The Beauty Industry周独夫
By Aldous Huxley
肛门皲裂
The one American industry unaffected by the general depression of trade is beauty industry. American women continue to spend on their faces and bodies as much as they spent before the coming of the slump—about million pounds a week. The facts and figures are “official”, and can be accepted as being substantially true. Reading them, I was only surprid by the comparative smallness of the sums expended. From the prodigious number of advertiments of aids to beauty contained in the American magazines, I had imagined that personal appearance business must stand high up among the champions of American industry—the equal, or only just less than the equal, of bootlegging and racketeering, movies and automobiles. Still, one hundred and fifty-six million pounds a year is a tidy sum. Rather more than twice the revenue of India, if I remember rightly.
美国唯一不受大萧条影响的工业是美容业。美国妇女一如既往地花大笔钱在脸上和身上，其数目和大萧条前相当——大约每周一百万英镑。这是“官方”提供的数据，应当十分可靠。读
着这些数据，我还是感到吃惊，因为相对而言，这笔费用并不太大。美国杂志上充斥着大量的美容用品广告，故而我以为美容业应当和其它发达行业并驾齐驱——如非法酿酒、敲诈勒索、电影业、汽车业——不说旗鼓相当，至少也是相去不远。不过，每年一亿五千六百万英镑也不是个小数目，是印度国家岁入的两倍，如果我所记不差的话。
I do not know what the European figures are. Much smaller undoubtedly. Europe is poor, and a face can cost as much in upkeep as a Rolls-Royce（劳斯莱斯）. The most that the majority of European women can do is just to wash and hope for the best. Perhaps the soap will produce its loudly advertid effects; perhaps it will transform. them into the likeness of tho ravishing creatures who smile so rosily and creamily, so peachily and pearlily, from every hoarding. Perhaps, on the other hand, it may not. In any ca, the more costly experiments in beautification are still as much beyond most European means as are high-powered motor-cars and electric refrigerators. Even in Europe, however, much more is now spent on beauty than was ever spent in the past. Not quite so much more as in America, that is all. But, everywhere, the increa has been undoubtedly enormous.
元元之民
我不清楚欧洲妇女花在美容上的开销是多少，无疑要少得多。欧洲相对较穷，面部保养所需费用不亚于保养一部劳斯莱斯。大多数欧洲妇女所能做的无非是洗一下脸，就万事大吉了。或许肥皂真有广告所夸耀的功效，能把她们变得和一面面广告牌上的迷人女郎一样，笑靥如玫瑰，似奶油，若桃李，赛珍珠。或许也不尽然。无论如何，对大多数欧洲妇女来说，更昂贵的美容品正如高性能的汽车和电冰箱，是可望而不可及的。然而，就是在欧洲，美容的费用相比过去也是十分可观的了。和美国比，自是大大地不及。不过，美国也罢，欧洲也罢，美容的开销确实增长迅猛。
The fact is significant. To what is it due? In part, I suppo, to a general increa in prosperity. The rich have always cultivated their personal appearance. The diffusion of wealth—such as it is —now permits tho of the poor who are less badly off than their fathers do the same.
这一事实不容小视。所为何来？我想部分地是因为民众富裕程度普遍提高。富人一向注重修饰自己的仪容，财富的普及——虽然还不尽人意——使得穷人中境况比上辈稍好的人也能仿效一二。
But this is, clearly, not the whole story. The modern cult of beauty is not exclusively a function (in the mathematical n) of wealth. If it were, then the personal appearance industries would have been as hardly hit by the trade depression as any other business. But, as we have en, they have not suffered. Women are retrenching on other things than their faces. The cult of beauty must therefore be symptomatic of changes that have taken place outside the economic sphere. Of what changes? Of the changes, I suggest, in the status of women; of the changes in our attitude towards “the merely physical”.有趣的小白兔
但这显然不是全部原因。现代爱美的时尚并非财富的函数，即并非随财富的变化而变化。若如此，则美容业也会像其它行业一样，受到大萧条的重创。事实上，正如我们所见，它并无大碍。妇女宁愿别的方面省吃俭用，也不怠慢自己的仪容。因此爱美的时尚一定反映了经济领域以外的变化。什么变化呢？以我之见，是妇女地位的变化，是我们对“肉体而已”的态度的变化。骊山语罢清宵半
细菌战Women, it is obvious, are freer than in the past. Freer not only to perform. the generally unenviable social functions hitherto rerved to the male, but also freer to exerci the m
ore pleasing, feminine privilege of being attractive. They have the right, if not to be less virtuous than their grandmothers, at any rate to look less virtuous. The British Matron, not long since a creature of austere and even terrifying aspect, now does her best to achieve and perennially prerve the appearance of what her predecessor would have described as a Lost woman. She often succeeds. But we are not shocked—at any rate, not morally shocked. Aesthetically shocked—yes; we may sometimes be that. But morally, no. We concede that Matron is morally justified in being preoccupied with her personal appearance. This concession depends on another of more general nature—a concession to the Body, with a large B, to the Manichaean principle of evil. For we have now come to admit that the body has its rights. And not only rights—duties, actually duties. It has, for example, a duty to do the best it can for itlf in the way of strength and beauty. Christian-acetic ideas（基督教的苦行思想） no longer trouble us. We demand justice for the body as well for the soul. Hence, among other things, the fortunes made by face-cream manufacturers and beauty-specialists, by the vendors of rubber reducing belts and massage machines, by the patentees of hair-lotions and the authors of books on the culture of the abdomen.
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