The Beauty Industry译文

The Beauty Industry

By Aldous Huxley

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. These facts and figures are “official”, and can be accepted as being substantially true. Reading them, I was only surprised by the comparative smallness of the sums expended. From the prodigious number of advertisements 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 advertised effects; perhaps it will transform. them into the likeness of those 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 case, 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 increase has been undoubtedly enormous.

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 suppose, to a general increase in prosperity. The rich have always cultivated their personal appearance. The diffusion of wealth—such as it is —now permits those 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 sense) 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 seen, 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”.

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。

Women, it is obvious, are freer than in the past. Freer not only to perform. the generally unenviable social functions hitherto reserved to the male, but also freer to exercise the more 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 preserve 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 itself 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.

妇女无疑比以往更自由了，不仅能更自由地担负专属男人的、相当棘手的社会职责，也能更自由、更惬意地展示女性的魅力。她们在行为上还得像祖母那样恪守道德，但在外表上却无须如此。曾几何时，英国的太太们还是面色严峻，令人生畏，可现在她们不厌其烦地梳妆打扮，想永久保持自己的容颜，这样子从前的妇人见了，定会称之为荡妇的。这打扮常常会奏效，对此我们并不感到惊诧——至少在道德上，但在美感上——是的，有时不免如此。我们承认太太们注重修饰仪容在道德上无可厚非，这一认可建立在另一更宽泛的认可之上——对肉体的认可，对摩尼教关于物质之恶的教义的认可。因为我们逐渐承认肉体有其权利，非但如此——肉体还有义务，如尽力展示力与美的义务。基督教的苦行思想不再困扰我们，我们要求肉体像灵魂那样受到公正的对待。正因为如此，面霜生产商、美容师、橡皮减肥带和按摩机的销售商、发乳专利的获得者、以及如何调理腹部的书籍的作者能才大发其财。

What are the practical results of this modern cult of beauty? The exercises and massage, the health motors and the skin foods –to what have they led? Are women more beautiful than they were? Do they get something for the enormous expenditure of energy, time and money demanded of them by the beauty-cult? There are questions which it is difficult to answer. For the facts seem to contradict themselves. The campaign for more physical beauty seems to be both a tremendous success and a lamentable failure. It depends on how you look at the results.

这一现代爱美时尚实际效果到底如何呢？锻炼和按摩，健身摩托和护肤剂——它们产生什么效果？妇女是否比原先更美了？她们花费了大量的精力、时间和金钱，得到了什么？这些问题不易回答，因为事实似乎自相矛盾。这场轰轰烈烈的美容运动似乎既是巨大的成功，又是可悲的失败，这取决于你如何看待所谓的效果。

It is a success in so far as more women retain their youthful appearance to a greater age than in the past. “Old ladies” are already becoming rare. In a few years, we may well believe, they will be extinct. White hair and wrinkles, a bent back and hollow cheeks will come to be regarded as medievally old-fashioned. The crone of the future will be golden, curly and cherry-lipped, neat-ankled and slender. The Portrait of the Artist’s Mother will come to be almost indistinguishable, at future pictures shows, from the Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter. This desirable consummation will be due in part to skin foods and injections of paraffin-wax, facial surgery, mud baths, and paints, in part to improved health, due in its turn to a more rational mode of life. Ugliness is one of the symptoms of disease, beauty of health. In so far as the campaign for more

beauty is also a campaign for more health, it is admirable and, up to a point, genuinely successful. Beauty that is merely the artificial shadow of these symptoms of health is intrinsically of poorer quality than the genuine article. Still, it is a sufficiently good imitation to be sometimes mistakable for the real things. The apparatus for mimicking the symptoms of health is now within the reach of every moderately prosperous person; the knowledge of the way in which real health can be achieved is growing, and will in time, no doubt, be universally acted upon. When that happy moment comes, will every woman beautiful—as beautiful, at any rate, as the natural shape of her futures, with or without surgical and chemical aid, permits?

所谓成功，是说和从前相比，现在更多的妇女能够长久地留住青春的容颜，“老妇人”日渐减少，而且不久的将来准会销声匿迹。一头银发、满脸皱纹、弓腰驼背、牙齿全无——这一切都像中世纪一样古老悠远。未来的老妇人将有着金色的卷发、樱桃般的红唇、匀称的双腿，苗条的身材，未来画家笔下的母亲们和画家笔下的女儿们几乎难分彼此。这一可喜的成功部分地得益于护肤剂、注射粗石蜡、面部整形、泥浴和化妆品，部分地得益于健康的身体，而身体的健康则得益于日趋合理的生活方式。丑陋是疾病的反映，美丽是健康的反映。追求美就是追求健康，就这点而言，这是值得称道的，而且，在某种程度上，也的确是成功的。美容是健康的表象幻影，在本质上要比真品次一等；不过，这一赝品相当不错，有时到了以假乱真的地步。制造表面健康的物品每一个中等富裕的人都负担得起，而获得真正健康的养生之道也日益推广，并且肯定会很快得到普遍运用。当那一幸福的时刻来临时，是不是妇女个个都美丽动人——不论是否整容，是否涂脂抹粉——，个个都天生丽质，要多美有多美？

The answer is emphatically: No. For real beauty is as much affair of the inner as

of the outer self. The beauty of a porcelain jar is a matter of shape, of color, of surface texturing. The jar may be empty or tenanted by spiders, full of honey or stinking slime—it makes no different to its beauty or ugliness. But a woman is alive, and her beauty is therefore not skin keep. The surface of the human vessel is affected by the nature of its spiritual contents. I have seen women who, by the standards of a connoisseur of porcelain, were ravishingly lovely. Their shape, their color , their surface texture were perfect. And yet they were not beautiful. For the lovely vase was either empty or filled with some corruption. Spiritual emptiness or ugliness shows through. And conversely, there is an interior light that can transfigure forms that the pure aesthetician would regard as imperfect or downright ugly.

