The Today Show host told Fairfax Media he came up with the idea while reflecting on the constant criticism and unsolicited advice received by his co-host Lisa Wilkinson and Samantha Armytage, the host of rival breakfast program Sunrise. "I've worn the same suit on air for a year – except for a couple of times because of circumstance – to make a point," Stefanovic said. "Women are judged much more harshly and keenly for what they do, what they say and what they wear." "I'm judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humour – on how I do my job, basically. Whereas women are quite often judged on what they're wearing or how their hair is ... that's [what I wanted to test]." One TV show host decided to test that double standard by wearing the same knock-off Burberry suit for a year straight.
– An Aussie TV personality has worn the same suit on-air for a full year, and not because he likes the smell. Karl Stefanovic, a presenter on Australia's morning news show Today, says he kept wearing the blue Burberry knock-off to make a point: "No one has noticed; no one gives a s--t," he says. "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." And Stefanovic has seen co-host Lisa Wilkinson—with whom he's had an admittedly rocky relationship—raked over the coals because her outfit happens to offend a few fans, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Unlike Wilkinson, "I'm judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humor—on how I do my job, basically," Stefanovic says. He was particularly offended when the Telegraph ran old photographs of a female co-host on a rival morning show, dressed in comfortable clothes while running errands. "She's a mate and she was hurt by that," says Stefanovic, who offered her his support. "And I can understand." Hundreds of tweets (mostly favorable) reacted to Stefanovic's well-worn suit, The Age reports, with comments like "I loved this so much! Bloody double standards, well played Karl xx" and "absolutely brilliant stuff." Others, not so much: A member of a feminist Facebook page called the suit experiment "superficial," while an analyst on Jezebel saw nothing new: "As hilarious and interesting as this is, he simply proved something we all already know, the double standard women deal with on a day-to-day basis," Isha Aran writes. (Another recent viral video shows a woman getting 108 catcalls in 10 hours while walking around New York City.)