When Florence Pugh wore a sheer dress, it seemed like everyone on the internet had an opinion on her nipples being out. That’s weird since when she is literally topless in Oppenheimer, and they all just let that go, but when Pugh herself chose to wear a sheer top, they all had something to say. A woman is comfortable in her body, and people on social media feel like they need to control that, but what’s been great is that Pugh doesn’t seem to be letting their comments get to her. Pugh is the cover for Elle UK for October and opened up to Jodie Turner-Smith (who interviewed her for the piece) about the 2022 Valentino show.
Famously, Florence Pugh went to the show, and her hot pink dress was the talk of the town, mainly because the top of the dress was sheer, and you could see Pugh’s nipples through it. For weeks, all people could think to do was comment on how they didn’t appreciate Pugh’s look, and the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter what they thought!
For the most part, women are consistently told to hide their body (particularly their nipples) from the public eye, and Pugh doing the opposite of that norm and being comfortable in her skin has made for many a faux outrage post over the dress.
Let women exist happily in their skin
During her chat with Turner-Smith, Pugh talked about how she didn’t want to hide her body from the world. She said, “I speak the way I do about my body because I’m not trying to hide the cellulite on my thigh or the squidge in between my arm and my boob: I would much rather lay it all out. I think the scariest thing for me are the instances where people have been upset that I’ve shown ‘too much’ of myself.”
Personally, I have started to accept a lot of aspects of my own body that I didn’t like, because of Pugh’s openness about loving hers. I’m someone who has constantly wanted to change something about myself—wouldn’t eat for a day because maybe that’d make me feel better, or would work out to the point where I couldn’t move the following day all because I wanted to fit what society told me was beautiful. Pugh is, obviously, gorgeous, and her willingness to show her body has made it easier to look at my own body and find the beauty in it.
That’s something that people feel the need to control. Pugh talked about it in her chat with Turner-Smith, noting that it isn’t her nipples that people had a problem with but that she was free in her expression of her body that they didn’t like and felt like they had to control.
“It’s the freedom that people are scared of; the fact I’m comfortable and happy. Keeping women down by commenting on their bodies has worked for a very long time,” Pugh said. “I think we’re in this swing now where lots of people are saying, ‘I don’t give a shit.’ Unfortunately, we’ve become so terrified of the human body that we can’t even look at my two little cute nipples behind fabric in a way that isn’t sexual. We need to keep reminding everybody that there is more than one reason for women’s bodies [to exist].”
One of things Pugh went on to say that really connected with me was her talking about how the response to her dress from women was one of excitement because we could see how much Pugh was loving her life, her look, and the time she was having at the show. “Women were drawn to the fact that I was completely happy. That’s been a massive aspect of my career and my life: accepting who I am, and not running away from it,” she said.
The truth is that women have constantly been forced to feel badly about their bodies because of how other people want to make us look at ourselves, and it frankly takes celebrities like Pugh to stand up and just say “f**k it” for a lot of us to realize that our bodies are beautiful, no matter what some random anonymous person on social media wants to say about them.
(featured image: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
