What do you wear if you go to the gym? Personally, I like wearing fun, colorful tops and shorts that fit tight on my body so the fabric doesn’t get caught on machines.
According to comedian Shane Gillis, that makes me a whore.
On October 10, Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live and delivered this joke in his opening monologue: “I haven’t been to the gym in so long. I didn’t know that women just dress like whores now. 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? Those neon—they’re like artificial bait colors.”
The reaction was immediately negative. The joke didn’t get the most laughs, and very few were laughing online. Many took to social media to slam Gillis, including actor Dan Levy and former SNL cast members Ego Nwodim and Cecily Strong.
It’s common on SNL that when comedians host, they write their own opening monologue. So while we can assume that this joke is from Gillis’ own mind, I wonder why no one on SNL vetted the monologue or called attention to the ways this joke could be read. Comedy’s very role is meant to comment and disrupt, but that line can be hard to draw.
Jokes have a time and a place; this one has neither. Derogatory remarks about women’s bodies are never in good taste, but the timing of this particular joke is gutwrenching combined with the recent coverage of the 2024 rape of Jane Doe at Cornell. As for place, SNL is a national live broadcast that has averaged 1 million viewers ages 18–49 just this season, which should inform the jokes that air. Instead, college women open the news to see coverage about sexual assault on prestigious campuses, then in the next scroll, see jokes like Gillis’ broadcast on national television. It sends the message that objectification and dehumanization of our bodies will continue long after we leave college.
Gillis already has a complicated history with SNL. In 2019, he was announced as a featured cast member alongside Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang (who both ended up having a seven-season run on the show). However, within a couple hours of the announcement, clips resurfaced of Gillis used slurs against Chinese and gay people, two communities Yang identifies with. Gillis said he regretted these comments, but the damage was done: Gillis was removed from the cast a couple days later. He has since been invited back three times to host: in 2024, 2025, and now this recent episode.
It’s disheartening to know that Gillis’ career will not suffer much from this joke. The very fact that he was invited to host multiple times after being fired from the same workplace years earlier demonstrates how much leeway men are given to say or do anything and still succeed. Women, especially those in the entertainment industry, have historically been held to much higher standards, with every appearance being the subject of criticism from all angles. After making comments in the same manner, a female comedian would have never broken the Guinness World Record for largest audience of a comedy show—something that Gillis achieved earlier this year with 73,000 people in the crowd.
While the airing of this joke may not change Gillis’ career or SNL’s structure as a whole, it warrants us to ask: how do you decide what makes comedy “okay,” and when does it cross a line?
One rule is to punch up, not down. The best comedy pokes fun at yourself and situations of the world without turning it into an attack on others. Essentially, you can make fun of people or situations that have power over you, not ones where you hold institutional power and social privileges.
Take this joke about Gillis’ same topic—women’s outfits—made by another SNL cast member, Marcello Hernandez: “You go to a club and see a beautiful woman, and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s a nice shirt.” Uh, that’s not a shirt, Papa. That thing clips!…You thought she put her shirt on like this? [lifts arms up] Uh, uh… She had to jump, probably.” It works because the joke is centered around a neutral topic—the act of putting on a shirt—instead of objectifying the woman wearing the bodysuit and fantasizing about “unclipping” it. Those two topics are entrenched in gendered power dynamics about who has control over a woman’s body, and may fall flat for younger, more radicalized audiences.
Shane Gillis’ appearance on Saturday Night Live marks how little society has improved in regards to sexism. It’s not a new story or new joke—and that should be a wake-up call. Male comedians are not reprimanded when they make sexist remarks, and are instead given national platforms where they can continue narratives that make young women feel unsafe and uncomfortable in public settings like gyms. Learning about how to be funny without crossing the line is vital if we want to dismantle sexist entertainment systems. If you’re passionate, fill the world with your own jokes and media that drown out the rampant sexism. But even having these conversations and calling out comedians like Shane Gillis is a good first step.