent it. Yet cross-dressing males choose to adopt it which signifies unhealthy underlying "issues" and makes their psychology qualitatively different than other men, and then either traditional or cross-dressing women. Which again, is my entire point.
High heels are still central to women's fashion and cultural standards, uncomfortable breast squeezing bras are more "required" than ever, dresses are still expected in formal occasions no matter how cold it is, etc.. Also their is the high degree of sexualization issue that has increased massively in the last century for women but not much for men.
I think you´re right on the money. Sexualisation is the answer. Today we don´t really value virginity or nor laziness. Today sexiness has high status and that is the focus.
High heels make the legs longer. But it also forces the pelvis to tilt backward, which is an ancient primate signal of sexual availability in a woman. It´s a universal signal for all primates that she´s ready to go, and obviously in humans to.
Breasts is a weird one and quite hard for evolutionary psychologists to explain. Best explanation I´ve heard is that our brains haven´t quite adapted to bipedalism yet. So the tits are a "front ass". The brain can´t really deal with women standing upright. Large or full breasts doesn´t correlate to health or youth in a woman nor ability to produce milk. It´s just a weird sexual attraction. Anyhoo... it does why we like tits being squeezed together. It looks more like an ass-crack from behind.
Okay, so we gettting somewhere in agreeing that modern female attire is much about sexualizing women at the expense of practicality and even physical health. My argument is not that women's attire is intentionally made impractical for the sake of impracticality. That is more your argument regarding affluence and showing that you don't work, so you don't need practical attire. My argument is that for various reasons highly tied to gender roles, women's clothes today have the byproduct of being an impractical nuisance to them and many don't like it. The underlying reasons are not that critical. What matters is the reality that this gender difference in impracticality exists. That reality is why some cross dressing by hetero males requires an odd fetish that not only violates norms, but can go against valuing of comfort, practicality, frugality, and safety. That makes it a qualitatively different type of thing reflecting a different type of psychology than most female cross dressing.