答案是斩钉截铁的：不！因为真正的美既是外在的，又是内在的。瓷瓶的美在于形态，在于色彩，在于质地；瓶子或空无一物，或蜘蛛成群，或盛满蜂蜜，或粘满泥浆，但无碍于其美丑。但女人是有生命的，所以她的美就不是皮相。若把人比作器皿，其外表受内在精神的影响。我曾见有些女人，照瓷器鉴赏家的标准，算得上迷人可爱，其体态、色彩和质地都是绝佳，但她们不美丽，因为这只可爱的花瓶或是空空如也，或是污秽不堪。内心的空虚和丑陋一目了然。相反，内在的光彩可以改变美学家认为不完美或极端丑陋的形体。

There are numerous forms of psychological ugliness. There is an ugliness of stupidity, for example, of unawareness (distressingly common among pretty women). An ugliness also of greed, of lasciviousness, of avarice. All the deadly sin, indeed, have their own peculiar negation of beauty. On the pretty faces of those especially who are trying to have a continuous “good time,” one sees very often a kind of bored sullenness that ruins all their charm. I remember in particular two

young American girls I once met in North Africa. From the porcelain specialist’s point of view, they were beautiful. But the sullen boredom of which I have spoken was so deeply stamped into their fresh faces, their gait and gestures expressed so weary a listlessness. That it was unbearable to look at them. These exquisite creatures were positively repulsive.

内在的丑陋形式多种多样。有一种愚蠢的丑陋，如没有自知之明的丑陋（可悲的是，这在漂亮女人当中很常见）。还有贪得无厌的丑陋、淫荡好色的丑陋。说真的，所有的重罪无一不对美加以自身特殊的否定。特别是那些想青春永驻的妇人，漂亮的脸蛋上常常流露着郁郁寡欢、百无聊赖的神情，没有丝毫的魅力可言。我尤其记得在北非遇见的两位美国女郎，从瓷器鉴赏家的眼光看，她们是很美，但我前文提及的郁郁寡欢、百无聊赖的表情是那样深深地印在她们娇嫩的脸上，举手投足又是那样慵懒懈怠、无精打采，让人看了真受不了。这些美丽的尤物绝对令人生厌。

Still commoner and no less repellent is the hardness which spoils so many pretty faces. Often, it is true, this air of hardness is due not to psychologist causes, but to the contemporary habit of over-painting. In Pairs, where this over-painting is most pronounced, many women have ceased to look human at all. Whitewashed and ruddled, they seem to be wearing masks. One must look closely to discover the soft and living face beneath. But often the face is not soft, often it turns out to be imperfectly alive. The hardness and deadness are from within. They are the outward and visible signs of some emotional or instinctive disharmony, accepted as a chronic condition of being. We do not need a Freudian to tell us that this disharmony is often of a sexual nature.

更常见且同样令人生厌的是表情冷漠，它使无数俊俏的脸蛋为之减色。说真的，这种冷漠的表情往往并非由于心理原因，而是现代人浓妆艳抹的习性造成的。在巴黎，这一情况最为显著，许多妇女脸上瞧不出一点人的样子，涂得刷白，抹得通红，活像是戴了面具，要凑近才能看见底下那张生动柔和的脸。但常常那张脸并不柔和，而且生动得有些牵强。冷酷和呆板来自于内心，是情绪和天性不和谐的外在表现，这种不和谐并非一朝一日形成，而是性关系失衡造成的，这点不懂精神分析的人也看得出来。

So long as such disharmonies continue to exist, so long as there is good reason for sullen boredom, so long as human beings allow themselves to be possessed and hagridden by monomaniacal vices., the cult of beauty is destined to be ineffectual. Successful in prolonging the appearance of youth, or realizing or simulating the symptoms of health, the campaign inspired by this cult remains fundamentally a failure. Its operations do not touch the deepest source of beauty—the experiencing soul. It is not by improving skin goods and point rollers, by cheapening health motors and electrical hair-removers, that the human race will be made beautiful; it is not even by improving health. All men and women will be beautiful only when the social arrangements give to every one of them an opportunity to live completely and harmoniously, when there is no environmental incentive and no hereditary tendency towards monomaniacal vice. In other words, all men and women will never be beautiful. But there might easily be fewer ugly human beings in the world than there are at present. We must be content with moderate hope.

只要这种不和谐继续存在，只要郁郁寡欢、百无聊赖有存在的理由，只要人类不摆脱种种偏执恶习的支配和困扰，爱美的时尚注定是徒劳无功的。这一场轰轰烈烈的运动虽能

留住青春的容颜，获得真正的或表面的健康，但归根结底还是失败的，因为它没有触及美最深、最根本之处——有感知力的灵魂。单靠提高护肤剂和卷发器的质量，单靠降低健身摩托和电动去毛器的价格，甚至单靠改善身体状况，人类不会变得更美丽。只有当社会给予每个人机会去充实和谐地生活，只有当环境刺激和遗传因素不导致偏执恶习，人类才会变得美丽。换言之，人类永远不可能变得更美丽。不过，丑陋的人会越来越少，这一并不过分的愿望还是很可能实现的，对此我们该感到知足。