This Is Us star and inadvertent short-shorts icon Milo Ventimiglia is setting the record straight on those headline-making ultra-short shorts, and I kind of wish he wouldn’t.
For those who may have forgotten — just kidding, anyone whose eyes have glimpsed the glory of Ventimiglia’s bulging thighs emerging from the sky-high hems of a pair of gym shorts shorter than god’s own daisy dukes could obviously never forget such a sight — Ventimiglia made headlines back in April after the actor was photographed leaving the gym sporting a pair of exceptionally short gym shorts. The short shorts seen round the internet sparked a new round of inseam discourse, one that issued a significant challenge to last year’s TikTok-sanctioned five-inch decision.
While the brevity of Ventimiglia’s hemline begged the question of whether there might be such as thing as too-short short shorts, we — and the rest of society — ultimately arrived at the nearly unanimous decision that when it comes to shorts, the shorter the better (“so long as you’re not bordering on a public indecency charge,” as InsideHook’s Logan Mahan put it). The photo of Ventimiglia was hailed as a harbinger of spring and the scantily-clad summer of sex to come, and the upcoming season has since been declared the Summer of Massive Thighs in honor of our short-shorts king.
Now, however, Ventimiglia has issued a shocking twist to the short shorts narrative that has already defined summer 2021. According to the star, the brevity of his shorts has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the shorts in question were actually just “normal length,” he claimed during a recent appearance on The Talk.
“I swear to god this is just a guy leaving the gym,” Ventimiglia told the show’s co-hosts when the topic of the photo inevitably came up. “The shorts are normal length, but when I work out I kind of fold them up just so I can work a little harder.”
It’s worth noting that this shorts-hiking habit is one the star shares with many prominent soccer pros, most notably Alexis Sanchez and Cristiano Ronaldo. But while one InsideHook editor who happens to know a thing or two about soccer players and their thigh-baring tells me the shorts-shortening maneuver is “100% a vanity, ‘check out my fucking beautiful legs’ thing,” Ventimiglia claims that’s not what he was going for at all. In fact, as he told The Talk co-hosts, “I wasn’t even thinking about it.”
While Ventimiglia may not have intended to grace the world with his iconic massive thigh moment, he seems to have embraced his new role as the official face (and quads) of Massive Thighs Summer. The star told The Talk he’s “excited” about the internet’s outpouring of thirst for his hiked-up shorts — even if he “wasn’t expecting it” — and earlier this month he shared a close-up shot of the shorts themselves on Instagram along with the caption, “Ride em high kids.”
Looking at that photo, it still seems like the hemline of the garment in question probably falls short of what we might have previously considered “normal length” shorts for men before Ventimiglia enlightened us all, but it’s certainly possible some hemline-hiking contributed to the ultra-short look the star was sporting in the now iconic photo.
Regardless, Ventimiglia owes no man, woman or child an explanation for those beautiful shorts, and whether you roll them, hike them, give them a DIY trim or just go out and throw down some money on the shortest shorts you can find, our stance remains the same: to echo our fearless short-shorts short king himself, “Ride em high kids.”
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