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Last Tuesday, in a strange moment of network television-pop culture syzygy, the new ABC comedy “Selfie” included a scene in which two colleagues, Eliza and Charmonique, were discussing the movie star Renée Zellweger.
上周二，在電視與流行文化交匯的一個奇異時刻，ABC臺的新喜劇《自拍》(Selfie)中出現了這樣一幕：兩個同事——伊莉莎(Eliza)和卡莫尼克（Charmonique），聊起影星芮妮·齊薇格(Renée Zellweger)。
She looks great, Eliza commented. Yes, Charmonique agreed, but she “doesn’t look a damn thing like Miss Renée Zellweger.”
她看上去很棒，伊莉莎評價。是的，卡莫尼克表示同意，但是她“看上去一丁點也不像芮妮·齊薇格小姐”。
The episode, which judging from typical television production schedules had most likely been filmed weeks before, came a day after photographs of a radically different looking Ms. Zellweger flooded news outlets. At Elle magazine’s annual Women in Hollywood celebration last Monday night, Ms. Zellweger’s forehead was as smooth as a packed ski slope, and her eyes as crystal-blue as ever, but they appeared, in some images, wide and round as pennies. In 24 hours, it seemed, every possible news media outlet had a story or a tweet or a blog post decrying the Oscar-winning actress’s new face. Another day passed, and every possible media outlet featured a chat or post or news report defending Ms. Zellweger and her new-looking face. By Friday, we were all ashamed to still be thinking private thoughts about Ms. Zellweger, but we were.
按照典型的電視劇制作規劃來看，這一集多半是在幾個星期前拍的，可是就在它播出的前一天，齊薇格的照片正好在新聞中鋪天蓋地，她在照片中的樣子和以前大不相同了。上周一晚上，齊薇格出席《Elle》雜志主辦的年度好萊塢女性慶典，她的額頭平滑，像是剛剛填好的滑雪坡，眼睛雖然還是清澈的藍色，但在某些照片上，顯得又圓又大，像硬幣一樣。在24小時之內，好像所有沾邊的新聞媒體都做了報道，要不就是發推或者博客，對這位曾經獲得奧斯卡獎的女影星的新面孔表示反感。一天之后，所有的媒體又發出了聊天、帖子或者新聞報道，為齊薇格和她的新面孔辯護。到了星期五，我們還在私下里想著齊薇格，這讓我們都覺得羞愧，但我們確實在想。
We’ve all seen garish plastic surgery on celebrities. But in the case of Ms. Zellweger, her new appearance set off a battery of intensifying debates. She carved out a career playing accessible characters, wholesome and fallible. In “Dazed and Confused,” as a heartland teenager, and in “Jerry Maguire,” she was winning and approachable. As Bridget Jones, she allowed us to embrace our wine-and-heartache inner insecurities. She made the fat, boozy chain-smokers and job-losers among us feel O.K. about ourselves. She won an Oscar in 2004 for her role in “Cold Mountain,” in which she played a gritty Southern woman working on a failing farm, unafraid to snap a chicken’s neck. Even her personal life offered a dose of reality women could relate to, enjoying a whirlwind love affair and short marriage to the country singer Kenny Chesney in 2005. Who hasn’t had a sloppy breakup?
我們都見過名人臉上醒目的整容痕跡。但齊薇格的新面孔卻引發了激烈的爭論。她是靠飾演平易近人、身心健康而又容易犯錯的角色而起家的。在《年少輕狂》(Dazed and Confused)里，她飾演美國中心區域的青少年，在《甜心先生》(Jerry Maguire)里，她又迷人又可親。她飾演的布里吉特·瓊斯(Bridget Jones)讓我們可以欣然接受自己內心深處借酒澆愁的不安全感。她讓我們當中那些肥胖、酗酒、一根接一根地抽煙、丟掉工作的人感覺自己還不錯。2004年，她憑著在《冷山》(Cold Mountain)中飾演的角色獲得了奧斯卡獎，那是個堅強的南方女人，經營著一家快要倒閉的農場，連擰斷小雞的脖子都害怕。就連在個人生活方面，她也提供了一絲真實的痕跡，讓女人們可以同自己的經歷聯系起來——2005年，她經歷了同鄉村歌手肯尼·切斯尼(Kenny Chesney)的激烈戀情和短暫婚姻， 誰沒有過一段草率的分手往事呢？
It’s jarring when suddenly we don’t recognize the person in whom we once saw ourselves.
突然之間，我們就認不出這個曾經讓我們感覺在她身上看到我們自己的人了，這簡直太讓人不安了。
What is new — and plainly shocking to some — is that Ms. Zellweger now looks like someone not even related to the quirkily pretty, Kewpie-doll star who had us at hello. However the method, she has changed herself into someone who looks like the manicured socialite, the moderately successful commercial actress, the benign political wife. Ms. Zellweger looks beautiful but does not look like Ms. Zellweger.
與以往不同，讓有些人非常震驚的是，齊薇格現在看上去和那個有著古怪的漂亮、好像丘比特娃娃、在問好的那一刻就贏得我們的心的那個人，看上去一點都不一樣了。不管是用什么方法，她把自己變成了一個做美甲的上流人士，取得小小成功的商業女星，溫和的政治家太太。齊薇格看上去很漂亮，但完全不是齊薇格了。
In another surprising turn, the actress defended herself to People magazine soon after the Elle party, in a statement that attributed her new appearance to healthy living, love and lifestyle changes. “I’m glad folks think I look different!” she said. “I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows.” As for why she addressed the issue, Ms. Zellweger said, “It seems the folks who come digging around for some nefarious truth which doesn’t exist won’t get off my porch until I answer the door.”
