The Art of Botox 肉毒桿菌素的藝術


【行遍天下旅遊電子報】每月企劃精采的旅遊專題,讓你感受美景與多樣風情,創造屬於個人的旅遊哲學。 知音難尋?【古典音樂報】深度專業地介紹古典音樂樂曲與歐洲樂壇現況,讓你不再孤芳自賞!
★ 無法正常瀏覽內容,請按這裡線上閱讀
新聞  健康  u值媒  udn部落格  
讀紐時學英文
2021/12/17 第363期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
紐時周報精選 The Art of Botox 肉毒桿菌素的藝術
Holmes's Fall Converted Media Into Tech Skeptics 霍姆斯案讓媒體不再一味吹捧矽谷
紐時周報精選
 
The Art of Botox 肉毒桿菌素的藝術
文/Amanda Hess
譯/李京倫

肉毒桿菌素的藝術

Last spring, Botox rolled out a series of ads directed by filmmaker Errol Morris. Styled like very short documentary films, the ads featured Botox users — a widower, a single mother, a drag performer — telling touching, sad, ultimately redemptive anecdotes. In 2019, a typical Botox commercial pitched the product as a girlboss tonic that could infuse fantasy women with pluck as they slunk from boardroom to bar stool. Now it was being recast as a kind of truth serum, a tool of deep personal introspection. The mother gazed upon nostalgic photographs. The widower recalled his husband's eyes and wept. Though the subjects did not mention Botox, the camera regarded their restful foreheads with sympathy and implied that the procedure had a profound therapeutic effect. The tagline was: "Still you."

今年春天,「保妥適」肉毒桿菌素推出一系列由電影製作人埃洛.莫里斯執導的廣告。這些廣告就像非常短的紀錄片,由鰥居者、單親媽媽和變裝皇后三位保妥適使用者,訴說動人、悲傷和最終具救贖力量的故事。2019年,一支典型的保妥適廣告把產品描繪成女強人的補品,能讓夢幻女子從董事會會議室溜到酒吧高腳凳時,賦予她們勇氣。現在保妥適被重新定位成一種能讓人吐露真相的藥,一種個人深刻自省的工具。這名母親凝視著舊照片。鰥居者回想起他丈夫的眼神而落淚。雖然這三人沒提到保妥適,但鏡頭拍攝她們平滑的額頭時帶著讚許意味,暗示這個療程有深刻療效。廣告語寫著「你還是你」(譯註:此為雙關語,也有「撫平你」的意思)。

Botulinum toxin is a poison that by some macabre coincidence both causes botulism and cures wrinkles. When injected at low doses into a crinkled forehead, it blocks nerve signals to muscles and smooths the skin atop them. Though there are several competing brands, Botox is the Kleenex of the category. It presents the kind of bargain one might strike with a nefarious sea witch: She will grant you eternal youth, but at the price of being able to move your face.

肉毒桿菌素是一種毒素,可怕的巧合是,它既能讓人肉毒桿菌中毒,又能除皺,低劑量注射到有皺紋的額頭上,能阻斷給肌肉的神經訊號,因而撫平肌肉上方的皮膚。雖然市面上有幾種競爭品牌,但保妥適是其中佼佼者。這種藥提供你可能和邪惡海巫達成的那類交易:她能讓你青春永駐,但價格之高足以讓你動容。

There was a moment when this trend was seen as a bad thing — for acting, for society, and especially, for women. A Botoxed face used to strike viewers as an uncanny spectacle, but uncanny spectacles fuel reality television and internet culture, and thanks to those ascendant forms, Botox has accumulated a gloss of campy pageantry, helping disarm cultural fears around its use.

以前有一陣子,用肉毒桿菌素除皺的趨勢被視為是不良風氣,對演藝人員、社會,尤其是女性都如此。打過肉毒桿菌素的臉曾經被觀眾認為是不自然的奇觀,但這種奇觀助長了電視實境秀和網路文化,多虧了這些日益興盛的類型,肉毒桿菌素累積了一種搞笑虛飾的光環,有助於消減使用上的文化恐懼。

Botox once suggested vanity, delusion and self-consciousness, but now it has fresh associations: with confidence, resilience, even authenticity, as the idea of "having work done" has come to be seen as a legitimate form of work.

肉毒桿菌素一度意味虛榮、錯覺和侷促不安,但現在給人新的聯想:自信、堅韌,甚至真實可靠,因為「進廠維修」已經被認為是正經事。

It strikes me that wrinkles on women are not only stigmatized because they make them seem old but because they make them look angry, sad, surprised, distressed — they make them look alive. Even as Botox has become a way station for women at risk of being catapulted from Hollywood, it presents as a vivid reminder of what has been lost. Female movie stars are no longer buried after a certain age; instead they are embalmed. The new Botox tagline is "Still you," but it could be "Still here."

