原文標(biāo)題：
The economics of thinness
THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
瘦身經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)
世界的重量
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It is economically rational?for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin
從經(jīng)濟(jì)上講，成功女性會(huì)盡最大努力保持苗條的身材

[Paragraph 1]
MIREILLE GUILIANOis a slim and successful woman.
米瑞耶·朱利亞諾是一位事業(yè)成功且身材苗條的女性。
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She was born in France and studied in Paris before working as an interpreter for the United Nations.
她生于法國(guó)，在巴黎求學(xué)，后在聯(lián)合國(guó)擔(dān)任翻譯一職。
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She then worked in the champagne business and in 1984 joined Veuve Clicquot whose performance was, at the time, rather flat.
再后來，她轉(zhuǎn)戰(zhàn)香檳行業(yè)，于1984年加入凱歌香檳。凱歌之前的效益不容樂觀。
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She fizzed up?the ranks and launched their American subsidiary.
她帶領(lǐng)凱歌一路高歌猛進(jìn)，創(chuàng)辦了美國(guó)子公司。
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In 1991 she became its chief executive and ran it with great success.
1991年，她升任該公司首席執(zhí)行官，事業(yè)欣欣向榮。
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In her apartment overlooking downtown Manhattan, she offers a glass of water before quipping “You know how much I love water.”
她的公寓可以俯瞰曼哈頓市中心，她為我倒了杯水，然后打趣說："你知道我有多喜歡水"。

She is correct; drinking plenty of water is a key rule in “French Women Don’t Get Fat”, her bestselling?book on how to lose weight and stay slim “the French way”.
她說得對(duì)；她寫了一本暢銷書《法國(guó)女人不會(huì)胖》，這本書講述了如何“法式”減重和保持身材。大量飲水是一個(gè)關(guān)鍵原則。

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[Paragraph 2]
In the book she describes her discomfort when as a teenager she gained weight while spending a summer in America.
書中，她講述了十幾歲時(shí)在美國(guó)度夏變胖帶來的不開心。
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Her uneasiness comes to a head when she returns home to France and her father, instead of rushing to hug her, tells her she looks “l(fā)ike a sack of potatoes”.
而她回到法國(guó)時(shí)，父親并沒有急于擁抱她，而是說她看起來 "像一袋土豆"，這種不開心達(dá)到了頂峰。
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She goes on a new diet plan, remembers her old French habits (lots of water, controlled portions, moving regularly) and tips the scales back in her favour.
她開始了新的減肥計(jì)劃，再次遵循她以前的法國(guó)習(xí)慣：大量飲水、控制食量、定期運(yùn)動(dòng)。于是，她成功瘦身。
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[Paragraph 3]
As a successful woman who is willing to talk publicly about her appearance and her weight, Ms Guiliano is rare.
很少有成功女性愿意公開談?wù)撟约和獗砗腕w重，但朱利亞諾是個(gè)例外。
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“Of course no one wants to talk about it,” she says.
她說:“當(dāng)然沒有人愿意公開談?wù)摐p肥這件事?！?br>?
“It is much easier to pretend it comes naturally.”
“但是假裝天生就瘦卻容易得多?！?br>?
Successive?waves of feminism have told smart women they should have emancipated?themselves from vanity—as they have from domestic servitude?and an existence defined by procreation.
歷次女權(quán)主義浪潮都教育聰明女性要擺脫自我虛榮心的束縛--就像教育她們要擺脫家庭奴役和生育機(jī)器的束縛一樣。
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[Paragraph 4]
But as a woman greatly affected by a comment about her weight she is not rare.
女性很容易受到外人對(duì)自己的體重評(píng)論影響，她也不例外。
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Aubrey Gordon, the co-host of the Maintenance Phase, a podcast which unpicks the problems with modern weight loss and wellness, was told by a doctor that she was overweight aged just ten.
奧布里·戈登是播客節(jié)目“維持階段”的聯(lián)合主持人，這個(gè)節(jié)目專門分析現(xiàn)代減肥和健康的問題。奧布里·戈登10歲時(shí)就被醫(yī)生告知體重超標(biāo)。
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[Paragraph 5]
These experiences are deeply personal but also universal, at least in the rich world.
這雖然都是個(gè)人隱私，但卻很普遍。至少在富裕國(guó)家是如此。
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They reflect the pressure on women to look like an “ideal”.
它們反映了婦女面臨的壓力，要求她們看起來像一個(gè) "理想中的人"。
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That ideal has changed over time.
這個(gè)理想隨著時(shí)間的推移而改變。
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Renaissance nudes boast ample?curves.
文藝復(fù)興時(shí)期的裸體畫盛行豐滿曲線。
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But in more recent decades it has been defined by thinness.
但最近的幾十年，又開始以瘦為美。
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In the 1980s in New York it was the “social X-ray”, a term coined by Tom Wolfe in his novel “Bonfire of the Vanities” to describe women so slight they existed only in two dimensions.
在20世紀(jì)80年代的紐約，“社會(huì)X光”這個(gè)詞是用來形容那些像紙片人一樣瘦小的女性，這一詞是湯姆·沃爾夫在他的小說《虛榮的篝火》中創(chuàng)造的。
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This morphed into the “heroin chic” ideal of London in the 1990s.

