Dan Levy tore into Shane Gillis for joking about women’s gym clothes on Saturday Night Live, calling the bit misogynist and insisting more men must stand up against it.
Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live and used his monologue to talk about the clothes women now wear at the gym. The 38-year-old comedian went straight at the look.
Gillis told the audience he had not been to the gym in a long time and did not realize “women just dressed like whores now.” He added there was “no other way to describe it,” then zeroed in on the shorts: neon “artificial bait color,” with “wrinkles” that “go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole.” He also joked that men are told not to look because the women are filming TikToks and he was already in the background of about ten of them.
The live crowd answered with a mix of laughs and groans. Later that same night Gillis slipped an uncensored f-word during a Dr. Seuss-inspired sketch. At sign-off, standing with musical guest Rosalia and the cast, he offered a brief apology for “earlier” and thanked the audience. That apology covered the language slip, not the monologue.
Page Six reported that “Schitt’s Creek” star Dan Levy, 43, shared an Instagram Reel on Sunday answering the monologue directly. He said he was left speechless that the material aired on live national television.
Levy laid out his view in clear terms.
"Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there,"
He continued that he has seen more men’s nipples at the gym than women “showing their bodies off.” Then he widened the charge.
"It’s complacency that has created the environment with which women are sexually assaulted and it’s a conversation opposed to a crime. Men need to be defending women more,"
Levy framed the monologue as part of a larger media habit. “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.” He closed by saying he was sorry if the post got him “in trouble with the internet, but f, k.”
Hannah Einbinder wrote, “Thank you dan” with a heart. Elizabeth Banks added, “Nailed it.” Elaine Hendrix posted, “THIS Thank you!” Flavor Flav dropped a “💯.” Page Six reached out to a representative for Gillis for comment.
Gillis described a style of gym shorts that leaves little to the imagination and treated it as comedy. Levy treated the same observation as misogyny that feeds sexual assault and declared women “superior human beings to men.” The monologue drew laughs and groans in the studio. The Instagram response drew applause from fellow entertainers. Gillis said sorry for an f-word on air. He did not retract the gym bit.
A comedian notices revealing gym clothes on national television and the lecture arrives before the next commercial break. That is the state of the argument.
