News Anchor Wears the Same Suit Everyday for a Year, No One Notices
If a high-profile woman is pictured wearing the same outfit twice then the fashion police pick up on it and immediately issue the rule-breaker a style citation. But men, on the other hand, can get away with repeating ensembles time after time without a single outcry. Morning news anchor Karl Stefanovic put this double standard to the test with a yearlong social experiment. The Australian media personality revealed over the weekend that he wore the same suit on air for an entire year.
Frustrated by viewers’ criticism of his Today co-worker’s fashion choices, Stefanovic wore the same blue Burberry knockoff suit everyday to demonstrate the sexism within his industry. Of the watchers that consistently commented on the fashion choices made by Lisa Wilkerson, Stefanovic’s fellow presenter, not a single one spotted his faux pas.
"No one has noticed; no one gives a shit," Stefanovic said, according to Fairfax Media. “But women, they wear the wrong color and they get pulled up. They say the wrong thing and there’s thousands of tweets written about them.”
Regularly occurring series in print, online, and in television all call out celebrities and famous faces for being repeat offenders on red carpets and even when snapped in their everyday lives by paparazzi. These types of very public pressures mean that women not only have to look presentable but also unique.
On Monday morning during a taping of his show, Stefanovic said, “Some people have called it sexism and reverse sexism and what not … I don’t know whether it’s that because — can sexism be mainly women judging other women?”
Response to the test on social media has been mostly positive.
Sam Rubin, a Los Angeles-based reporter, called out similar sexist practices recently after he was on the receiving end of a very public fat-shame. While he has never received criticism for his fluctuating weight, he noted that his female colleagues haven’t been able to avoid similar talks from upper-management.
Only Wilkinson and another Today employee knew of the ongoing experiment. The continuous duping of his viewers pointed out exactly what he expected. ”I’m judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humor; on how I do my job, basically,” Stefanovic said. “Whereas women are quite often judged on what they’re wearing or how their hair is … that’s [what I wanted to test].”
