In case you missed it, last week, Times Square was the home of a 45-foot billboard featuring an image of pregnant celebrity cookbook author Molly Baz. But you probably did miss it, because just days after the image went up, it came right back down. The ad, which was developed in partnership with inclusive breastfeeding brand Swehl, featured a mostly nude Baz holding lactation cookies over her breasts, along with the tagline “Just Add Milk.” It went up Monday and was scheduled to appear for an entire week. But it was removed on Thursday, not even making it until Mother’s Day weekend, with billboard company Clear Channel deeming it inappropriate. Clear Channel told Brex, the company that aided Swehl in the advertising deal, that the image violated its “guidelines on acceptable content,” according to a New York Times report. The image reportedly was “flagged for review,” and was replaced by another image from the campaign which was deemed decent enough for public view. In that image, Baz is fully clothed. Clear Channel did not reply to an inquiry from Fast Company. It can’t be ignored that near-nudeness is hardly an uncommon sight when it comes to billboards in Times Square. In fact, it’s practically a hub for underwear brands like Aerie, Calvin Klein, and Skims to promote their products. In New York, images of models in their underwear are more common than Starbucks and the smell of urine in subway stations. But when it came to an exposed pregnant belly, for Clear Channel, that somehow crossed the line. Baz tells Fast Company that she’s genuinely “disheartened” over the takedown. “It’s 2024. Are we for real?” she asks. “Why is it that we are so uncomfortable seeing a pregnant woman’s half-bare body at a 45-foot scale, and yet a sexualized image of a woman in lingerie doesn’t make us bat an eye?” She’s not the only one asking. On social media, the move has caused a viral discussion among women, mothers, breastfeeders, feminists, and allies who are, unsurprisingly, outraged. Shortly after the image was removed, Baz posted on Instagram: “i’ve done a lot of campaigns in my day but as soon as my pregnant belly and breasts got involved things apparently got real uncomfy for some folks. take one look at the landscape of other billboards in times square and i think you’ll see the irony. bring on the lingerie so long as it satiates the male gaze.” The post quickly garnered over 95,000 likes and thousands of supportive comments. Other founders and public figures, including Emily Weiss (Glossier), Melanie Masrin (Ghia), Laura Modi (Bobbie), and Camila Marcus (Westbourne), have spoken out in support of the campaign, too. “Why is America so uncomfortable with women and their bodies?” wrote Robin Arzon, vice president of Peloton. Likewise, racecar driver and keynote speaker Julia Landauer remarked: “Hands in pants foreplay on a billboard is fine, but not a more covered pregnant woman promoting maternal and baby health?” Baz tells Fast Company that the censorship sends women a harmful message, that pregnant bodies are somehow less “worthy of celebrating” than non-pregnant ones. It’s a genuinely sad debate, yet Swehl co-founder Elizabeth Myer says she knew what the campaign, which was about empowerment, was up against. “Swehl is a humorous and cheeky breastfeeding platform with a serious mission: to change dated narratives around feeding our babies and having agency over our own bodies and experiences,” Myer tells Fast Company. “We’ve always leaned into branding and messaging as our strategic vehicle for resonating with this generation of parents, and we anticipated that this campaign had a lot of legs to spark a conversation in all the right places to bring further awareness to the double standards placed on women in our society.” Sadly, most New Yorkers didn’t get to catch a glimpse of the billboard last week. However, the backlash over the perceived disgust of pregnant women’s bodies has generated an important conversation all the same. Pregnant bodies are not shocking or obscene, and bias around women’s bodies needs a more full-frontal examination. Because as Baz puts it, “It seems like somewhere along the way, some folks lost sight of one crucial piece of this puzzle: that preggo belly and those lactating breasts are how every single one of us got here in the first place.”

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