Comedian Shane Gillis sparked controversy again for his “Saturday Night Live” monologue Saturday after commenting that he “didn’t know women dress like whores now” at the gym.
Gillis appeared to make the studio audience laugh after making the remark during the monologue, which marked his third time hosting the NBC sketch comedy show. (“SNL” airs on NBC, a division of NBCUniversal, which is also the parent company of NBC News.)
After lamenting that he needed to lose weight, he then described the “neon-colored, artificial-colored” shorts that women wear to work out, and the fact that men are not allowed to look at women in those shorts.
This news sparked a wave of negative reactions towards Gillis online, with hundreds of people sharing their negative reactions on TikTok, Instagram, X and Threads.
Representatives for “SNL” and Gillis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Gillis, who is known for his raunchy style of comedy, has a history of placing women – and other marginalized groups – as the butt of jokes. Many people called Gillis tone-deaf for making such comments following reports about a former Cornell University student who claimed she was gang raped at a fraternity house on campus in 2024.
Among the harsh critics was actor Dan Levy, who posted a video on Instagram on Sunday in which he said: “Women who wear short shorts to the gym don’t make them whores. It makes men who call them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there.”
Levy, who created and starred in “Schitt’s Creek,” said he was “speechless that something like this could exist on live national television.”
“And to be completely honest,” Levy continued, “more men need to stand up against this, 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.”
Levy called on men to stand up for women more often and said it wasn’t a women’s issue: “It’s an issue that concerns everyone,” he added.
“The more men objectify women in the media, the more other men see them as objects and treat them like objects,” he said. “They are not objects. They are human beings superior to men.”
Some used Gillis’ monologue to show solidarity with Cornell’s Jane Doe, who accused seven Chi Phi fraternity members of making her take drugs before sexually assaulting her overnight after a fraternity party.
As the investigation made headlines, women began sharing their own experiences of sexual assault on campus and what they view as inadequate responses from their universities and police departments, with some coalescing around the hashtag #iamjanedoe.
Writer Jessica Valenti said she thought Gillis was likely aware of the “major national conversation happening right now about sexual assault” in relation to the Cornell case.
“This is his contribution to this conversation,” she said. “He’s the one who tells us what he thinks of the discourse on sexual assault. (…) That’s rape culture.”
Others, like writer and comedian Sophia Benoit, said Gillis’ joke about how women dress at the gym wasn’t funny.
It’s “a very common joke for AT LEAST fifteen years, and as far as I can remember, it has never been performed with a punchline,” she wrote on X.
Gillis’ career has been full of controversy, primarily his time with “SNL.” He was hired as a cast member in 2019, before quickly being fired for making racist jokes on his podcast. Criticism of Gillis mounted when other clips of him using offensive language went viral at the time.
At the time, he apologized but said he would continue to make shocking and taboo jokes.
“We want SNL to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show, and we hired Shane based on his comedic talent and impressive audition for SNL,” Lorne Michaels, a spokesperson for the “SNL” executive producer, told NBC News in 2019. “We were not aware of his previous remarks that surfaced in recent days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.”
The show, which at the time was home to Bowen Yang (the show’s first Asian American cast member), opted to fire Gillis, but invited him back to host in 2024 and 2025 before Saturday’s appearance.
Later during Saturday’s episode, Gillis accidentally slipped an f-bomb during a sketch and later apologized. The Federal Communications Commission “prohibits the broadcast of obscene, indecent, and profane material on radio or television.” The agency defines “rude content” as “grossly offensive” language that is “considered a public nuisance,” according to its website.
Some netizens pointed out that Gillis apologized for cursing during a skit, but not for offending people during his monologue.
“This is a pretty ridiculous contrast,” one social media user wrote. “An accidental swear word leads to an apology, while insulting a woman is supposed to come across as daring comedy.”
Gn entert
