Florence Pugh is tired of her body and fashion creating discourse

Florence PughPhoto: Pascal Le Segretain (Getty Images)

Florence Pugh has sparked fervent discourse over her fashion choices multiple times, most recently when she wore a sheer purple Valentino dress to Paris Fashion Week earlier this summer. Last year, the Oppenheimer star went viral for wearing a similar hot pink gown to a Valentino show in Rome. But while Pugh is no stranger to sending a message, she’d really prefer if her looks weren’t seen as so much of a statement in the first place.

Speaking to White Noise actor Jodie Turner-Smith for Elle’s Style Awards, Pugh addressed the same detractors she previously called out (in response to the original Valentino dress) for being willing to “totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see... [even] with your job titles and work emails in your bio.”

“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,” Pugh said. “I think the scariest thing for me are the instances where people have been upset that I’ve shown ‘too much’ of myself. When everything went down with the Valentino pink dress a year ago, my nipples were on display through a piece of fabric, and it wound people up.” (In her Instagram response last year, Pugh addressed this blowback by saying “What’s more concerning is…. Why are you so scared of breasts? Small? Large? Left? Right? Only one? Maybe none? What. Is. So. Terrifying.”)

“It’s the freedom that people are scared of; the fact I’m comfortable and happy,” Pugh continued in the Elle interview. “Keeping women down by commenting on their bodies has worked for a very long time. 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].”

In the actor’s own words, “#fuckingfreethefuckingnipple.”