新视野大学英语第三版第四册课文及翻译(5)

我相信，大多数男性都不会对自己的相貌感到过分自傲。如果他们偶尔想到自己外表的话，他们愿意认为自己样貌中等。长相普通不会使他们有任何烦恼，因为普通就已经是很好了。男性不是特别注重自己的外貌，也不会从美学的角度去审视自己。他们的打扮方式主要就是刮刮胡子，就像打理自家草坪一样。对于一位男性来说，如果能花四分钟刮刮胡子，结束之后再把粘到头发上的剃须膏擦净，又没有出血太厉害，他就觉得自己已经尽心尽力了。

Women do not look at themselves this way. If I had to guess what most women think about their appearance, it would be: \the beauty industry. She has trouble thinking I'm beautiful, She magnifies the smallest imperfections in her body and imagines them as glaring flaws the whole world will notice and ridicule.

女性可不是这样看待自己的。如果非要我猜测大多数女性对自己的相貌是如何评价的话，那肯定是：“还不够好。”一位女士，无论她看起来多么吸引人，她对自己的看法总是由于受美容业的影响而蒙着一层阴影。要她认为“我很漂亮”是一件难事。她把身体上的极小的不完美之处加以放大，并且幻想这些缺点十分明显，以至于全世界的人都会注意到并且嘲笑她。

Why do women consider their looks so deficient? This chronic insecurity isn't inborn, but created through the interaction of many complex psychological and societal factors, beginning with the dolls we give them as children. Girls grow up playing with dolls proportioned so that, if they were human, they would be seven feet tall and weigh

61 pounds, with tiny thighs and a large upper body. This is an absurd standard to live up to, especially when you consider the size of the doll's waist, a relative measurement physically impossible for a living human to achieve. Contrast this absurd standard with that presented to little boys with their \figures\Most of the toys that young boys have played with were weird-looking, like the one called Buzz-Off that was part human, part flying insect. This guy was not a looker, but he was still extremely self-confident. You could not imagine him saying to the others, \

为什么女性会把自己的外貌想得这么差呢？这种长期的不安全感并不是与生倶来的，而是由许多复杂的心理和社会因素的相互作用造成的，从小时候大人们给她们买洋娃娃时就开始了。女孩成长过程中摆弄的洋娃娃，如果按照身材比例还原为真人大小的话，就会是 7 英尺高，61 英磅重，大腿纤细，上身丰满。要达到这样的标准是很荒唐的，尤其是当我们想想那种洋娃娃的腰围尺寸，就知道其相对尺寸对任何一个活人来说都是不可企及的。与女孩玩具的这种荒唐标准相比，小男孩们得到的“动作玩偶”却是完全不同的模样。大多数男孩的玩具都样貌古怪，例如那个叫作“蜜蜂侠”的玩偶，一半像人，一半像会飞的昆虫。这个玩偶尽管样子不好看，但仍然非常自信。你肯定无法想象他会问别人说：“这个配饰的紫罗兰色和这件外套配不配呢？”

But women grow up thinking they need to look like Barbie dolls or girls on magazine covers, which for most women is impossible. Nonetheless, the multibillion-dollar beauty industry, complete with its own aisle in the grocery store, is devoted to constant warfare on female self-esteem, convincing women that they must buy all the newest moisturizing creams, bronzing powders and appliances that promise to \once saw an Oprah Show in which supermodel Cindy Crawford dispensed makeup tips to the studio audience. Cindy had all these middle-aged women apply clay masks and other \she stressed how important it was to adhere to the guidelines, like applying products via the tips of their fingers to protect elasticity. All the women dutifully did this, even though it was obvious to any rational observer that, no matter how carefully they applied these products, they would never have Cindy Crawford's face or complexion. 然而，女性在成长过程中却认为自己应该长得像芭比娃娃或杂志的封面女郎那样，这对大多数女性来说是不可能的。尽管如此，产值达几十亿美元的美容业，在超市化妆品销售专区的配合下，总是在不停地攻击着女性的自尊，使其相信自己只有购买最新的保湿面霜、古铜散粉，以及各种美容器具，才能“激发和恢复”肌肤活力。我曾经看过一期《奥普拉脱口秀》，在节目中，超级名模辛迪?克劳馥和演播室里的观众分享了自己的化妆秘诀。辛迪要求这些中年妇女在脸上敷上黏土面膜和其他去皱产品；她还强调一定要遵守这些方法，例如：往脸上涂抹这些产品时，要用指尖，这样可以保护皮肤的弹性。所有这些妇女都非常忠实地按照辛迪说的做了。可是对任何一个理智的旁观者来说，无论她们如何认真地使用这些产品，她们都不可能拥有辛迪那样的面容或肤色。

I'm not saying that men are superior. I'm just saying that you're not going to get a group of middle-aged men to plaster cosmetics to themselves under the instruction of Brad Pitt in hopes of looking more like him. Men don't face the same societal focus purely on physical beauty, and they're encouraged to reach out to other characteristics to promote their self-esteem. They might say to Brad: \yeah? Well, what do you know about lawn care, pretty boy?\

我并不是说男性优于女性。我的意思是你不可能让一群中年男子在布拉德?皮特的指导下把化妆品敷到自己脸上，期望自己能看起来更像布拉德。与女性不同，男性的外貌美不是社会所关注的唯一焦点。人们会鼓励男性借助其他特征来提升自尊。他们也许会对布拉德说：“是吗？那么帅哥，你对草坪维护又知道多少？” Of course women argue that they become obsessed with appearance as a reaction to pressure from men. The truth is that most men think beauty is more than just lipstick and perfume and take no notice of these extra details. I have never once, in more than 40 years of listening to men talk about women, heard a man say, \had gorgeous fingernails!\To most men, little things like fingernails are all homogeneous anyway, and one woman's flawless pink polish is exactly as invisible as another's bare nails.