Shane Gillis’s ‘tone-deaf’ SNL joke about women’s gym clothes draws outrage amid Cornell case

A joke about women’s workout clothing has put Shane Gillis back at the center of a familiar debate, after his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live this weekend prompted widespread criticism online and drew a noticeably muted response in the studio.

The bit came during Gillis’s third turn as host of the NBC sketch show. Riffing on his own efforts to slim down, the comedian turned to the brightly colored shorts women often wear at the gym, describing them in vivid terms before using a crude, derogatory word to suggest women now dress inappropriately to exercise. He framed the routine around the idea that men are expected not to look. The line landed with little laughter in the room.

Reaction outside the studio was swifter and louder. Within a day, hundreds of viewers had posted objections across TikTok, Instagram, X and Threads.

Critics point to timing

Much of the backlash focused on when the joke aired. It arrived amid national attention on a case at Cornell University, where a former student, identified as Jane Doe, has accused seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of drugging and sexually assaulting her after a party in 2024. Her account has prompted many women to share their own experiences with campus assault and with what they describe as weak institutional and police responses, often under the hashtag #iamjanedoe. Some viewers used the outcry over Gillis’s monologue to voice support for her.

Actor Dan Levy, co-creator of Schitt’s Creek, was among the most prominent critics. In an Instagram video posted Sunday, he argued that the problem lay with men who label women that way, not with women’s clothing choices, and said he was stunned such a line made it onto live national television

Levy urged men to speak up more, saying silence helps create conditions in which sexual assault gets treated as a debate rather than a crime. He called it “an everybody issue,” not one for women alone, and warned that objectifying women in media encourages men to treat them as objects in real life. “And to be perfectly honest,” Levy said, “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.”

“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.”

As quoted by NBC, writer Jessica Valenti suggested Gillis was likely aware of the ongoing national discussion about sexual assault and described the joke as his response to it, characterising it as an example of rape culture. Comedian and writer Sophia Benoit took a different angle, arguing on X that the premise has been recycled for well over a decade. 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.

A history of controversy

The episode is the latest in a long line for Gillis, whose provocative style has often targeted women and other marginalised groups. “SNL” hired him as a cast member in 2019 but dismissed him days later after clips surfaced of racist remarks he had made on his podcast, followed by further recordings of offensive language. A spokesperson for executive producer Lorne Michaels said at the time that the show had been unaware of the comments and called them unacceptable.

Gillis apologised then, while making clear he had no plans to stop pursuing edgy, taboo material. Despite the split, the show brought him back as host in 2024 and again in 2025, ahead of this weekend’s appearance.