Shane Gillis can say what he likes about women’s skimpy gym shorts

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Eventually, those hideous ass-crimping gym shorts – which have absolutely escaped from the gym and are apparently now considered acceptable outerwear – were bound to become a hot topic in The Discourse. You have no doubt seen them on young women all over the place. They are tight-fitting, yes, but they also pucker along the seam that goes over the, er, intergluteal cleft.

Why don’t I let US comedian Shane Gillis describe them? ‘Have you seen the shorts? They’re, like, artificial bait colours. The wrinkles go, like, around the cheeks, and all combine at the butthole.’ So went his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live last weekend. His lead into the bit was: ‘I haven’t been to the gym in so long. I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?’ Cue media outrage.

Was the joke crass? Absolutely. Was it factually incorrect? Er, no. I mean, ‘whore’ is a value judgement. So people are free to take umbrage at the word specifically. But was his entire bit wrong? Or the product of a fevered misogynist incel’s fantasy life? Also no. Let’s call it another data point for the ‘libs getting mad at reality’ file.

Leading the charge against Gillis was nepo-baby actor, Schitt’s Creek star and beloved gay Dan Levy. He took to Instagram to heroically defend the big-booty gym-hoe community. ‘Women wearing shorts at the gym does not make them whores’, he helpfully informed us. ‘It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.’

Applause all round for Dan. Now I’d like to hear his take on how gay men have popularised the phrase ‘serving cunt’, and why that is not at all misogynist.

Levy’s Instagram reel got two million likes and drew a few other famous-ish people into the field of battle. For example, did you wake up this morning thinking, I wonder what Billie Eilish’s mother thinks of this? Well, Maggie Baird – who, aside from being Billie’s mum, is a climate-change activist and big fan of kale – ‘felt it physically’ and not in a good way. 'It’s actually dangerous', she wrote on an Instagram story sharing Levy’s post.

Flavor Flav (anyone else on here old enough to remember him?) also came out swinging, calling Levy’s hissy fit 'important allyship'. And some young’un I’ve never heard of by the name of Maren Morris gave a performative middle finger to Gillis on her Instagram, while simultaneously proving him correct by writing ‘leave my gym short wedgie out of it’.

Gen X feminist hysteric Jessica Valenti gets the prize for most frenzied hyperbole by writing of Gillis’s comments: ‘This is what turns young men into rapists.’

Jesus H Christ. Which one is it, ladies? Are we sexually liberated power goddesses, or are we shrinking violets who wilt under the male gaze? And are we really pretending that wrapping your derrière in the clingiest fabric imaginable and then doing squats in front of men is not an attempt to show off your plump, ripe peach? Of course, the edgy right-wing X-posters had a field day with the hypocrisy. ‘How dare you notice me cooter-mogging in your general direction!’, wrote one anon.

Look, I get that Gillis used a mean word. But first of all, this is comedy, not feelings time at kindergarten. Being mean is kind of the point. Secondly, this booty-shorts thing is a clearly observable phenomenon, and we ought to be able to discuss it as adults.

I propose this: if the word ‘whore’ is too triggering (also imprecise, because who knows if these chicks are actually charging), why don’t we use something a bit more quaint? Harlot, perhaps? I’ve always been fond of the term. What’s more, it reflects the, dare I say, idolatrous worship of ‘looksmaxxing’ that has become alarmingly prevalent among some people on the internet.

I am as pro-women as they get. However, I find myself growing tired of the never-ending double standard that so many liberal, leftie women and their hand-males indulge in. Remember all the bitching and moaning about ‘manspreading’? At least the men guilty of that faux pas were not showing us the seam that divides their wrinkly balls. And lots of men actually hate those crinkly gym shorts. My husband has been complaining about them for years. He calls them ‘anus pants’. Judging from the multitude of similar comments on social media from men, with many of them raising questions about hygiene, my husband is not alone.

For all the chatter about the evils of the male gaze, it turns out that lots of men don’t actually want their eyes drawn towards your anus. Sorry if that offends you.