Womens' Fashion, Mens' Sport, Goods -- but how good?

Prospero, one of the blog batches of commentators for the Economist, recently brought up several interesting points, in A Man’s Guide to a Woman’s Wardrobe.  One of these is that, although many would be tempted to write off sport and fashion as mere fluff, unworthy of the serious person, perhaps also vestiges of  gender roles and their assigned provinces, they are indeed goods — or really, whole ranges of interconnected and distinctive goods:

…  fashion is to many women what sport is to many men: a pastime, a passion, a shared language, a form of self-definition, and a temporary escape from the opposite sex, all rolled into one deeply satisfying whole.