From the time she was a struggling young writer and a member of the high-profile Algonquin literary clique, Dorothy Parker's reputation as a serious author has been overshadowed by her fame as a public figure and a wit. "Big Blonde" is the achievement that earned Parker her greatest literary respect and it remains a staple of anthologies and readers. Even this most famous of Parker's stories, however, is less well-known than some of her frequently cited witticisms, such as "Men seldom make passes at women in glasses." Since "Big Blonde" is the most autobiographical of Parker's stories, criticism has tended to focus on parallels to Parker's life, rather than the story's craft.

Parker has been credited with breaking the boundaries that circumscribed earlier generations of women writers in terms of both style and subject matter. Biographer Marion Meade, in Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This...