Very true, I guess the distinction I'm trying to draw though is between having articles talk about men's clothing vs. having comments on an article about a company with a female CEO quickly go to her physical appearance when the subject at hand is the company's performance. When Facebook makes missteps, I don't think discussion on them quickly jumps to Mark's hoodies.
what men wear at work is a frequent and unending topic of discussion, but you probably don't notice, because it doesn't fit your worldview.
... and if this hn thread were about that link, you'd probably be the person complaining that it focuses too much on men, and not enough on women. unfortunately, i don't have a quantum time machine, so we'll never really know.
"In most businesses if a man wears anything except a suit and tie it is a topic of serious consideration, and possibly a firing offense."
I don't know if that's as true as it used to be. Business casual has pretty much taken over most of corporate America by now. True, you might not be able to roll into work at a non-tech Fortune 500 company wearing a hoodie and jeans -- but you aren't expected to wear a suit, generally speaking, unless you're in the C-suite or in a high-profile, externally facing role (investor relations, BD/CD, etc.).
Suits are generally relegated to the professions these days: big law firms, banks, and what have you. I'm sure there's the occasional company (F500 or otherwise) that mandates suits for cultural or traditional reasons, but such a company is likelier to be the exception than the rule in 2016.
Chris Rock at the Oscars did a good job of this, women say a lot with their clothes and men generally don't. I'm not qualified to speculate on how that came about, but going to a formal event you seen all the men in very slight variations of a standard tuxedo and the women in a wide variety of evening gowns.
So when men, or women, change their appearance in dress, its generally considered a "communication" of some sort. Sometimes its obvious like the difference between dress uniforms and fatigues in the service, and sometimes less so.
It's pretty clear that Theranos is under fire and I agree with the GP that the change in garb and styling of the CEO was part of the message she was trying to communicate. Without specific guidance on that, we are left to speculate.
I'm not sure if this is the thread you were thinking about, but I don't see much about the appearance of the founder; rather it is all rightfully focused on his miserable failings and running his company into the ground: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11327341
I believe him dressing up like Ziggy Stardust was discussed. I believe he'd also had a fashion gaff (cartoon character shirt or tie or something like that) in an IPO announcement for a different company that was discussed either in the comments or the article.
Unfortunately liberalism as a movement is not at all consistent. One would think that the liberals posters on HN would downvote that grandparent to hell and voice support for your post. But they don't, because Holmes is not supported by liberals for other reasons: she is White, blonde, comes from old White money, and tried to portray herself as workaholic nerd. So it's a free for all for sexism against her. But what do I know, I'm just an uniformed nerd who hasn't read up on intersectionality.
If you look there are plenty of articles about Steve Jobs clothing, and about Mark Zuckerberg hoodies.