Megan Fox didn’t hesitate to shut down criticism over her latest outfit: a sheer orange dress.
The actress, 37, took to Instagram on 25 July to share pictures of the mesh maxi dress, which had horizontal stripes along the bodice and vertical stripes down the skirt. She completed the orange look - which she wore over pasties - with layered, silver necklaces, white painted nails, and dyed red hair in a bun.
In the caption of the post, the Transformers star responded to potential backlash that she could receive over the dress, as she acknowledged that she was entirely “covered”.
“Before you start angrily typing - those are not my nipples, calm down,” she wrote. “They are safely and completely hidden under nipple covers so no worries.”
She concluded: “We will all live another day without a rip in the space-time continuum.”
In the comments of Fox’s viral post, which has amassed more than 1.9m likes, many fans praised her outfit, while others defended her from online backlash.
“So sick of the witch hunt against you. Keep doing you girl,” one person wrote, while another added: “People need to touch grass at this point and stop worrying about someone else. Anyways you’re absolutely gorgeous and this outfit is.”
“Whatever you do, they’ll have to comment in a negative way,” a third person wrote. “Don’t care. You’re spectacular, Meg, and I love the way you shut up haters. Teach me the life, Mom.”
Despite the applause, there were a few critics in the comments who claimed that the actress needed to “cover up”.
Fox’s lastest Instagram post isn’t her first time speaking out about the ongoing and public reactions to her appearance. During an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2019, she discussed feeling like she’s been sexualised in Hollywood, specifically referencing a 2008 GQ issue where she was described as the magazine’s “Obsession of the Year.”
“I’m not offended if someone were to say: ‘Hey, people think you’re sexy!’ I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being sexy,” she said. “It’s just a problem that that part was so loud that it muted out the rest of who I was - and has continued to even now.”
The Jennifer’s Body star also confessed that her childhood strengths of being funny and strange “in a good way” changed when her career started to be defined by her looks.
“I was supposed to just be a sexy girl or the prettiest girl or the most beautiful - which is the most burdensome title to have to carry around, especially when you don’t feel that way about yourself,” she said. “You feel like eventually, people are going to figure out that this is not true. The shoe’s going to drop at some point and then what? What am I valued for?”
One year before Fox shared her post about the sheer dress, Florence Pugh also made headlines for wearing a similar outfit. After she shared a photo of the pink, transparent Valentino gown in July 2022, the actor was hit with a wave of backlash on social media, prompting her to respond with a follow-up post on Instagram. In the caption, she said it was “interesting to watch and witness just how easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see”.
After she acknowledged that this wasn’t the first or last time that a woman heard “what’s wrong with her body by a crowd of strangers,” she went on to criticise men on social media for how “vulgar” they can be.
“So many of you wanted to aggressively let me know how disappointed you were by my ‘tiny tits’, or how I should be embarrassed by being so ‘flat chested,’” the Don’t Worry Darling star wrote. “I’ve lived in my body for a long time. I’m fully aware of my breast size and am not scared of it. What’s more concerning is... Why are you so scared of breasts? Small? Large? Left? Right? Only one? Maybe none? What. Is. So. Terrifying.”
