But how many times did he do the laundry!? Australian TV anchorman Karl Stefanovic recently admitted that he’s worn the same suit on-air for an entire year — and no one even noticed! The experiment was designed to provoke a discussion about sexism, and to prove how women get judged on their appearance more than men.
“No one has noticed; no one gives a s–t. But women, they wear the wrong color and they get pulled up,” the Australian Today show co-host Stefanovic, 40, told Fairfax Media. “They say the wrong thing and there’s thousands of tweets written about them. Women are judged much more harshly and keenly for what they do, what they say and what they wear.”
Stefanovic decided to wear the same dark navy suit (changing up his ties!) every day after he noticed that his co-host Lisa Wilkinson was receiving negative online comments about her wardrobe choices — critiques mainly from other women.
“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,” Stefanovic continued. “If Lisa had worn the same dress two, three, four, eight, 12 days in row? Everyone would have noticed — but women would have noticed, first.”
Stefanovic was not alone in his creative experiment. Wilkinson and one other co-worker also knew about it. “They often remark that it’s getting a bit stinky. I’m hoping to get it into the dry cleaners at the end of the year,” he joked to Fairfax Media. During his on-air reveal, Wilkinson asked if he at least changed his button-up shirt on occasion. He quipped: “Don’t go there, girlfriend.”
