Written at the height of the second-wave feminist movement, the essay humorously explores body image and the psychological effects of being small-breasted.
[2] It later appeared in Ephron's 1975 essay collection Crazy Salad and was reprinted in The 50 Funniest American Writers, a 2011 anthology published by the Library of America.
[4] Ephron's friend and biographer Richard Cohen wrote that the essay "has been widely misread since 1972 as a self-deprecating trifle....But as in Heartburn, her novel that was to follow, the humor camouflaged considerable anger.
"[6] In 2012, the critic Wesley Morris framed "A Few Words About Breasts" as a feminist cultural critique disguised as a comic essay, praising Ephron's use of observation, self-deprecation, and hyperbole.
In The New Yorker, Ariel Levy speculated that "If Nora Ephron had been born buxom....Harry might never have met Sally," and the comedian Jessi Klein has said, "I relate to pretty much every word of [the essay]....There is something about the struggle of having to get male attention without breasts that I think made me funnier".