On the other hand, if they had done better at “getting the girls out there”, then people would be looking at whether she was too sexy. There is just no way for women in the public eye to satisfy everyone.

Pelosi and Boxer: “She looks too old” vs “Plastic surgery?”
Hillary: “She looks too frumpy” vs “What’s with the cleavage?”

vs

Men: “He should have gone with the red tie” vs “He should have gone with the blue tie”

There just isn’t as much underlying controversy (and, we’re basically expected to be fashion-blind).

My question: Doesn’t it seem like women under constant scrutiny need to have a never-ending supply of garments so that they don’t appear to wear the same things over and over, while men can simply change shirt/tie?

I have to wonder if the shoppers/stylists/whatever that they used for this aren’t used to dressing anyone with a very shapely figure, ie, boobs. Alternatively, they may think they’re downplaying her bust to make her look more ’serious’, but all they’re doing is making it more obvious because one’s eye is drawn to the obviously straining fabric. Or maybe they want her to look ’sexier’ as part of their plan, and they think this is the way to do it. Who knows?

I think they should make a point of the fact that they’re buying American or whatever. As someone pointed out, they could be doing some small businesspersons a big favor by using them to tailor these garments to fit, or make her some things that really would fit. That would be a more heartwarming story than so many bucks to Saks, Nieman Marcus, etc., and isn’t that what they want?

Let me put it this way (because I just sat through a presentation on it this week): when the Lewinsky news broke, one network found that clip of Monica in the beret talking to Bill on the White House lawn somewhere in their archives. They leased that out to the other networks and made millions on it. Every other network then realized the value of the intellectual property they were sitting on and went to the trouble to digitize all of their old film and analog coverage, complete with metadata tags (keywords) derived from observation of the images plus automated analysis of the voiceover, etc. The result was seen last year when Jim McKay died and within a few minutes they were pulling up his first broadcast and that clip from the ‘72 Olympics when he said “They’re all gone.” Even the NBA has spent millions digitizing and tagging their games, so whenever someone makes a three-point shot in the 3rd Quarter of Game 3 of the Western playoffs, they can pull up footage of Magic Johnson doing the same thing in 1984 (or whatever) before the 4th Q even starts.

So you’re dealing with two problems: ubiquity and forever. Now, imagine that you are going to jump into that limelight. Still wanna be caught wearing something cheap, ill-fitting, the wrong color? No, you want to wear something that doesn’t distract from the carefully orchestrated message. Male politicians in that regard can always resort to very, very conservative suits; women have the much more difficult job of having to shoot the gap between feminine and “serious”, and they must do it without appearing to be trying to do it. You don’t have to approve of the person to understand the pressure and scrutiny they are under, D or R.