Florence Pugh is the latest target of media misogyny and body-shaming, and it’s infuriating. Pugh is talented and smart, a great role model, but she keeps getting torn down.
She spoke out about it in a recent interview with The Times for her new movie, We Live in Time. “There are fine lines women have to stay within, otherwise they are called a diva, demanding, problematic,” she said. “And I don’t want to fit into stereotypes made by others. It is really exhausting for a young woman to just be in this industry, and actually other industries. But I’ve always been encouraged to have a voice.”
Pugh is using that voice now to speak up about when she was body-shamed for having “chunky thighs” and “tiny tits.” She was angry at the time, and she’s understandably still angry. “Look, not everybody has legs that go on for days,” she said.
“I remember watching this industry and feeling that I wasn’t represented. I remember godawful headlines about how Keira Knightley isn’t thin anymore, or watching women getting torn apart despite being talented and beautiful.”
Knightley was indeed the recipient of some godawful headlines. She opened up this year about the “violent, misogynistic” experience of growing up a movie star, and Pugh knows that situation all too well. Pugh told The Times:
“I’m proud I’ve stuck by myself and look the way I look—I’m really interested in people who are still angry with me for not losing more weight, or who just hate my nose ring. I am not going to be able to just change the way that things are—but I can certainly help young women coming into this industry by making conversations happen where they weren’t before.”
The idea that anyone would be angry about a famous person not losing weight beggars belief, yet here we are.
The Times piece writes of Pugh, “She has often been described as a young Kate Winslet and up close the comparison sticks: she is outspoken, whip-smart, talented.” But there’s one other thing you can add to that list: both were body-shamed by the news media. Winslet is another actress who spoke out about body-shaming this year, telling the people who crafted the headlines, “I hope this haunts you.” The sheer amount of vitriol she was subjected to was, in her own words, “horrific.”
Pugh is determined to change things for the better. “It’s always been fashionable to tell a woman how she should live her life,” she said, “Or that the decisions they are making are wrong or too loud. It’s about control, isn’t it? It’s still ultimately about suppressing one sex, and we’re dealing with it all the time.”
She explained that staying silent about misogyny was simply not an option for her. Although “most intelligent people would just be quiet and go live their life,” Pugh considered herself, “a bit too gobby and argumentative” for that. “I wouldn’t be able to not say how I feel, especially when it’s me being attacked. If people don’t want me to be this way they’re going to be severely disappointed,” she said.
There’s no doubt about it: Hollywood is a bad place to be a woman. America Ferrera’s famous speech from Barbie applies here: “You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin.” This applies to all women everywhere, of course, but with famous women, their so-called “flaws” are pointed out to the whole world. Pugh, Knightley, Winslet, and so many more have been held to impossible standards of beauty and it’s just not fair. Bring on the gobby and argumentative women.
Published: Dec 18, 2024 06:24 am