What is a possible thesis statement for an essay dealing with Virginia Woolf's short story "The New Dress"?

One possible thesis statement that immediately suggests
itself after one reads Virginia Woolf’s short story “The New Dress” might be phrased as
follows:

Although Virginia Woolf’s short
story “The New Dress” might seem to deal with a character who is almost pathologically
shy and insecure, the fact that the character is female is crucial to an understanding
of her insecurities. Perhaps her feminine insecurities can partly be explained in
Darwinian terms.

In other words, Mabel
Waring might be far less obsessed with the possible shortcomings of her clothing if she
were not a woman but a man.  Of course, the upper-class social circles in which she
moves have much to do with her preoccupation with her appearance, but even more
important is the fact that she is female.  In almost every human society of which we
have knowledge, women have been judged, far more than men, on the basis of their
conformance to (or departure from) certain “ideal” standards of beauty. (Men tend to be
judged more in terms of strength and financial success.) Women have often been
discriminated against because they have fallen short of such supposed standards. Aging
actresses, for instance, often have more trouble sustaining their statuses as movie or
televisions stars than do aging male actors.  Male actors who age are often thought to
have developed interesting “character” traits (think of Sean Connery, Humphrey Bogart,
Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, and numerous others). Female actors who age are often
consigned to bit parts or forgotten altogether.  A few great actresses escape this fate
(Betty Davis might be cited as one example), but on the whole, even today, women are far
more likely to be judged in terms of their physical appearances and fashionable dress
than men.

To say this, of course, is not to say anything
especially surprising, and that is why a Darwinian approach to this theme might make
your argument more intriguing. A great deal of fascinating work has been done recently
about Darwinian explanations of the kinds of prejudices just outlined.  You may want to
take a look, for instance, at the work of David P. Barash (such as his book
Madame Bovarie’s Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature). Barash
will lead you to other important work that might help you place Woolf’s story in an
intriguing larger context. Barash’s book and the studies he cites may help you to give
an unusual explanation of passages in Woolf’s story such as the sentence with which it
opens:

Mabel
had her first serious suspicion that something was wrong as she took her cloak off and
Mrs. Barnet, while handing her the mirror and touching the brushes and thus drawing her
attention, perhaps rather markedly, to all the appliances for tidying and improving
hair, complexion, clothes, which existed on the dressing table, confirmed the suspicion
-- that it was not right, not quite right, which growing stronger as she went upstairs
and springing at her, with conviction as she greeted Clarissa Dalloway, she went
straight to the far end of the room, to a shaded corner where a looking-glass hung and
looked.