另一個驚人的轉折是，《Elle》的派對之后，這位女星很快在《人物》(People)雜志上為自己辯護，她在一份聲明中說自己的新樣子是來自健康的生活、愛，以及生活方式的改變。“人們覺得我看上去不一樣了，這讓我感到高興！”她說。“我現在過著與從前不同的生活，是快樂、更充實的生活，這或許顯示出了成果，讓我感到興奮。”至于她為什么要對此作出評論，齊薇格說：“如果我不去應門，那些在我周圍發掘根本不存在的丑陋真相的人們就根本不肯離開我的門廊。”
Surgeons are quick to offer their opinions about what has taken place. Dr. Michelle Copeland, a plastic surgeon in New York City, said that Ms. Zellweger had probably elected to have a blepharoplasty, or upper eyelid lift, and possibly also a forehead lift, with the addition of injectable fillers that may have widened the planes of her face. She has also likely benefited from laser or ultrasound procedures that tighten the skin.
外科醫生們很快給出他們的意見。紐約市的整容醫生米歇爾·科普蘭德(Michelle Copeland)醫生說，齊薇格或許是做了眼瞼成型術，或是上眼瞼拉皮術，或許還做了前額拉皮術，此外還注射了拓寬臉型的填充物。也許還用激光或超聲波收緊了皮膚。
The issue is that in all that work, Dr. Copeland said, Ms. Zellweger changed too much. “She was known for having these slightly squinty, slightly hooded eyes,” Dr. Copeland said. “The problem is they totally eliminated that look, and now she is no longer recognizable. She is beautiful, but who is she? Jennifer Grey?” (Dr. Copeland was referring to the “Dirty Dancing” actress whose nose job drastically altered her appearance.)
科普蘭德說，在所有這些措施的共同作用下，齊薇格變了太多。“人們都知道，她本來有一雙微微斜視、微微鼓起的眼睛，”科普蘭德醫生說。“問題是這個特征完全沒有了，現在她變得根本認不出來了。她很漂亮，但那還是她嗎？還是詹妮弗·格雷(Jennifer Grey)？”（科普蘭德說的是出演《辣身舞》[Dirty Dancing]的女演員，鼻子整形手術完全改變了她的外貌。）
Nancy Etcoff, an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard and author of “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty,” said: “We have gotten used to seeing bad plastic surgery. Two big basketballs on the chest, fish lips, blown-up cheeks. But this is a little different. This is about a lot of subtle changes that add up to a person who no longer looks like our memory of them. She looks like a different person.” Instead of aging along with us, she jumped off the path directly into another identity.
南希·艾特科夫是哈佛大學一位進化心理學家，著有《最漂亮者生存：美容的科學》(Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty)一書，她說：“我們習慣了目睹糟糕的整形手術。胸前的兩個大籃球、魚唇、膨脹的雙頰。但這一次有點不一樣。這是關于許多細微的改變加在一起，讓一個人看上去不再像我們記憶中的樣子。她看上去完全是另外一個人。”她沒有和我們一起變老，而是徑直跳出這條路，變成了另一個身份。
Faces are tightly packed with important biological information, Dr. Etcoff said. “They tell people who we are, who our relatives are, how we feel,” she said. “We are face virtuosos. We can discern one face from thousands, even millions, of other faces. When someone does something to their face that renders them unrecognizable, when that impacts our ability to read their face, it really is a jolt.”
一個人的面相中充滿重要的生物信息，艾特科夫說。“它們告訴人們我們是誰，我們同誰有關系，還有我們的感受，”她說。“我們都是面孔的鑒賞大師。我們可以把一張臉從上千張臉，甚至是上百萬張臉中辨認出來。如果有人對自己的臉做了什么事，讓自己的臉變得認不出來，當這種效果對我們認臉的能力造成沖擊，這確實是一種震撼。”
What makes the matter particularly upsetting to any woman over age 39, said Debora L. Spar, the president of Barnard College and the author of “Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection,” is that if Ms. Zellweger, an everyday beauty whose work celebrated the flawed and embraced irregularity, apparently succumbed to such dysmorphia, what are the rest of us supposed to do?
巴納德學院校長，《奇妙的女人：性、權力與追求完美》(Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection)一書的作者黛博拉·L·斯巴爾(Debora L. Spar)說，這件事令年過39歲的女人感到特別不安，因為齊薇格是個家常美女，她的作品歌頌缺陷，接受非正式，這種形象卻死于這樣的變型，那么我們其他人應該怎么辦？
“It’s a terrible double bind,” Dr. Spar said, noting the sense of hypocrisy around the situation. “On the one hand, we’re being told don’t worry about how you look, embrace inner goodness and stop judging on external appearance, and yet as a community we have all done nothing but talk about poor Renée Zellweger’s face all week.”
“這是一種可怕的兩難困境，”斯巴爾說，她指出，整個事件中充滿虛偽的感覺。“一方面，我們被告知，不要在意外表，擁抱內心的美好，不要以貌取人，然而作為一個整體，我們整個星期都在聊可憐的芮妮·齊薇格的臉。”
The Zellweger-bashing needs to end, Dr. Spar said. “But the things that made her unique are now gone, and now she looks like a million other people,” she said. “A million other good-looking people.”
應該停止對齊薇格的猛烈抨擊了，斯巴爾說。“但是那些讓她顯得獨一無二的東西如今已經消失，現在她就和成百萬人沒什么兩樣了，就是其他上百萬個長相漂亮的人，”她說。
