Florence Pugh Isn’t Having the Gross Reaction to Her Body

Florence Pugh is no stranger to being in the public eye. From her shining moment in the 2016 movie Lady Macbeth, she instantly became one of the most talked about young actresses in the game currently. The problem with that is that everyone then seems to have an opinion on the things she does and what she wears. In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Pugh talked about a great many things, and two things really stuck out in the piece: one being her breakup with Zach Braff that they kept quiet because of how everyone seems to have an opinion on their relationship, and the other being how she feels about the outrage over her sheer Valentino dress.

At the Valentino Haute Couture Fall/Winter 22/23 fashion show, Pugh wore a vibrant pink dress with a sheer top that was, in a way, see-through. While we’ve seen countless male celebrities go to events with just a jacket on and their full chest exposed, we rarely get to see that same courtesy extended to female celebrities, and it was very clear that people had their own personal issues with it when Pugh wore the dress, and instead of minding their own business, they shamed her for it and commented on her breasts and her body as if they had any right to do so.

“What’s been interesting to watch and witness is just how easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see. You even do it with your job titles and work emails in your bio..?” she wrote, at the time on Instagram, and it was a testament to her own strength and the disgust that many of us (and obviously Pugh) felt at the men who felt the need to comment on her body.

There were plenty of people, at the time, who thought that they could simply because Pugh is a public figure, and they feel some warped right towards her choices and her body, but it was made clear by her Instagram post that Pugh wasn’t going to take people talking about her body on the chin.

Now, in the interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Pugh talked about her own confidence in her body and her “small breasts” that everyone felt the need to talk about. “I was comfortable with my small breasts. And showing them like that — it aggravated [people] that I was comfortable,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “It was just alarming, how perturbed they were. They were so angry that I was confident, and they wanted to let me know that they would never wank over me. Well, don’t.”

A woman’s body is her own

What this boils back down to yet again is the policing of the female body and what people think they should be able to comment on. Not to get too personal, but as someone who also doesn’t have larger breasts, I loved that Pugh was proudly wearing the Valentino gown and not afraid to fight back against those who voiced their “opinions” on her body.

I like that she used her platform to strike back at the commentary on her own body by saying what needed to be said: It’s her body and she didn’t have to hide aspects of it away to fit within the male gaze. Pugh’s confidence is something that I know I admire, and many others who love her and her work admire as well, so I hope she continues to fight back against those who feel the need to comment on her existence, but then I also want this to stop.

A woman doesn’t have to answer to anyone, especially a man, about what she chooses to wear. We’ve had to go through life making sure our outfit choices don’t hinder the male student body from their classwork, and we’ve had to adjust what makes us comfortable in order to make sure that men are okay, and enough is enough.

(featured image: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)