Whatever Suits You

This is a bit old, and I've meant to write about it but only am getting around to it now.  Well...consider it more persistence than procrastination.

In November of last year, the popular host of Australia's Today show, Karl Stefanovic announced that he had been playing a sort of "prank" in support of his co-anchor, Lisa Wilkinson.  She had given a speech which, in part, discussed the double-standard whereby women in TV news get judged by what they wear, but men don't.  (She later noted that it's mostly women writing in and doing the judging.)

Stefanovic felt he wanted to support her so, as an experiment, he decided to wear the exact same suit every single day for a full year, and see if anyone would comment.  No one did -- though in that same period viewers would often comment about the clothes Ms. Wilkinson was wearing.

Stefanovic told Fairfax Media, "I'm judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humor - on how I do my job, basically. Whereas women are quite often judged on what they're wearing or how their hair is."

He did change his shirt and tie, though the point wasn't that he never changed any of his wardrobe, just that people would regularly address what his female co-host wore but never would reference any his clothes at all.  And of course a suit is easily the most prominent part of a man's wardrobe.  (He did say he would occasionally get the suit-drycleaned.)

During the year, the only person he told was Mr. Wilkinson and one other colleague on the show. 

"They often remark that it's getting a bit stinky," he said. "I'm hoping to get it into the dry cleaners at the end of the year."

After the story broke, it got a huge amount of attention in Australia, where Stefanovic has been on the air with the Today show for over a decade, but it also became a big story all over the world.

Here they are talking about the reaction after the story became public.