20世紀(jì)90年代這也演變成了倫敦的理想化“海洛因時(shí)尚”。

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[Paragraph 6]
Today the perfect body is the “weasel bod”, says one Los Angelena, who is surrounded by women seeking physical perfection. These women strive to look streamlined and sleek,?like a weasel, as though they could slip through water without disturbing it.
洛杉磯的安吉麗娜，身邊環(huán)繞著很多追求完美身材的女性，她說現(xiàn)如今的完美身材是像“黃鼠狼的身材”一樣線條流暢、皮膚光滑，仿佛可以在水中自由滑行，波瀾不驚。
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Pursuit of such a body might permit a little more food than the regimes of the past but it is just as difficult to attain.
追求這樣的身體可能允許比以前吃的多一點(diǎn)，但依舊難以實(shí)現(xiàn)。
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[Paragraph 7]
All women eventually recognise the importance placed upon their bodies.
最終，所有女性都會(huì)意識(shí)到身材管理的重要性。
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It is as though girls are walking through a forest unaware and are then shown the trees.
這就好像女孩們?cè)诓恢挥X中穿過一片森林時(shí)，只見其樹木。
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They can wonder how the trees got there, how long they have been growing and how deep their roots really go.
她們可以想象這些樹是怎么來的，已經(jīng)生長(zhǎng)了多久，根又有多深。
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But there is little they can do about them and it is almost impossible to imagine the world any other way.
但他們對(duì)這些樹木幾乎無能為力，而且?guī)缀醪豢赡芤云渌绞较胂筮@個(gè)世界。
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And the fiction that clever and ambitious women, who can measure their worth in the labour market on the basis of their intelligence?or education, need pay no attention to their figure, is difficult to maintain upon examination of the evidence on how their weight interacts with their wages or income.
有一種猜想，成功女性，可以不用注重身材管理，因?yàn)樗齻冊(cè)趧趧?dòng)力市場(chǎng)上的價(jià)值可以根據(jù)其智力或受教育水平來衡量。在研究了成功女性的體重與工資或收入之間的相互關(guān)系的證據(jù)后，這種猜想并不成立。
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The relationship differs in poor countries where rich people are generally heavier than poor ones.
體重與收入的關(guān)系在發(fā)展中國(guó)家略有不同，富人通常比窮人更重視身材管理。
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[Paragraph 8]
Wealthy people are thinner than poor ones in countries such as America, Britain, Germany and rich Asian countries, such as South Korea.
在美國(guó)、英國(guó)、德國(guó)以及韓國(guó)等亞洲發(fā)達(dá)國(guó)家，富人比窮人更瘦。
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There is typically a gently downward sloping relationship between most measures of weight, like body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity, or the share of a population that is obese, and income, as measured by wages, the share of people below a poverty line or their income quartile.
大多數(shù)衡量體重的指標(biāo)，如身體質(zhì)量指數(shù)BMI，或肥胖人口的比例，與收入，如工資、貧困線以下的人口比例或其收入四分位數(shù)之間，通常有一個(gè)緩緩向下的傾斜關(guān)系。
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[Paragraph 9]
That poor people are more likely to be overweight has often been explained by arguments that obesity, in the rich world, is a feature of poverty.
有觀點(diǎn)認(rèn)為窮人更有可能體重超標(biāo)。在發(fā)達(dá)國(guó)家，肥胖是貧窮的一個(gè)特征。
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Poor people may struggle to afford healthy foods.
窮人飲食一般不太健康。
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They may reach for processed or fast foods because they lack the time to prepare meals at home or have less time to exercise because low-wage jobs often involve working long shifts and can be less flexible?than those performed by the “l(fā)aptop class”.
他們沒有時(shí)間在家里準(zhǔn)備飯菜，也沒有那么多時(shí)間鍛煉，因?yàn)樗麄兊墓ぷ鞑粌H收入低，輪班工作時(shí)間也很長(zhǎng)，且不如 "白領(lǐng)階層 "的工作時(shí)間靈活，所有他們的食物更可能是加工食品或快餐。
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Or because low income is often a function of limited education, perhaps, so goes the thinking, that lack of education extends to a lack of knowledge about how to maintain a healthy weight.
也可能因?yàn)槭杖氲屯鞘芙逃潭扔邢薜慕Y(jié)果，所以人們會(huì)認(rèn)為，缺乏教育可能會(huì)導(dǎo)致缺乏保持健康體重的知識(shí)。
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[Paragraph 10]
The problem with all of these explanations is that the correlation between income and weight at the population level in advanced countries is driven almost entirely by women.
所有這些解釋的問題在于，發(fā)達(dá)國(guó)家的人口水平上的收入和體重之間的相關(guān)性幾乎完全由女性驅(qū)動(dòng)。
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In America and Italy the relationship between income and weight or obesity is flat for men and downward-sloping for women.
在美國(guó)和意大利，男性的收入和體重之間的關(guān)系是平緩的，而女性則是向下傾斜的。
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In South Korea the correlation is positive for men but this is more than offset by the sharply negative correlation in women.

