SOURCE: Wheeler, Elizabeth. “The More and Less Meaning of Woman.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (26 February 1984): 3.

In the following review, Wheeler applies Brownmiller's ideas in Femininity to her own feelings about femininity, concluding that the book is both thoughtful and thought-provoking.

When I go through an emotional crisis, especially a romantic one, I lose weight. It's not an intentional or reasoned response. I just have that sort of metabolism, or so I tell myself.

Would I, however, have that metabolism if I didn't live in a time and in a place that values thinness? Or if my father had not told me that thin women were beautiful and fat women vulgar? I don't know, but I do lose weight. And, slender to start, I look in the mirror and find that I'm a little more model-thin, a little weaker, a little more fragile in appearance—a little bit...