"Dump him," says Florence Given.
"If you feel you've settled for less than you deserve, and he drains you, or you simply realise that you deserve better, dump him."
Given, or 'Floss' to her friends' has all the markings and appeal of a new-age influencer. She’s young and talented with a staunch feminist viewpoint – and she’s telling women to ditch their boyfriends.
“When people come to me with boy problems, [I tell them] there is literally no reason to stay with someone that is causing you stress,” Given tells the Standard.
“There are billions of people in the world, and you think the man who doesn’t text back and is out flirting with other girls is ‘the one’? You want to painstakingly betray yourself to fix him because you ‘believe he will change’?”
The 20-year-old explains she was that girl - the one who would defend her boyfriend no matter what - because she didn't have friends telling her she deserved better.
“I needed a ‘dump him’ friend,” Given continues. “So that’s what I’m becoming, for thousands of other people.”
When Given was was 17 and an art college student in Plymouth, she began her Instagram page (@florencegiven), which now has over 200,000 followers.
“I wanted to create a space that I could express my opinions using art as a medium,” Given recounts.
“I could see that Instagram was a great way for artists to showcase their work and get jobs, so I kick-started it off with my hand-drawn illustrations to open some minds and get people talking about all the frustrations I was having, existing as a woman and learning about the sexualisation of my body.”
Given's account began to ‘snowball’ when other feminist pages started sharing her illustrations, but her account didn’t properly take off until Given started university last year – at the London College of Fashion – where she would spend time in her dorm making and uploading artwork daily.
Now, Given’s Instagram is filled with colourful retro-inspired graphics, a mix of quotes (‘Love Sex, Hate Sexism’ and 'It's a Wonderful Day To Dump Him'), illustrations of mostly naked women – body hair and all, along with images of the designer herself. Given was also recently named as Cosmopolitan UK’s Influencer of the Year for 2019.
“I began to see that there was a hunger for conversation about all of the things women wish they could talk about with people in their everyday lives, but couldn’t. I think my page created a space for women to relate to,” Given says.
‘Dump him’ isn’t an original phrase. It can be traced back to a Von Dutch (remember them!) t-shirt Britney Spears wore bearing the slogan in the mid-2000s. Yet Given has, erm, given it a new lease of life with her Instagram account and her trademark slogans including ‘Life is short, dump them’ and ‘It’s a wonderful day to dump him’.
As the slogans suggest, Given is single by choice – actively choosing ‘to demand better for my life and for myself’.
“That’s not to say that being in a relationship is the opposite of that”, Given continues. “Being in a relationship can be just as enriching, but for me right now, after coming out of a very toxic relationship, being single and embracing it has been my form of self-care.”
While Given denies being single is a part of her personal brand, she says it’s important to show women an ‘alternative narrative’ and that being single isn’t something to be ashamed of.
“It isn’t a temporary state where you’re waiting, lonely and bored,” Given says. “I used to view being single as something to be embarrassed by, but I’m totally embracing this chapter of my life as a time where I get to figure out who I am outside of a relationship. But I also think you can learn about yourself in a relationship too, just in a very different way.
"If someone could add value to my life and enrich it more than it already is by me being stress free and single – then why not? I’d welcome that person with open arms! The point of my message about being single is to demand better for yourself.”
Like other influencers before her, Given has also been able to monetize her designs by creating her shop at florencegiven.com, where fans can buy t-shirts and prints emblazoned with their favourite designs. Given has cracked the celebrity market as well, with Love Island alum Megan Barton Hanson wearing one of Given’s t-shirts with the slogan ‘Stop Valuing Women Based on Their Sexual History’ on Good Morning Britain last year. Given also designed the merchandise for Rita Ora’s Girls Tour in 2018.
She's currently in the process of writing her first book and hopes her Instagram account to continues to inspire women.
“I want women to learn to love the sh*t out of themselves and put themselves first,” Given says.
“You deserve nothing short of exactly what you want in a relationship. Stop settling. If you’re compromising your identity or the way you express yourself, if you feel deflated after talking to them, if you feel like you’re giving more than you’re receiving, if you stopped doing things you used to love before you were in a relationship, dump him.”
For more from Florence, follow her on Instagram @florencegiven and shop her designs at florencegiven.com.
