As problematic as the idealized portrayal of Power may be, she at least meets the criteria— conventionally attractive, young, statuesque—to be the object of repeated glowing profiles, willingly photographed in an endless series of couture gowns. The Janet Napolitanos and Janet Renos of the world, powerful Cabinet-level officials like Power without the requisite princess factor, are not accorded similar treatment. The grandmotherly Janet Yellen may be the most powerful woman in the world now that she is head the Federal Reserve, but she probably will not be posing in a satin cocktail dress anytime soon. And is that a bad thing? It is hard to say whether this lack of interest is a problem, given that even the most flattering profile ultimately, in its obsession with appearances, diminishes a woman’s power.

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In 2000, Americans learned that Condoleezza Rice, their future national security adviser, is a “size 6, but occasionally jumps to an 8, because of ‘muscle mass,’” “keeps two mirrors on her desk at Stanford, apparently to check the back as well as the front of her hair,” and is “impeccably dressed, usually in a classic suit with a modest hemline.” Secretary of State Colin Powell approved: “Condi was raised first and foremost to be a lady,” he told the New York Times.

It is difficult to imagine a male corollary. (“Dick Cheney, resplendent in size-46 balloon seat pants…”) But the most pernicious aspect of the profile is not the obsession with Rice’s appearance, but its sanction by the Times. The New York Times—and the Washington Post and other “hard” news sources—are often no different from women’s magazines in their refusal to emphasize ideas and actions over body and gender. (In 2005, Rice, by then secretary of state, had evolved to a “dominatrix” of “shadowy daydreams” in a Washington Post article devoted solely to her decision to wear a black coat and leather boots.)

All politics is performance, but for women, it is literally a cosmetic battle. “When I press her to articulate her personal positions, her eyes, lined in her trademark aqua blue, settle in a glare,” writes Jason Horowitz in Vogue of Susan Rice, then Obama’s U.N. ambassador and now his national security adviser. What would a diplomat’s answer about “her interventionist tendencies” be without a description of her eyeliner color? We never hear a full take on Rice’s positions, although she is chided for her “temper.”

For those deemed too unconventional to make the Vogue cut, an extreme makeover is in order. A 2012 Vogue profile of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz describes her as “frizzy-haired,” and “neither elite nor rich.” But the photo that ran with the profile is of a glamorous, coiffed blonde in designer dresses. Many who know Wasserman Schultz called the picture “unrecognizable.” For Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, that’s apparently the point. When Hillary Clinton backed out of a 2008 cover shoot for fear, the magazine said, that she might appear “too feminine,” Wintour responded in her editor’s note: “The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. How has our culture come to this? How is it that the Washington Post recoils from the slightest hint of cleavage on a senator? This is America, not Saudi Arabia.”

Other female political players lose their human characteristics altogether. This year alone, Clinton has made magazine covers as both a flesh-colored moon and a spiky shoe trampling a tiny man. In 2011, Newsweek ran a cover of a wild-eyed, ghoulish Michele Bachmann with the headline “The Queen of Rage.” A female politician is an adversary, an accessory, a distortion, a dress size—but rarely a thinker or leader.

Even when winning, female politicians are losing. Those who get the Vogue treatment—relentlessly upbeat, mercilessly superficial—have been known to provide inadvertent fodder for their opponents. “Among the most important details of her filibuster, apparently, are her ‘pink Mizuno running shoes and a sky-blue Escada day coat concealing a back brace,’” growled the conservative aggregation site Breitbart, in a sudden shift to feminist analysis, commenting on Vogue’s profile of Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. “Yet Davis, the profile insists, is a woman of the people.”

In the end, every woman who cooperates with this inanity—not just Mastromonaco—becomes the ambassador of a puff-piece brand. For male politicians, the media spotlight illuminates flaws, often in a ruthless way. For women, it creates silhouettes, veiled versions of what publications think their audience wants to see.

As Hillary Clinton gears up for the 2016 election, we will undoubtedly face a new barrage of these questions. Already, the media is breathlessly debating why her new memoir, Hard Choices, is failing to attract anticipated interest, under-selling by at least 48,000 copies, and what it might mean for her presidential prospects. Perhaps she should have stuck with her (jokingly) proposed original title: “The Scrunchie Chronicles, 112 Countries And It’s Still All About The Hair.” At least it would have been more honest: Have no doubt that the Clinton campaign, whatever it means for the glass ceiling in American politics, augurs a barrage of think pieces couched in demeaning, gendered terms—“scrunchie,” “cankles”—along with the enduring classic: she’s “old and stale.”

This is not to say journalists should not go after Clinton—they are not obligated to treat female politicians gently. If a woman is in a position of power, her words and actions should be critically analyzed and interrogated. But it should be her words and actions, not her body or clothes or children. A female pol has nothing to prove but that she can do her job. Treat her like a person. Treat her like a man.