Last week, an ad featuring cookbook author Molly Baz with her exposed pregnant belly and two cookies covering her breasts was supposed to be displayed on a billboard in Times Square. But after just three days, the image was taken down for violating “guidelines on acceptable content,” the New York Times reports.
Baz developed the recipe for “Big Titty Cookies” — her version of lactation cookies, which claim to help stimulate milk production — for the breastfeeding startup Swehl. The cheeky Times Square billboard promoting the collab featured the tagline “Just add milk.” Brex, the company that helped Swehl get the billboard up, told the Times that Clear Channel — which manages many New York billboards — had flagged the ad for review.
Brex replaced the ad with a different photo from the campaign — one of Baz eating a cookie at a kitchen counter while dressed in jeans and a crop top. On X, people pointed out that the same billboard often displays images for Skims, Calvin Klein, and Michael Kors underwear and swimsuit ads, sparking outrage that a woman’s body was deemed inappropriate only in the context of pregnancy and breastfeeding. The double standard wasn’t lost on Baz, who shared her frustration on Instagram: “Turns out these big titties and preggo belly were a little too much for times square.”
On Monday, Baz told ABC the ad was intended to celebrate breastfeeding moms, adding, “It’s super-disheartening and infuriating to me that my, kind of, first public foray into being a public mother was one that was deemed inappropriate.”
The Cut has reached out to Clear Channel for comment, and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
