I've had to deal with the standover size in two different ways:

SGTiger has short legs and a long body. I have long legs and a short body (look at a picture of Christopher Walken, that's about how I'm proportioned).

Put another way, I'm 5'9" and the Boss is 5'1". Standing she comes to my chin. If we are sitting side by side, the top of her head meets my eyes.

If you take a look at her bike (see the photo posted in the Brooks Picture forum), her frame was built to accomodate the shorter standover height she needs. Hence the semi-mixte frame thing she has going on. They compensated for her long body by using a longer stem.

My bike is a 57cm. When the bike was built for me, they had a problem making the top tube short enough to be comfortable with me without causing toe overlap with my front wheel. Because of my long legs, I use 175mm cranks. I use a short stem and I still had to get one with some rise to it so I'd be comfortable.

Women's bikes are generally designed for someone with my proportions. I actually tried a WSD out once out of curiosity and it was pretty close to right.

So, there are a couple of take-home points here. Have your LBS fit you as best they can. You are pretty much locked into standover height but if the reach is just a little wrong, you can make it up with stem length.