An Australian news anchor is making headlines far away from the Land Down Under with a one-year on-air experiment that showed just differently men and women are judged by their clothing.
Karl Stefanovic, anchor for the morning “Today Show,” wore the same suit on air every day for a year to compare viewers’ reactions to his outfit with the clothing worn by his female colleagues.
The result?
“No one has noticed. No one gives a shit,” Stefanovic told 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.”
For this, he’s being hailed as a hero by the feminist set.
Karl Stefanovic’s same-suit sexism experiment on Today goes global http://t.co/zwgT9XvaPa * Karl Stefanovic #KarlStefanovic #HEADLINE
— Patricia Johnson (@johnspatricc) November 17, 2014
Hey @karlstefanovic you are absolutely magnificent… Jx http://t.co/wHbGgJHVIn pic.twitter.com/F0quOlwYbt
— Julia Morris (@Ladyjmo) November 15, 2014
@Ladyjmo@karlstefanovic I loved this so much! Bloody double standards, well played Karl xx
— Mrs Woog (@Woogsworld) November 15, 2014
OK then.
First, before the libs at the New York Times, or the ladies at Jezebel, start getting hysterical, Stefanovic’s prank just proved something the world has known since Adam and Eve discovered they were naked
Then, Stefanovic told Fairfax Media, he did wear a different suit “a couple of times because of circumstance.” That quote isn’t explained, but presumably Christmas shows or other holiday-themed events would count Down Under (insert insensitive Maori joke here).
In other words, Stefanovic found a suitably colored jacket, and switched it up with the different colored shirts and ties — and remember, this is a job that generally involves being seated behind a desk most of the time.
And don’t forget, there are countless men the world over who have done exactly what Stefanovic has done for a year or more and never given it a second thought. It’s a fair bet there are damn few women — outside religious orders, the military or other uniformed professions — who would even consider it if they had a choice.
Finally, and this is crucial, the clothes in question are exactly what viewers expect of a man in Stefanovic’s line of work. If he’d worn a cowboy vest and crotchless chaps for a year, you’d have heard about it before now (without the feminist applause, no doubt.)
The women-oriented website Pinterest has a feature right now called “Find your style and stick to it.”
Sounds like exactly what Stefanovic did.
Interesting? Of course, fascinating really. But does it prove women are paid 77 cents to every dollar men make in the United States? (That’s not true.) Or that one in five women in college are raped in the United States (That’s not true, either).
Beyond gushing about sexism, Twitter reactions ran the gamut from the skeptical:
@kellyoxford@PhizLair Do the men or women notice when the woman wears the same dress more than one?
— jeff schmieder (@jcschmieder) November 17, 2014
To the humorous:
@kellyoxford Is there evidence to prove that he’s not just a tightwad with 1 suit making retrospective excuses? Like me with my underpants.
— Paul Carey Jones (@paulcareyjones) November 17, 2014
To the age old truth:
@kellyoxford There’s a saying that women don’t dress up for men, they dress up for other women.
— Liban (@DieZauberer) November 17, 2014
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