Global BC tv station decided to do an informal experiment about people’s scrutiny of male and female clothing.
For a week, their two male news anchors wore the same suits.
For the next week, their two female anchors wore the same outfits.
Reactions from viewers about the male anchors? Zip.
Reactions from viewers about the female anchors? E-mails, plenty of them.
Liu went on to share screenshots of the several emails the station received inquiring about the women’s repeated looks, including, “Is this some kind of protest?” and “Have they run out of clothes?”
I’d be willing to get the ratio of emails about the female clothing was closer to parity than most would assume. It is not only males who pay attention to what women wear.
As another data point, and nearly a decade ago, Karl Stefanovic, co-host of an Australian morning show, Channel Nine’s Today program wore the same cheap blue Burberry knock-off suite for a year without drawing comment.
Stefanovic’s co-host Lisa Wilkinson, says she has mixed feelings about the auction.
“Look, I’m glad the suit is going to such a great cause,” says Wilkinson … “But to be honest, I’m kinda going to miss it. It’s become like another member of the Today show team” … “The truth is, with the scant dry-cleaning it’s had over the past year, these days it could probably get up and walk around the studio all by itself.”
True. Men’s suits tend to be blue, black/grey, and sometimes brown, and sometimes with pinstripes. Shirts tend to be dull, either solid colour or an unobtrusive simple pattern. About the only place a man can “show off” is with his tie. And even that must conform with the setting—while I was once interviewed for a job by a guy wearing a Bloom County tie, I doubt I’ll ever find a lawyer in a courtroom wearing anything similar.
I do have a tie that, from a bit of a distance, looks like a pattern. Get up close though, and it’s kittens wrestling and playing. I’ve worn that to court, but that’s the closest I’m willing to come to a “fun” tie in court.
Somewhat of an aside: I’m a regular at the local horse racing book, and another regular pretty much always wears a sportcoat, shirt, and tie. (Classiest-looking guy in a joint that can always use some classing-up, as we joke.) But his tie is always something funny—Warner Brothers cartoon characters, or Charlie Brown, or Bloom County, or (most recently) ugly Christmas ties. I often compliment him on his choice of tie, and he in turn, thanks me and usually offers some good insights into the next race.
Isn’t this kind of bad form? Why would people feel the need to make time to write into networks and comment on TV presenters’ style choices in the first place? Just because they’re somewhat public figures somehow means that that concerns you?
Oh, man. The ubiquity of electronic communication has made a lot of people feel perfectly entitled to comment on things like that. Female meteorologists have been pointing this out for quite a while.
“Comments on social media give people the right to lash out and hide behind their computers where they don’t see the effects their remarks have on us. Sure, given the fact we work in television we put ourselves out there to a certain extent, but that should not give viewers license to openly ridicule our appearance or the job that we do.”
“I’ve been called overweight, criticized for the length of my hemline and told I have ugly knees. Viewers have made comments on whether they think my dress should be one worn on the morning news or evening news, and I was recently asked if I’m pregnant. I am not, for the record. The worst, however, was being sexually harassed on Twitter to the point I had to get the Global BC management involved.”
At first I could not tell if you meant the two e.g. men dressed the same as each other on any given day, but differently every day, or that they each dressed differently from the other, but each wore their chosen outfit every day for a week.
It eventually became obvious you meant the latter, but I think the former might be an interesting experiment too. OTOH, there are lots of contexts where we see folks wearing work uniforms that, although gendered, all the males or all the females are dressed alike or nearly so.
I think @chappachula is pretty close. Men’s clothing, and especially suits, is all but invisible. Women’s clothing is usually much brighter and therefore more noticeable if nothing else.
I’m curious about @Dr_Paprika’s point, with which I tentatively agree. Of those who wrote / posted about the female anchors’ clothing, what was the male / female breakdown of writers, and how does that compare to the run-of-the mill male / female ratio of incoming emails/posts on all topics?
I met my wife in the workplace in the mid 1990s. She was convinced that I had one, maybe two grey suits that I wore three days a week. And then maybe one navy and one olive suit that I wore every other week. This was in the days when Casual Friday meant a blazer or sport coat over a patterned shirt and Dockers.
When she first visited my home, she went straight to the closet to verify that I did indeed own about twenty suits and about forty dress shirts that were mostly in colors and patterns “indistinguishable to her”.
If a woman in the workplace wore the same outfit twice in a fortnight, you bet my wife would have noticed. But a man could wear the same suit six times in that interval and no one would notice.
In fact when I was relocating cross country, the movers lost all my belongings for almost four weeks. All I had were the clothes I hand carried on the flight. I wore the same suit for four days at my new job, while the two new suits I bought were being altered. Then I wore three suits for the next two weeks. I even wore the same three ties repeatedly over that three week period. I bet no one paid any attention.
My stepdad’s closet had like ten of the same blue button-down shirts, and an equal number of the same khaki pants. Not similar, the exact same. He just bought multiples.
Yup, my daily ‘around the house’ wear;
Black shorts: I own 6, identical, pairs.
Green or yellow t-shirt: I own 5, identical, in both colors.
See me on the right days and you might think I don’t ever change clothes!
Surely that is the point; men are expected to wear similar-looking clothes in formal situations, while women are expected to wear different clothes all the time. These expectations need to be challenged.
Exactly. Have them try the experiment with the men wearing bright purple and yellow suits and then see how many people notice.
I only glanced at the photo in the OP but I remember the woman was wearing red and the man, probably dark blue? But if he wore the same again tomorrow I wouldn’t even notice. The faces are so small in the thumbnail so it’s not gender-based, it’s color-based.
Now of course, why people felt they needed to write in and comment on it, is a totally separate issue than noticing it, though I wonder how many people would email if the man was wearing the same bright red suit every day instead.
Remember when Obama wore a tan suit to some bill signing & the $#it he got for not being formal enough for the event?
Yup, guys suits are mostly the same shape & mostly in a dark color. I have a black suit with a maroon pinstripe in it, but you probably wouldn’t be able to tell that if you’re sitting across the table from me; you’d just think it was black, which isn’t all that different in color than the charcoal grey one I have; especially, if you’re seeing them on consecutive days & not side by side.
