Tuesday, February 24, 1998

Controversial ad plays in weeklies

By Keith J. Kelly

New York magazine may have balked at running an ad featuring a woman's breasts, but there's no such queasiness at weekly rivals The Village Voice and Time Out New York.

The two weekly rivals are running the ads for the one-woman play "The Top of the Bottom Half" with actress Liza Vann that tackles the topic of breast cancer.

"I don't know what they're worried about," said Time Out publisher Alison Tocci of New York. "There are scarier things out there than a woman's breasts."

David Schneiderman, publisher of The Village Voice, said "We had no problem with it. We can run those ads because our readership is more accepting."

Vann, who had a lumpectomy for breast cancer, said a major theme of the play, which kicks off March 4 at the Theatre at St. Peter's, has to do with choices that women face in their lives -- including decisions about treatment of breast cancer.

She modeled topless for the photo that is running in the Voice and Time Out ads that hit newsstands tomorrow.

She said she initially wanted to run a New York ad with a flap, and had approached the weekly in late January.

She said the magazine reserved the right to accept or reject ads based on content and asked to see what the ad looked like.

When she sent a photo showing herself from the waist up, she waited two weeks and then was told it was rejected.

"I'm not as much outraged as I am frustrated and disappointed," said Vann. She said the decision was particularly surprising in the light of New York's highly publicized battle with Mayor Giuliani over the magazine's ad campaign on the sides of buses poking fun at Hizzoner.

New York publisher Amy Churgin didn't return calls but a spokesman said the magazine only saw a photo and never got a completed copy of the proposed ad.