被逝去的青春容顏困擾不已
The Moment came for my friend, Julia, a 42-year-old accomplished writer of children's fiction, when she went to pick up her five-year-old son from school.
我的朋友茱莉亞是一位42歲的才華橫溢的作家，她撰寫的是兒童科幻小說。但她有一次去學校接她5歲的兒子時，這一“不幸”的時刻降臨在了她的身上。
One of his classmates stared fixedly at her brow and asked: 'Why has your forehead got stripes on it?'
她兒子的一位同班同學，緊盯着茱莉亞的額頭問道：“爲什麼你的前額上又好多小細紋呀？”
For Sophie, 50, a successful PR executive, the feeling of revelation came when she caught a sudden glimpse of her burgeoning rear in a changing room mirror.
而同樣的經歷也發生在蘇菲身上，她是一名50歲的公關主任，當她在試衣間的鏡子裏瞥見了自己後背上“展露頭角”的細紋時，她也感到了一陣慌張。
'I looked at the reflection and thought: "Is that fat, middle-aged woman really me?" ' she confessed.
她說，“我看到鏡中的自己，我問到‘那個胖胖的中年婦女真的是我嗎’”？
Why are we women in mid-life so obsessed with losing our looks?
爲什麼中年女性經常爲她們逝去的青春容顏困擾不已呢？
For a start, we live much longer lives: at 40 we can, perhaps, look forward to nearly half a century of living with our relentlessly declining physical attractiveness.
首先我想說，我們現在可以活得更長，於是在我們40歲的時候，我們也許可以繼續向前看到50年，我們逐漸逝去的迷人外表將陪伴我們度過剩下的歲月。
Moreover, our culture and the media convince us that unless we hold on to our youth at all costs, we will face terrible losses.
而且，這個時代的文化氛圍和媒體讓我們相信，我們必須要以任何代價讓青春永駐，不然我們將失去很多。
We're warned that our jobs and husbands will be usurped by younger women. We face the dreadful prospect of our own 'invisibility'.
它們警告我們，我們的工作和丈夫很可能會被更年輕的女人搶走，我們將會面臨一個很可怕的未來，那就是我們將被徹底無視。
What's more, we feel guilty that we are worrying about our declining looks, because feminism has taught us to be above such trivial preoccupations.
女性主義教導我們不要太過把精力放在這種小事兒上，因此當我們爲自己逐漸消逝的青春所煩惱的時候，我們會有一些負罪感。
We were the generation raised to believe that beauty is skin deep.
我們是被新觀念調養出來的新時代女性，我們相信美麗是深藏在皮膚之下的。
Vocabulary:
obsessed with 爲...而困擾不已
dreadful adj.可怕的
