Florida's Fort Lauderdale boasts seven miles of beaches, 56 golf courses, 214 tennis courts, 165 miles of navigable waterways and so forth. But of all the figures in the Chamber of Commerce's latest tourism ad campaign, one really jumped out—that of model Nancy Traylor. Which was fine with her until the local press denounced her body language as "sleazy, shortsighted and sexist," and the city fathers decided last month to kill the Traylor ad. Cracked Mayor E. Clay Shaw, tastelessly compounding the problem: "Perhaps if the chamber would have gotten someone with larger breasts, the name Fort Lauderdale would have stood out more."
That comment didn't exactly please either Vice-Mayor Virginia Young, also a foe of the ad, or the model herself, a divorced mother of two who grew up in Fort Lauderdale. She was miffed at first by the cancellation. "They're prudes," she complained. "How can a T-shirt and shorts be sexy? If I wanted to be sexy," she added, "I would have slit the shorts up the sides..."
Ah, well, modesty has its rewards. Whatever the furor did for Fort Lauderdale, it hasn't hurt Traylor's bookings. Since the controversy she's been hit by a wave of offers, including an audition for CBS' Dallas. "I'm in it for the money," she says sweetly, and though she has rejected a few bids to act in the buff, Traylor says seminude might be okay if the setting is "tasteful." Beyond that, she is taking her case to the people—by marketing the ad nationwide without the copy. "I want to be the Fort Lauderdale poster girl," she gushes. She'll face no competition from the city's new Madison Avenue image: a fully clothed couple strolling hand in hand along those seven miles of strand.
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