在韓國(guó)，男性收入體重是正相關(guān)關(guān)系，但也被女性的強(qiáng)負(fù)相關(guān)關(guān)系抵消了。

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In France the relationship slopes gently downwards for men, but the slope is much steeper for women.
在法國(guó)，男性收入和體重之間的關(guān)系是緩緩向下傾斜的，但女性的傾斜度要大得多。
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These kinds of patterns seem to hold across most rich countries and appear robust to various ways weight or obesity might be measured.
這些類型的模式似乎在大多數(shù)發(fā)達(dá)國(guó)家都適用，而且在各種測(cè)量體重或肥胖的方法中似乎都很可靠。
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（恭喜讀完，本篇英語詞匯量954/2755左右）
原文出自：2022年12月24日《The Economist》Christmas specials版塊。

精讀筆記來源于：自由英語之路

本文翻譯整理: Maree本文編輯校對(duì): Irene
僅供個(gè)人英語學(xué)習(xí)交流使用。

【補(bǔ)充資料】（來自于網(wǎng)絡(luò)）
《虛榮的篝火》電影根據(jù)湯姆·沃爾夫的小說《虛榮的篝火》改編，是1990年上映的喜劇片，該片講述了一個(gè)華爾街的弄潮兒，惹上了官司，而且官司的開庭地點(diǎn)是布朗士區(qū)，從此生活變化得天翻地覆。被搬上銀幕時(shí)萬眾矚目，可是最后卻票房與口碑俱慘，有人歸罪于選角不當(dāng)，湯姆·漢克斯演壞蛋不像。起碼，那以后湯姆·漢克斯還沒再演過壞蛋。要么他自己不敢了，要么沒有片商敢了。
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BMI身體質(zhì)量指數(shù)，是BMI（Body Mass Index ）指數(shù)，簡(jiǎn)稱體質(zhì)指數(shù)，是國(guó)際上常用的衡量人體胖瘦程度以及是否健康的一個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。計(jì)算公式為：BMI=體重÷身高2。（體重單位：千克；身高單位：米。）BMI由19世紀(jì)中期的比利時(shí)通才凱特勒最先提出。正常水平：18.5-23.9 kg/m^2。
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【重點(diǎn)句子】（3 個(gè)）
?She goes on a new diet plan, remembers her old French habits (lots of water, controlled portions, moving regularly) and tips the scales back in her favour.
她開始了新的減肥計(jì)劃，再次遵循她以前的法國(guó)習(xí)慣：大量飲水、控制食量、定期運(yùn)動(dòng)。于是，她成功瘦身。
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Successive waves of feminism have told smart women they should have emancipated themselves from vanity—as they have from domestic servitude and an existence defined by procreation.
歷次女權(quán)主義浪潮都教育聰明女性要擺脫自我虛榮心的束縛，就像教育她們要擺脫家庭奴役和生育機(jī)器的束縛一樣。
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All women eventually recognise the importance placed upon their bodies.
最終，所有女性都會(huì)意識(shí)到身材管理的重要性。