译 稿 | 苏珊·桑塔格：女人的美丽：是贬低还是力量（1975）
女人的美丽：是贬低还是力量（1975）
For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. Persons then were assumed to be what we now have to call—lamely, enviously—whole persons. If it did occur to the Greeks to distinguish between a person's “inside” and “outside,” they still expected that inner beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind. The well-born young Athenians who gathered around Socrates found it quite paradoxical that their hero was so intelligent, so brave, so honorable, so seductive—and so ugly. One of Socrates' main pedagogical acts was to be ugly—and teach those innocent, no doubt splendid-looking disciples of his how full of paradoxes life really was.
希腊人认为，美是一种品德，一种美德（excellence，拉丁语中的virtue）。那时的人们被认为是“完人”，尽管这个称呼现在听起来令人生疑又带些嫉妒。如果希腊人确实区分过人的“内在”和“外在”，那么希腊人一定期盼内在美能够和其他类型的美联系起来。出身高贵的希腊的年轻人们围在苏格拉底身边，他们惊讶地发现他们心目中的英雄是如此智慧，如此勇敢，如此正派，如此富有魅力，然而也如此丑陋，这似乎是个悖论。“丑”是苏格拉底的教学法之一，他以此教育天真无邪、衣着光鲜的追随者们，生活就是如此充满悖论。
They may have resisted Socrates' lesson. We do not. Several thousand years later, we are more wary of the enchantments of beauty. We not only split off—with the greatest facility—the “inside” (character, intellect) from the “outside” (looks); but we are actually surprised when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent, talented, good.
这些年轻人们也许拒绝从苏格拉底那学到这一课。但我们学到了。数千年后的我们对于美的诱惑更加谨慎。我们不仅将“内在”（性格、智慧）和“外在”（外貌）分离，甚至如果一个人兼具智慧、天赋、美德和美貌，人们还会对此感到惊讶。
It was principally the influence of Christianity that deprived beauty of the central place it had in classical ideals of human excellence. By limiting excellence (virtues in Latin) to moral virtue only, Christianity set beauty adrift—as an alienated, arbitrary, superficial enchantment. And beauty has continued to lose prestige. For close to two centuries it has become a convention to attribute beauty to only one of the two sexes: the sex which, however Fair, is always Second. Associating beauty with women had put beauty even further on the defensive, morally.
美原本在关于人类美德的古典理想中处于中心，而剥夺这种地位的主要是基督教的影响。基督教认为美德仅限于道德品质，而美则被视为异化的、无常的、肤浅的魅力，被驱逐出了美德之列。美不断地失去其声誉。将近两个世纪之中，将美归属于两性中的一个性别已经成为了传统：无论是何等的美丽，总是属于第二性。将美与女性联系起来，使得美更容易受到道德的批判和攻击。
A beautiful woman, we say in English. But a handsome man. “Handsome” is the masculine equivalent of—and refusal of—a compliment which has accumulated certain demeaning overtones, by being reserved for women only. That one can call a man “beautiful” in French and in Italian suggests that Catholic countries—unlike those countries shaped by the Protestant version of Christianity—still retain some vestiges of the pagan admiration for beauty. But the difference, if one exists, is of degree only. In every modern country that is Christian or post-Christian, women are the beautiful sex— to the detriment of the notion of beauty as well as of women.
英文中说女人是“美丽的”，而男人是“帅气的”。“帅气”成了充满男子气概的“美”的同义词，也表达了一种对“美”的拒绝，“美”越发具有某种贬低意味，成为专属于女性的词汇。但是在法语和意大利语中“美”仍然可以用来修饰男性，这表明和新教国家不同，天主教国家仍然保留着对“美”异教徒般的追寻的遗迹。如果非说有什么不同的话，就只是程度不同。在每一个现代国家中，无论是信仰基督教或是基督教衰落，将“美”归属于女性一个性别，都有害于“美”概念本身和女性。
To be called beautiful is thought to name something essential to women's character and concerns. (In contrast to men—whose essence is to be strong, or effective, or competent.) It does not take someone in the throes of advanced feminist awareness to perceive that the way women are taught to be involved with beauty encourages narcissism, reinforces dependence and immaturity. Everybody (women and men) knows that. For it is “everybody,” a whole society, that has identified being feminine with caring about how one looks. (In contrast to being masculine—which is identified with caring about what one is and does and only secondarily, if at all, about how one looks.) Given these stereotypes, it is no wonder that beauty enjoys, at best, a rather mixed reputation.
