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，在电视与流行文化交汇的一个奇异时刻，ABC台的新喜剧《自拍》(Selfie)中出现了这样一幕：两个同事——伊莉莎(Eliza)和卡莫尼克（Charmonique），聊起影星芮妮·齐薇格(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，伊莉莎评价。是的，卡莫尼克表示同意，但是她“看上去一丁点也不像芮妮·齐薇格小姐”。

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.
按照典型的电视剧制作规划来看，这一集多半是在几个星期前拍的，可是就在它播出的前一天，齐薇格的照片正好在新闻中铺天盖地，她在照片中的样子和以前大不相同了。上周一晚上，齐薇格出席《Elle》杂志主办的年度好莱坞女性庆典，她的额头平滑，像是刚刚填好的滑雪坡，眼睛虽然还是清澈的蓝色，但在某些照片上，显得又圆又大，像硬币一样。在24小时之内，好像所有沾边的新闻媒体都做了报道，要不就是发推或者博客，对这位曾经获得奥斯卡奖的女影星的新面孔表示反感。一天之后，所有的媒体又发出了聊天、帖子或者新闻报道，为齐薇格和她的新面孔辩护。到了星期五，我们还在私下里想着齐薇格，这让我们都觉得羞愧，但我们确实在想。
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?
我们都见过名人脸上醒目的整容痕迹。但齐薇格的新面孔却引发了激烈的争论。她是靠饰演平易近人、身心健康而又容易犯错的角色而起家的。在《年少轻狂》(Dazed and Confused)里，她饰演美国中心区域的青少年，在《甜心先生》(Jerry Maguire)里，她又迷人又可亲。她饰演的布里吉特·琼斯(Bridget Jones)让我们可以欣然接受自己内心深处借酒浇愁的不安全感。她让我们当中那些肥胖、酗酒、一根接一根地抽烟、丢掉工作的人感觉自己还不错。2004年，她凭着在《冷山》(Cold Mountain)中饰演的角色获得了奥斯卡奖，那是个坚强的南方女人，经营着一家快要倒闭的农场，连拧断小鸡的脖子都害怕。就连在个人生活方面，她也提供了一丝真实的痕迹，让女人们可以同自己的经历联系起来——2005年，她经历了同乡村歌手肯尼·切斯尼(Kenny Chesney)的激烈恋情和短暂婚姻， 谁没有过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.
突然之间，我们就认不出这个曾经让我们感觉在她身上看到我们自己的人了，这简直太让人不安了。
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.
与以往不同，让有些人非常震惊的是，齐薇格现在看上去和那个有着古怪的漂亮、好像丘比特娃娃、在问好的那一刻就赢得我们的心的那个人，看上去一点都不一样了。不管是用什么方法，她把自己变成了一个做美甲的上流人士，取得小小成功的商业女星，温和的政治家太太。齐薇格看上去很漂亮，但完全不是齐薇格了。
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.”
另一个惊人的转折是，《Elle》的派对之后，这位女星很快在《人物》(People)杂志上为自己辩护，她在一份声明中说自己的新样子是来自健康的生活、爱，以及生活方式的改变。“人们觉得我看上去不一样了，这让我感到高兴！”她说。“我现在过着与从前不同的生活，是快乐、更充实的生活，这或许显示出了成果，让我感到兴奋。”至于她为什么要对此作出评论，齐薇格说：“如果我不去应门，那些在我周围发掘根本不存在的丑陋真相的人们就根本不肯离开我的门廊。”
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.
外科医生们很快给出他们的意见。纽约市的整容医生米歇尔·科普兰德(Michelle Copeland)医生说，齐薇格或许是做了眼睑成型术，或是上眼睑拉皮术，或许还做了前额拉皮术，此外还注射了拓宽脸型的填充物。也许还用激光或超声波收紧了皮肤。
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.)
科普兰德说，在所有这些措施的共同作用下，齐薇格变了太多。“人们都知道，她本来有一双微微斜视、微微鼓起的眼睛，”科普兰德医生说。“问题是这个特征完全没有了，现在她变得根本认不出来了。她很漂亮，但那还是她吗？还是詹妮弗·格雷(Jennifer Grey)？”（科普兰德说的是出演《辣身舞》[Dirty Dancing]的女演员，鼻子整形手术完全改变了她的外貌。）
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·艾特科夫是哈佛大学一位进化心理学家，著有《最漂亮者生存：美容的科学》(Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty)一书，她说：“我们习惯了目睹糟糕的整形手术。胸前的两个大篮球、鱼唇、膨胀的双颊。但这一次有点不一样。这是关于许多细微的改变加在一起，让一个人看上去不再像我们记忆中的样子。她看上去完全是另外一个人。”她没有和我们一起变老，而是径直跳出这条路，变成了另一个身份。
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.”
一个人的面相中充满重要的生物信息，艾特科夫说。“它们告诉人们我们是谁，我们同谁有关系，还有我们的感受，”她说。“我们都是面孔的鉴赏大师。我们可以把一张脸从上千张脸，甚至是上百万张脸中辨认出来。如果有人对自己的脸做了什么事，让自己的脸变得认不出来，当这种效果对我们认脸的能力造成冲击，这确实是一种震撼。”
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?
巴纳德学院校长，《奇妙的女人：性、权力与追求完美》(Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection)一书的作者黛博拉·L·斯巴尔(Debora L. Spar)说，这件事令年过39岁的女人感到特别不安，因为齐薇格是个家常美女，她的作品歌颂缺陷，接受非正式，这种形象却死于这样的变型，那么我们其他人应该怎么办？
“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.”
“这是一种可怕的两难困境，”斯巴尔说，她指出，整个事件中充满虚伪的感觉。“一方面，我们被告知，不要在意外表，拥抱内心的美好，不要以貌取人，然而作为一个整体，我们整个星期都在聊可怜的芮妮·齐薇格的脸。”
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.”
应该停止对齐薇格的猛烈抨击了，斯巴尔说。“但是那些让她显得独一无二的东西如今已经消失，现在她就和成百万人没什么两样了，就是其他上百万个长相漂亮的人，”她说。