Comedian Shane Gillis drew controversy again for his “Saturday Night Live” monologue Saturday after commenting that he “didn’t know women just dress like whores now” at the gym.
Gillis appeared to draw few laughs from the studio audience 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 needs to lose weight, he went on to describe the “neon, artificial-vape colored” shorts that women are wearing to work out, and the fact that men are not allowed to look at women in those shorts.
The bit drew an outpouring of backlash toward 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 — at the butt of jokes. Many people called it tone-deaf of Gillis to make such comments following the reports around a former Cornell University student who alleged she was gang-raped at an on-campus fraternity house in 2024.
Among the chorus of vocal critics was actor Dan Levy, who on Sunday posted an Instagram video in which he said, “Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there.”
Levy, who created and starred in “Schitt’s Creek,” said he is “speechless that something like that can exist on live national television.”
“And to be perfectly honest,” Levy continued, “more men need to be standing up in opposition to it because it’s complacency that has created the environment with which women are sexually assaulted, and it’s a ‘conversation’ as opposed to a crime.”
Levy called on men to defend women more often and said it is not a women’s issue — “this is an everybody issue,” he added.
“The more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects,” he said. “They are not objects. They are superior human beings to men.”
Some used Gillis’ monologue to show solidarity for Cornell’s Jane Doe, who accused seven Chi Phi fraternity members of plying her with drugs before sexually assaulting her overnight following a fraternity party.
As the investigation made headlines, women began sharing their own experiences with sexual assault on campus and what they say were inadequate responses from their universities and their police departments, with some coalescing around the hashtag #iamjanedoe.
Writer Jessica Valenti said that she thinks Gillis was probably aware about the “major national conversation happening right now about sexual assault” in relation to the Cornell case.
“This is his contribution to that conversation,” she said. “This is him telling us what he thinks of the discourse on sexual assault. ... That is rape culture.”
Others, like writer and comedian Sophia Benoit, said Gillis’ joke about how women dress at the gym was not funny.
It “has been a very common joke for AT LEAST fifteen years, and it has never once that I can recall been performed with a punchline,” she wrote on X.
Gillis’ career has been fraught with controversy, mainly, his time with “SNL.” He was hired as a cast member in 2019, before he was quickly canned for previously making racist jokes on his podcast. The criticisms of Gillis piled on 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 on the strength of his talent as a comedian and his impressive audition for SNL,” a spokesperson for “SNL” executive producer Lorne Michaels told NBC News in 2019. “We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.”
The show, which was home to Bowen Yang (the show’s first Asian American cast member) at the time, chose 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 obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast on the radio or TV.” The agency defines “profane content” as “grossly offensive” language that is “considered a public nuisance,” according to its website.
Some online pointed out that Gillis apologized for cursing during a sketch but not for offending people during his monologue.
“That’s a pretty ridiculous contrast,” one social media user wrote. “An accidental swear gets an apology, while insulting women is supposed to pass as edgy comedy.”