人们认为被称作“美丽”点出了女性的性格和关心中本质的东西（和男性形成对比，男性关注的是强壮、实效和能力）。一个人不需要经历接受前卫的女性主义意识的阵痛，就能够认识到，训练女性将自身与“美”联系起来是在鼓励自我陶醉，增强依赖性和不成熟。人人（男人和女人）都明白这一点。因为，“每个人”，即整个社会，都将关注外貌和女性化联系在一起（和男子气概形成对比，男子气概的标志是关心个人的地位和事业，而外貌最多只是第二位）。考虑到这些刻板印象，“美”至多享有毁誉参半的名声也就不足为奇了。
It is not, of course, the desire to be beautiful that is wrong but the obligation to be—or to try. What is accepted by most women as a flattering idealization of their sex is a way of making women feel inferior to what they actually are—or normally grow to be. For the ideal of beauty is administered as a form of self-oppression. Women are taught to see their bodies in parts, and to evaluate each part separately. Breasts, feet, hips, waistline, neck, eyes, nose, complexion, hair, and so on—each in turn is submitted to an anxious, fretful, often despairing scrutiny. Even if some pass muster, some will always be found wanting. Nothing less than perfection will do.
当然，错的不是追求美丽的欲望，而是将美或追求美变为义务。多数女性所接受的悦人的女性理想化形象使得她们在面对真实长成的自我时感到自卑。“美”的理想以自我压迫的形式被施加给女性。训练女性学会分开看待其躯体，分别评价其身体的每一部分——胸部、脚部、臀部、腰围、脖颈、眼睛、鼻子、肤色、头发等等——都是为了塑造一种令人焦躁不安，常常充满绝望的审视。即使有些部位较为满意，总有另一些部分不如人意。不达完美决不罢休。
In men, good looks is a whole, something taken in at a glance. It does not need to be confirmed by giving measurements of different regions of the body; nobody encourages a man to dissect his appearance, feature by feature. As for perfection, that is considered trivial—almost unmanly. Indeed, in the ideally good-looking man a small imperfection or blemish is considered positively desirable. According to one movie critic (a woman) who is a declared Robert Redford fan, it is having that cluster of skin-colored moles on one cheek that saves Redford from being merely a “pretty face.” Think of the depreciation of women—as well as of beauty—that is implied in that judgment.
男性的一表人才是一瞥中得到的整体判断，不需要用衡量身体各个部分来判定。没人会鼓励男性分割其外貌，依照五官依次论定。而追求外貌上的完美对于男性而言无足轻重，甚至几乎是缺乏男子气概的行为。事实上，对于拥有理想外貌的男人而言，一个小缺点或是小瑕疵被认为是增光添彩的。在一篇电影评论中，作者（女性）大方地表示自己是罗伯特·雷德福的粉丝，她认为正是罗伯特一边脸颊上肉色的痣使得他没有成为一个纯粹的“花瓶”。想想吧，在这样的判断中蕴含着的对女性和美的贬低。
“The privileges of beauty are immense,” said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; it is not the power to do but the power to attract. It is a power that negates itself. For this power is not one that can be chosen freely—at least, not by women—or renounced without social censure.
“美的特权是广泛的。”科克托（Cocteau）如是说。可以肯定，美是女性被鼓励去追寻的力量的一种形式。这种力量通常产生于和男性的关系之中，并非是一种“行动”的力量，而是去“吸引”。这种力量本身就是自相矛盾的。因为这种力量不是人可以自由选择的，至少女性不可以，也不是放弃后能够不受到社会谴责的。
To preen, for a woman, can never be just a pleasure. It is also a duty. It is her work. If a woman does real work—and even if she has clambered up to a leading position in politics, law, medicine, business, or whatever—she is always under pressure to confess that she still works at being attractive. But in so far as she is keeping up as one of the Fair Sex, she brings under suspicion her very capacity to be objective, professional, authoritative, thoughtful. Damned if they do—women are. And damned if they don't.
对于女性而言，精心打扮永远不是单纯的快乐。精心打扮也是一种责任。是女性的工作。如果一名女性踏实工作，甚至在政治、法律、医疗、商业或是其他任何领域攀登至精英之流，她通常会处于一种压力之下：承认她同时也在努力变得吸引人。只要她还在追求女性的美丽，就会有人怀疑她是否有能力能保持客观、专业、权威、思虑周全。如果女性做到了，那她们糟透了，没做到，也糟透了。
One could hardly ask for more important evidence of the dangers of considering persons as split between what is “inside” and what is “outside” than that interminable half-comic half-tragic tale, the oppression of women. How easy it is to start off by defining women as caretakers of their surfaces, and then to disparage them (or find them adorable) for being “superficial.” It is a crude trap, and it has worked for too long. But to get out of the trap requires that women get some critical distance from that excellence and privilege which is beauty, enough distance to see how much beauty itself has been abridged in order to prop up the mythology of the “feminine.” There should be a way of saving beauty from women—and for them.
女性受到的压迫——一个半是悲剧半是喜剧的故事——几乎找不出比这更好的证据证明人类如何将“内在”和“外在”分裂开来。先是将女性定义为关注外表的人，然后再因为她们的“肤浅”贬低她们（或觉得她们可爱），多么容易的一件事！这是个残忍的陷阱，而这个陷阱竟发挥了如此长时间的作用！逃离这个陷阱需要女性和“美”的品德及特权保持距离，一个足够让女性发现为了支撑“女性特征”（“feminine”）这一神话，“美”本身有多少内涵已被删去。应当有一种方式，将“美”从女性身上解救出来，并且如此做也是为了女性。