If you weren’t familiar with breastfeeding brand Swehl before this week, you surely are now.
This week, the company’s 45-foot billboard featuring cookbook author Molly Baz, her pregnant belly, a rhinestone bikini and two lactation cookies covering her breasts took over Times Square.
Since then, people across TikTok and the media have sounded off on the ad. The cause for furor? Not long after its debut, OOH owner Clear Channel Outdoor flagged the ad for review, saying the imagery violated its “guidelines on acceptable content.”
In response, Swehl’s media partner Brex replaced the original shot with another image from the campaign, showing Baz in jeans and a crop top.
Now, the brand is capitalizing on the controversy. Founders Elizabeth Myer and Betsy Riley told ADWEEK that Clear Channel’s adjudication underscored a hypocrisy that persists in advertising.
“The message is pretty clear: Women’s bodies are acceptable if and when they can be sexualized,” Myer said. “However, if we dare to bare our pregnant bellies—the reason for human existence—we are literally deemed ‘unacceptable.’ The irony is astounding. We should all be pissed, ready and excited for what’s next.”
Indeed, the paradox of reviewing a poster that occupies the same corner of the city where partially clothed Skims models and a glistening Calvin Klein-clad Jeremy Allen White have posed in their underwear on large-format 6-sheet billboards has not been lost on Myer, Riley, Baz or their target audience.
However, as the conversation has unfolded, the founders have seized their moment to raise awareness of their brand and its mission of empowerment.