An ethereal-looking image of Molly Baz, the cookbook author, her pregnant belly exposed and her breasts covered in little more than a rhinestone bikini top and two oatmeal cookies, floated high above the Times Square.
It was a digital billboard, measuring 45 feet tall, for Baz’s lactation cookies, a milk production-boosting recipe he developed in partnership with breastfeeding startup Swehl. The slogan read: “Just add milk.”
The ad was scheduled to appear for a week, from Monday through Mother’s Day, and play for the first minute of every hour. But three days later, on Thursday, it was removed from the lineup’s rotation.
A Clear Channel representative told Brex, a company that helped Swehl place the ad on a Clear Channel-powered billboard, that the ad violated “the guidelines on acceptable content,” according to an email reviewed by The New York. Times. Brex later clarified that the original artwork was “flagged for review” and was replaced with another image from the campaign. The new creative doesn’t feature Ms. Baz’s breasts as prominently; She is sitting at the kitchen counter in jeans and a crop top, eating one of her cookies.
The billboard, however, is in a location where underwear ads from brands like Skims and Michael Kors are often posted. It seemed to be another example of what some experts have said is a double standard that persists in the advertising world: A sexualized breast is acceptable, a lactating or lactating one is not.
“As yesterday went on, Betsy and I certainly became very outraged,” said Elizabeth Myer, co-founder of Swehl with Betsy Riley, who noted that breastfeeding in public was not legal in all 50 states until 2018. “This really stands out. how we are still dealing with the systemic shame of our bodies and breasts at the highest levels.”
Clear Channel did not respond to requests for comment.
Advertising has long had an ambivalent relationship with women’s health content. It was not until 2017 that it was allowed to publish a vintage product advertisement using red liquid, as opposed to blue which is considered more palatable. In 2020, an ad by mother and baby care brand Frida that realistically depicted the pain of postpartum recovery was rejected during the Oscars. And online content related to women’s health or breastfeeding is often censored on social media, as was the case with child care company Tommee Tippee, which ran a campaign titled “Boob Life” for its breast pumps, which showed a montage of realistic vignettes of breastfeeding and breasts.
However, rejected ads can be great publicity thanks to the reach of social media. In 2015, for example, vintage underwear brand Thinx claimed that the New York City subway system would reject ads featuring a suggestive pink grapefruit or runny egg yolk, sparking a heated conversation on X ( then Twitter) and in the media. The ads finally went up. Tommee Tippee was also able to bring back her Boob Life campaign on certain social media sites due to the backlash those platforms received for initially rejecting the ad.
The reaction to Ms Baz’s biscuit campaign “completely blew us away”, Ms Myer said. When it was announced on social media, Swehl experienced a 500 percent increase in traffic to his website, attracting 40,000 new users. The brand, which was founded last year and hosts a library of free breastfeeding educational videos online and sells breastfeeding accessories, also hosts community events, virtually and in person, helping parents connect with each other and providing to hospitals with prehension kits.
“I partner with different brands quite a bit,” Baz said. “What I often see is that my organic content always outperforms brand associations simply because people know they are being shown an ad.” But “this campaign was completely different: it overtook a lot of my own organic content.”
The day the sign was replaced happened to be Ms. Baz’s birthday, and Swehl’s representatives tried to keep the news from her for as long as possible. “I’m not going to let it rain on my parade,” he said. “I just see this as an opportunity and not something that’s going to crush us.”
So far, as with most things online, the response to the advertising campaign primarily on Instagram has been mixed. Some see it as “epic” or “iconic.” One person asked: “Which is tasteless, the cookie or the photo?” Another pointed out the stark hypocrisy of the situation: “For all you pearl-clutchers, if we can manage Jeremy Allen White with his chonies on billboards all over New York,” they wrote, “I think the city can survive this tribute to Mother Abundant. Touch the exact issue.”
Ms. Myer, who will travel to New York from Los Angeles on Saturday for work events, had planned to come with her mother to celebrate Mother’s Day and see the larger image of Ms. Baz in all her glory in the Times Square. . Now, she plans to “just sleep in.”