Mode magazine reported that this past year the Wall Street Journal refused to run an advertisement for Lane Bryant. The photograph, which featured Anna Nicole Smith in snug jeans and a long sleeved shirt that revealed a very sedate bit of cleavage, was considered too revealing. Too revealing? All of Anna was covered but for her arms below the elbow, her neck and face, and one small bit of chest. The most modest bathing suit would have shown more breast. Ms. Smith was, indeed, posed seductively: arms behind her head, sitting on what appears to be an ottoman, eyes closed. What, exactly, one wonders, was offensive to the powers that be at the Wall Street Journal, a publication undaunted by the apparently non-offensive legions of scantily clad Calvin Klein models staring glassy eyed and malnourished from those very same pages. Two other ads made the plus-size news when they were pulled, as well: Bijan perfume’s ad campaign featuring full figured model Bella was widely canned, and the British Advertising Standards Authority killed billboards that featured a nude (but painted) Sophie Dahl, another curvaceous model, stating that they were offensive. This seemed a tad strong in a country that allows bared breasts on the second pages of its daily newspapers and features casual nudity in evening television advertisement. Dahl’s ribs were clearly visible, but she does have ample curves by modeling standards. Still, she was apparently just not thin enough.

What is interesting in these cases is not so much that publications and public censors are offended by women who, by any other standards, would be considered “normal” sized and very attractive. Certainly in any other world but the ad-world they are unlikely to be considered obscene simply because they are expressing sensuality. The INTERESTING thing is what prompts the response. After all, the companies running the ads have a right to risk offending the public or “turning them off” with larger women. The removal of these ads was on the grounds of obscenity, which is to say that the Wall Street Journal, scores of magazines around the US, and the British ASA all find big women so horrifying that they must be censored. This is not an issue of nudity. Ads featuring more flesh revealed by slender models were approved without a second glance by the same reviewers. This is about taste and the cultural standard that creates knee jerk reactions. And, when all is said and done, who censors the censors?

Ironically, it was celebrity and not size for which Anna Nicole Smith was selected for the aforementioned ad. Lane Bryant’s catalogues do not feature anyone as curvy as the hourglass-shaped blond. Many larger women have boycotted them for this precise reason, feeling that they send a mixed message to large women by selecting models who may, indeed, be a size 14 or larger, but are also six feet tall and look pretty slender by provincial standards. Yet, when they attempted to display a full figure in a nationally read publication, they were smacked down for poor taste. What, precisely is the message underneath the impulse? Even Ms. Smith would be considered, by the majority of “supersized bbw’s” (those of us who wear a dress size larger than a 24) to be quite svelte.

Recently airwaves have been inundated with advertisements for a drug called Meridia. Hailed by the medical community's non-accepting community as a solution to obesity, Meridia promises to supress appetite. The drug is a predecessor of others like FenFen, which was responsible for many untimely deaths. Meridia's advertisements feature beautiful, active, laughing women who are also what advertisers would consider obese. The reality is they are average, according to all current data on women in America. Most are between a size 14 and 22; all are quite lovely. Though each of these women is shown, in the ad, to be happy, active, and apparently in perfect health (roller skating on the beach, dancing with an admiring male), the message in the ad is clear: fat women must be altered to conform. That this constitutes genetic engineering seems not to be a problem. Yet the ad sends a message of hate and loathing to women who are genetically predisposed to have a shape unappealing to advertisers. Meridia is not about being healthy, nor was FenFen. Listen closely to the advertisement. While these lovely women dimple and smile, pushing plates of food away, a soft male voice warns, in soothing tones, of a slew of possible side effects, including a warning that "women who have anorexia should not take Meridia." What have we sewn, as a culture, if such a warning is even necessary? Does the medical community need to spend time, money, and energy on developing new ways to alter the shape of healthy women or would it be better served to develop tolerance and acceptance?

What are we afraid of? If more than half the population in our country alone (and a healthy portion of Europe) is larger than “average” in size, how could tasteful portrayals of “normal” sized people be offensive simply because they celebrated the sensual, sexy, and seductive? Perhaps the danger perceived is in accepting.

Segregation is not a new concept. And it was only in the last decade that actor Blaire Underwood found himself the subject of well disguised scandal when he, a man of color, did intimate love scenes with a white actress. Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever sparked similar debates. Why? Not because thinking, educated, and sensitive Americans couldn’t handle it, but because the closet racists of our culture didn’t want to. When Hollywood, or NBC, or any mainstream media puts its stamp of approval on something our culture tends to follow, eventually. Such images: a black man making love to a white woman, a full figured beauty celebrating her sexuality, encourage acceptance by placing an iconic representation before the public. Intolerance despises acceptance.

That’s really what it’s about. If big women find their way onto the pages of the Wall Street Journal, onto billboards, into the pages of Vogue, and Elle, and Mademoiselle, the danger is that big women will be accepted rather than maligned and oppressed. For the time being the media is getting away with segregation. Fat girls belong on the pages of BBW Magazine, Mode, and other “fat girl” publications. They belong elsewhere, marginalized, stamped forever as unacceptable. But the battle lines are crumbling. Jennifer Lopez may not be fat, but she is no Kate Moss, either. More women and men of size are standing up and refusing to take the latest pill, or buy into the newest health-club-torture-method in order to conform. And although Anna Nicole Smith is far from a fat woman’s Rosa Parks, the telltale signs are out there. Tolerance is spreading like wildfire and just as wild flowers sprout from a burnt out hillside, acceptance is cropping up where we least expect it. Who knows? Wall Street may be next.