December: time to say goodbye to sunglasses and beautiful skirts. If we have to start covering up again, then so do the skin-and-bone celebrities whose disappearing bodies seem to have been the obsession of the media all summer long.

    12月，到了和太陽鏡還有漂亮裙子說拜拜的時候了。既然我們得再次裹上厚厚的冬衣，那么那些骨瘦如柴的名流們也得這么做。整個夏天，她們日漸瘦小的身體似乎一直都是媒體窮追不舍的對象。

    It's not just the popular press that keeps us informed about the too-thin figures of Nicole Richie, Victoria Beckham, Renée Zellweger and Keira Knightley. The quality papers have also found ways to report on uberskinny stars. They handle the subject differrently, of course. Usually they attack the popular press for its obsession with women's bodies, and then give us an intellectual analysis of the paradox of thinness in an increasingly fat world.

    不僅通俗報刊經常提醒我們妮可·里奇、維多利亞·貝克漢姆、芮妮·齊薇格和凱拉·奈特利等人身材過瘦，就連一些嚴肅報刊也在想方設法地報道那些骨瘦如柴的明星。當然，后者的選題角度不同。通常，嚴肅報刊會先批判通俗報刊過分關注女性身材，然后針對胖人日益增多的世界中出現以瘦為美這一悖論做出睿智的分析。

    What all the stories have in common is that they claim to be worried about the health of the woman in question.（Notice how it's always a woman.）And it encourages other women who have fewer reasons to be cheerful than these overprivileged, underfed celebrities.

    所有這些故事的共同點就是它們都聲稱自己是在關注女性的健康問題。請注意，為什么總是女性？而且，這會導致其他女性爭相效仿，比起那些營養不良但又處處享受特殊待遇的明星，她們更缺少開心的理由。

    Each year, anorexia kills an estimated 150,000 American women. In Britain, the charity ChildLine reports a 50 per cent rise in the number of children, some as young as 10, who are seeking help. Of all that is known about anorexia, the most significant is that it's most common among young Western women.

    據估計，每年有15萬美國女性死于厭食癥。在英國，來自慈善團體兒童熱線的報告顯示，患厭食癥的兒童增加了50%,其中一些患病的兒童才10歲大。在對厭食癥的了解中，最重要的一個事實是，它在西方年輕女性中最為普遍。

    Each era sets its ideal for feminine beauty: Rubenesque curves; tiny waist; large breasts; rounded hips; slender hips. But never has a set of conditions been as dangerous as 24-hour global media, airbrushing and the fashion for a figure that owes more to the unthreatening shape of a young girl that that of a fully grown, intelligent woman.

    對于女性之美，每個時代都有不同的標準：或具有魯本斯筆下婦女般的曲線、或細腰、或豐乳、或臀部渾圓、抑或臀部窄小。但從來沒有哪個時代的條件像現在這樣危險：24小時運轉的全球媒體、精心修飾過的明星海報、體形的時尚標準更推崇小女孩沒有發育的瘦小身材，而不是發育成熟、聰明睿智的女性的體形。

    This impossible-to-achieve illusion leads 12-year-old girls to miss meals, go for leg waxes and, worst of all, judge each other's worth entirely on the basis of their physical appearance.

    這種不可能實現的幻想導致一些12歲的女孩不吃飯，往腿上打蠟脫毛，最糟糕的是，完全以體態外貌來評判彼此的價值。

    This is not a mental illness, it's an unpleasant woman-against-woman competition. Maybe it's better for women to return to the battle of the sexes. Feminism was never so successful in eating away at femininity as the present culture that makes women fear food and so show a lack of faith in their talents and pride in their natural form.

    這不是一種精神疾病，而是一場令人不愉快的女性之間的競爭。也許回到為男女平等而斗爭的時代對女性而言更好些。那時的女權運動都沒能像如今的文化這樣"成功"地磨滅掉女性的氣質。現在的文化讓女性對食物感到恐懼，使女性表現出缺乏對個人才華的自信和對自然形體的自豪。