Comedian Shane Gillis is facing criticism online after a stand-up bit during his recent monologue on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” in which he joked that “women just dress like whores now” at the gym.
“I haven’t been in the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” Gillis said during the monologue. “I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe… have you seen it? I’ve seen it. The shorts. Have you seen the shorts?”
Gillis continued the bit by joking about women wearing revealing gym attire and then reacting with offense if men look at them. “And don’t look. You’re not allowed to look,” he said, adding, “For real, don’t look, because they are filming. I’m in the background of, like, ten TikToks right now.”
The monologue drew sharp reaction on social media. One Reddit user wrote that they and their spouse had walked out of a Gillis show in Chicago within 15 minutes, calling him “one of those ‘everything is allowed in comedy’ type morons” and accusing him of being “racist, sexist, and homophobic.”
Other commenters were more pointed. “I hate this fucking guy,” one wrote. “He wants to be the pied piper of knuckle dragging shitheads so bad.” Another asked, “What the fuck am I, as a woman, meant to wear at the gym?” before adding a personal insult directed at Gillis. A fourth commenter wrote sarcastically, “The worst thing they can say about women is that we wear shorts. How dare women wear SHORTS while EXERCISING.”
Dan Levy Weighs In
Actor Dan Levy, known for “Schitt’s Creek,” also responded publicly, calling Gillis a “misogynist” and arguing that jokes of this kind contribute to a broader culture of harm.
“Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists,” Levy said. “I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television. And to be perfectly honest, more men need to be standing up in opposition to it.”
Levy went further, linking the joke to sexual assault. “Because it’s complacency that has created the environment in which women are sexually assaulted and it’s a ‘conversation’ as opposed to a ‘crime,'” he said. He called on men to “defend” women more, saying, “This is not a women’s issue, this is an everybody issue,” and argued that “the more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects. They are not objects, they are superior human beings to men.”
Levy closed his remarks by acknowledging the likely response to his comments: “And I’m sorry if this gets me in trouble with the internet, but fuck.”
The episode has become another flashpoint in the ongoing national argument over what comedians can say on broadcast television, and where the line sits between crude humor and material that critics say normalizes hostility toward women. Gillis has not responded publicly to the criticism.
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