IntELLEgentsia

Last Wednesday I went to a panel discussion held by Elle Magazine called "IntELLEgentsia", which was moderated by msnbc's Campbell Brown, and had Ann Lewis, Hillary Clinton's senior adviser among a female vice-president from Google and the author of Full Frontal Feminism. One of the things that Lewis brought up was how ridiculous it is how much attention Hillary (and other female candidates) gets regarding what she's wearing, or her family. "You never hear, 'Congressman John, a grandfather of three'" she quipped, before noting that "We only have so much airtime, and I'd rather talk about healthcare than the strategic decision behind the pink suit over the gray suit."
This got me thinking, and sent me on a Google-hunt for fashion critiques of Hillary:

"She has a bad figure. She's bottom heavy and her legs are short," reported CNN's style editor, Elsa Klensch.

But, "she's making the most of it," by "seeking high-end fashion advice which has really been helping," we learned from Claudia Cohen, the entertainment reporter for Live with Regis and Kathy Lee.

Well good thing she's doing something about it! My, can we imagine how awful it would be to have a president that was BOTTOM HEAVY?! In addition, just a couple months ago, Donatella Versace reported to German magazine that she thought Mrs. Clinton should try wearing some skirts to show off her feminine side. Ignore the fact that Donatella apparently did not get the memo about Hillary's legs, I'm quite hard pressed to find any quote from the head of any other fashion house giving "what-to-wear" advice to a male candidate. When will Ralph Lauren give an interview in which he advises Al Gore to tie a special knot in his tie to make his neck look slimmer?
At this point, I start to think about Hillary's competitor, Barack Obama, featured on the cover of September's Men's Vogue, and the wonderfully-written profile by Jacob Weisberg inside. In the entire piece, we get two bits about fashion:

"The senator's tie is loosened, and he keeps his pin-striped jacket on while inside his formal office."
"For the most part, Obama appears to wear the burden of others' dreams lightly. They hang loosely on his shoulders, like the dark suits that compliment his slender frame."

This enrages me more than slightly, when I flip through the feature on this month's Vogue covergirl Scarlet Johansson, with enough references to her style that it would be ridiculous to type. This leads me to two questions:
-Why is it that when trying to be taken seriously, women get pigeonholed into fashion plates (or anti-fashion plates, in Hillary's case)?
-And why, when being featured as a fashion plate, does a man get to be taken seriously?