Molly Baz Returns With an Eye-Catching Times Square Billboard Months After Ad Controversy (EXCLUSIVE)

This billboard is in the same spot as her other controversial ad for lactation cookies that was taken down.

Cookbook author Molly Baz is working to normalize choice in how parents feed their babies. And she's taking a stand on the issue in a big way—with a billboard in Times Square in New York City. Baz has partnered with formula company Bobbie on a campaign that features a shot of her holding her son, Gio, to her breast with one hand. In her other hand, there’s a bottle of formula.

In just one image, Baz manages to normalize nursing , destigmatize formula feeding, represent postpartum bodies, and highlight a reality: No parent has to choose a single lane when it comes to feeding their baby.

Molly Baz Is No Stranger to Controversy

This isn't Baz's first provocative billboard in Times Square. In fact, it's on the same corner where Baz appeared on another billboard earlier this year. That was an ad for lactation cookies, and it featured Baz holding two cookies over her breasts, her baby bump visible under an unbuttoned shirt.

That billboard was taken down—because even though Times Square is full of billboards featuring models in bikinis or lingerie, apparently the image of a pregnant body and an allusion to lactation is just unacceptable.

“As I sat with what that actually meant, I realized whoa, this is a way bigger deal than just, ‘Oh, they decided to take the billboard down,” Baz says in a video exclusively shared with Parents . “[I realized] there’s a real double standard in advertising and just in media in our culture.”

Baz, understandably, got “pretty fired up” after her billboard was taken down (and later put up again ).

"My baby's now out; he's alive and kicking and I do in fact breastfeed and I also feed him formula," Baz explains. "I never thought I'd be this poster woman for breastfeeding."

But with the new billboard, she’s here to make a loud, clear point: Everybody’s gotta eat—whether that’s from a breast, a bottle, or both.

Normalizing Choice in Feeding

After you welcome a baby, chances are someone will ask you a question along the lines of, “Are you breastfeeding or bottle-feeding ?” There’s almost always that “or” between the two options, as though someone couldn’t possibly be doing some of both.

As with so many aspects of motherhood, there's a false binary narrative at play. But the reality is, many parents combo-feed , and Baz is one of those mothers.

“I breastfed for the first three months, and then around the three-month mark, when I went back to work, things started to get a little dicey in terms of my availability," says Baz. "It’s really important to me that I continue to breastfeed him, but I’m also not the type of mom who is like ‘he won’t have a single drop of anything but breastmilk’ because that’s not sustainable for me."

Baz says there was a moment when her son was screaming as she was warming up frozen breast milk . She then reached for formula.

"Gio didn't really notice a difference. He didn't make any faces and he sort of took to it immediately," says Baz. "Now it's this amazing tool that I have if he needs to gain a little bit of weight, I can top him off with formula and know he's getting enough calories or if I unexpectedly have to run to a meeting or if a shoot is going longer."

Combo-feeding is far more common than the discourse around infant feeding suggests, according to lactation consultant Kaia Lacy of Low Supply Mom .

“In the U.S., combo-feeding is the predominant method of feeding for families by six months. Even though it may feel like the breastfeeder’s skeleton in the closet, it’s wildly common,” says Lacy.

Lacy says she often encounters families who combo-feed and feel a sense of failure or guilt for not nursing exclusively.

"It makes me think back on breastfeeding my first baby when I had those same feelings," Lacy explains. "I thought I must have been the only person I knew combo-feeding my baby and I wonder how my perspective about what it meant to be ‘successful’ in breastfeeding might have been different had I known how common combo-feeding actually was.”

Lacy adds that combo-feeding families often face the barrier of a lack of evidence-based guidance and support.

“Parents are sifting through Reddit forums and Facebook groups to try and unearth the information they need because they don’t feel they can get it from their pediatrician or lactation consultant,” she explains.

That’s why this campaign and similar representations of combo-feeding are essential. They have the power to show real parents that they can figure out the best feeding approach for their own families and that it doesn’t have to be a binary choice. It also shows other parents who are combo-feeding that they’re not alone, and it provides a key representation of a reality that isn’t often illuminated.

Breaking Stigmas and Shame

The sad reality is, mothers are routinely shamed no matter how they feed their babies. Formula feeding is deemed “selfish” or “the easy way out,” but nursing is constantly policed. Somehow, as a society, we’re still wildly uncomfortable with pregnant, postpartum, and lactating bodies—so we have this idea that moms “should” nurse, but only in the privacy of their own homes. Any visual representation of that feeding approach is considered “too much."

Baz saw this type of policing firsthand before she even welcomed her child.

When it comes to breaking stigmas around pregnant and postpartum bodies, feeding choices, and so much more, we have a long way to go. But visual representations of the realities of motherhood, as well as the normalization of the many valid options families have when it comes to feeding their babies, all help us get to where we need to be.

“We still need to destigmatize pregnancy, breastfeeding, formula feeding, a woman’s body in any way, shape, form, or size,” says Baz.

And that’s what she’s here to do.

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