But who's putting all this pressure on women? As a professional geek, I couldn't care less what my colleagues are wearing -- male or female alike. At my previous job, most managers (including mine) were women; do you think they were judging their "badly-dressed" female subordinates more harshly than their male subordinates? If yes, why would they do that, knowing all too well how hard it is to strike that "perfect middle ground"?

Most of this pressure is self-inflicted. These problems won't go away until women stop listening to the idiotic fashion industry; if they don't, it's because their issues are less rational than they make them out to be.

Of course, my point was mainly that "having to go through something every single day" can be a huge burden or a slight inconvenience, and I'd be much more interested to hear from women where on that spectrum picking work attire falls for them rather than assuming it reduces their quality of life to zero based on a dramatized quote. Again, not trying to discount your friend's experience and I sure as hell don't think men have exactly the same issue, it's just low on context.

I completely agree. This thread is full of guys like me hypothesizing about what it's like to be a woman in the workplace. I'd love to hear more examples. I could be completely wrong.