Transvestia

those who are now assaulting the good Doctor's strange ideas about women. That he so misunderstood them as to create chaos in his own household is now noto- rious but that his essentially masculine judgement has crystallized into part of the "feminine mystique" of the post-war period is not as well understood as it should be.

On a more mundane level, the TV will find much food for thought in her analysis of the meaning of women's clothes to men (pp. 147FF.) and to women (pp. 498FF.) The old question as to whether girls dress to please men or themselves is not answered, and purposely so; she makes it clear that both are of vital importance. That feminine fashions so often tend to incapacitate the woman for masculine activities. is more gratifying to men; but the importance of dress to the girl seems to lie in donning a costume which is a sort of stage-setting for the role she expects to play until the next change. That women undergo a "person- ality change" with a shift in costume is stressed; this fact, really so evident to those who look for it, is seldom evoked in any explanation of transvestism but is probably a vital part of TV dynamics.

A brief review cannot give more than a distorted view of the author's tremendous achievement. Despite the flaws noted above, she has catalogued with meti- culous care the ingredients which make up that my- sterious aura known as "femininity". Perhaps I may take the liberty of providing an integration which Mlle. de Beauvoir does not include and perhaps could not see from her position as one of the "trees".

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It seems to me, after comparing this book with those previously reviewed (Florida Scott-Maxwell, Ashley Montagu, Elisabeth Borgese, Betty Friedan)

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