在我看來,女人皺紋被汙名化的原因,不只是顯老,還會讓女人看似在生氣、難過、驚訝和焦慮,也就是讓女人看來活生生。即使肉毒桿菌素成了可能被逐出好萊塢女人的停靠站,仍鮮明地顯示了失落的東西。女性影星過了某個年紀不再被埋葬,而是做防腐處理。新的保妥適廣告語是「你還是你」,但其實可能是「你還在這裡」。

 
Holmes's Fall Converted Media Into Tech Skeptics 霍姆斯案讓媒體不再一味吹捧矽谷
文/Erin Griffith and Erin Woo
譯/莊蕙嘉

霍姆斯案讓媒體不再一味吹捧矽谷

At the height of her acclaim in 2015, Elizabeth Holmes, the entrepreneur who founded the blood testing startup Theranos, was named Glamour's "Woman of the Year." Time put her on its list of 100 luminaries. And she graced the covers of Fortune, Forbes, Inc. and T Magazine.

成立血液檢測新創公司Theranos的創業家伊莉莎白.霍姆斯,聲望在2015年達到高峰,被Glamour雜誌選為「年度代表女性」。時代雜誌將她選入百大人物,她也登上財星、富比世和T雜誌等刊物封面。

Theranos collapsed in scandal three years later, failing in its mission to revolutionize the health care industry. But it did change the world in another way: It helped sour the media on Silicon Valley.

三年後Theranos因醜聞倒閉,無法達成革新醫療產業的使命。不過它確實以另一種方式改變了世界:讓矽谷的媒體走調。

That point was brought home when Roger Parloff, a journalist who penned the Fortune cover story on Holmes and Theranos in 2014, testified in a federal courtroom in San Jose, California, where Holmes is on trial for 12 counts of fraud. Parloff said Holmes had made misrepresentations to him, including the volume and types of tests that Theranos could do, as well as its work with the military and pharmaceutical companies.

這一點成為記者羅傑.帕洛夫在加州聖荷西聯邦法庭作證時的重點,他曾在2014年撰寫財星雜誌封面故事,報導霍姆斯和Theranos。在霍姆斯被控12項詐欺罪名的訴訟中,帕洛夫說,霍姆斯對他發表錯誤簡報,包括Theranos能做到的測試數量與種類,以及該公司和軍方及製藥公司的合作。

The discovery that Holmes, the tech industry's most celebrated female entrepreneur, was misdirecting the world about her company marked a turning point in the tech press, ending a decadelong run of largely positive coverage. Reporters cringed over glowing articles they had written about tech companies that turned out to have stretched the truth, glossed over the negative consequences of their products or generally abused the trust they had enjoyed with the public.

霍姆斯身為科技業界最知名的女性創業者,她被揭露就她的公司誤導全世界,代表科技媒體的一個轉捩點,結束十年來正面報導居多的趨勢。記者以他們撰寫的顯眼報導吹捧科技公司,實際上卻曲解事實,掩蓋產品的負面後果,或是廣泛濫用大眾對他們的信賴。

"Holmes just becomes this fable of 'You can't just buy what they're selling,' " said Margaret O'Mara, a professor at the University of Washington and a historian of Silicon Valley. " 'This was not what it purported to be, and we fell for it.' "

「霍姆斯只是變成『他們說的話不能照單全收』的寓言故事」,華盛頓大學教授及矽谷歷史學者瑪格麗特.歐邁拉說,「它看起來表裡不一,而我們卻信了」。

After The Wall Street Journal published exposés in 2015 and 2016 showing that Theranos was not what it appeared to be, coverage of tech companies generally became more probing.

在華爾街日報2015及2016年刊出報導,顯示Theranos名不符實後,關於科技公司的報導變得更深入徹底。

Reporters dug into Facebook's role in the 2016 presidential election, as well as scandals at Uber and a series of #MeToo accusations and labor uprisings at tech companies. The shift happened alongside the realization that the tech industry was no longer the niche realm of idealist computer geeks. It had become the dominant force in the global economy and needed to be held more to account.

記者深入挖掘臉書在2016年美國總統大選的角色,優步與一系列「我也是受害者」指控,以及科技公司的勞工抗議。

這個轉變伴隨一個認知,科技業不再是理想主義電腦奇才的利基領域,它已成為全球經濟的主導力量,需要負起更多責任。

 
訊息公告
 
家有想淘汰的IKEA桌?別急,IKEA正計劃向你買回
IKEA最近在美國推行一項服務:向顧客買回將淘汰的IKEA產品,經重新整理後,再販售給有需求的買家。這是此公司訂定「未來10年內要實現循環經濟及減碳正效益」的目標後,所踏出的第一步。

現代人常見的「膏肓痛」到底是什麼痛?
復健科醫師解釋,「膏肓」是位於人體背部脊椎與肩胛骨中間兩側,症狀包括麻、刺、痛,或是肩胛怎麼動都不太對勁等活動受限的感覺,尤其是需要整天坐在電腦前辦公,導致長時間姿勢不良的上班族特別常見。
 
本電子報著作權均屬「聯合線上公司」或授權「聯合線上公司」使用之合法權利人所有,
禁止未經授權轉載或節錄。若對電子報內容有任何疑問或要求轉載授權,請【
聯絡我們】。
  免費電子報 | 著作權聲明 | 隱私權聲明 | 聯絡我們