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Viliam_Bur comments on Why do people ____? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm not a female, but this seems to me an obvious competition within sexes. Assuming that most people are heterosexual, for a female a competitor is another female, just like for a male a competitor is another male. So the ability to put down members of the same sex is an evolutionarily selected trait. (Of course it is not the only evolutionarily selected trait; in other contexts a cooperation is rewarded.) Males and females use somehow different methods of putting down their competitor, probably the ones better suited to their comparative advantages: males will try to put down other males by physical attacks or threats, females prefer mental and social attacks.
However, a reason why some behavior is evolutionarily selected is not the same as a mental process by which it is started. (For example a desire to have sex is selected because it leads to reproduction, but we do it for pleasure.) A psychological trigger that starts the intra-sex competition may be a feeling of insecurity. Which, among other things, may be also triggered by a presence of a competitor.
In my understanding, few men would notice if I wore the same dress twice. Out-competing other women for men only makes sense if the men notice. The level of attention to dress that will impress most men is lower than the level that will impress most other women. So to the extent that women are dressing carefully to impress men, it's largely mediated through other women. Women may snark to men, or to other women in men's hearing, about other women in order to jockey for status. (I realize this isn't an Austen crowd, but think Miss Bingley snarking to Mr. Darcy about Elizabeth Bennet.)