British actress Florence Pugh has hit back at social media users who criticised her body after she wore a sheer dress that showed her breasts in a fashion show.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, she defended her dress choice, saying: “I was excited to wear it, not a wink of me was nervous. I wasn’t before, during or even now after.”

The Midsommar actress had on Friday walked the red carpet at Valentino’s haute couture show in Rome in an eye-catching pink gown, which she suggested had been designed especially by the brand’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli.

On Saturday the star wrote on Instagram “Technically they’re covered?” and urged society to “free the f*****g nipple,” in an apparent reference to Instagram’s nudity guidelines that ban images of women’s nipples but not men’s.

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The 26-year-old on Sunday said she had always expected the commentary, but had found it “interesting to watch… just how easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see”.

Her message on Sunday evening had been liked more than 500,000 times after an hour of appearing.

“It isn’t the first time and certainly won’t be the last time a woman will hear what’s wrong with her body by a crowd of strangers, what’s worrying is just how vulgar some of you men can be,” she wrote to her 7.4 million Instagram followers.

Addressing those who had criticised the size of her breasts, Pugh said she had come to accept the “intricacies of my body that make me, me” and was now “happy with all of the ‘flaws’ that I couldn’t bear to look at when I was 14”.

The actress said the reaction had made her wonder “what happened to you to be so content on being so loudly upset by the size of my boobs and body?”

She “promise[d]” to those who had insulted her that life would get “a whole lot easier” if they respected bodies, all women and humans.