dear girls,

我親愛的孩子們，

you’re so young right now, but i hope these letters will be helpful to you one day when you’re older. there is so much i wish i could ask my mother now that i am a grown woman. there is so much we never got to talk about. i’m planning on being around for you well into your lives and adulthood, but even so, i think having these letters will be useful in some way. who knows how things might change down the road, and at least you’ll have your 34-year-old mother’s thoughts down on paper.

你們現在如此稚嫩，但我希望將來某一天等你們長大了，這封信將會對你們有幫助。作為一個成年女人，我也有很多想問我媽媽的問題，有很多我和她從未談及過的事情。在你們的成長中，我會在你們身邊幫你們過好生活長大成人，但即使這樣，我認為這封信也能通過其他方式使你們獲益。誰也不知道將來會發生什么，但至少你們會有我這個34歲的母親把想法寫下來供你們參考。

anyway, i want this letter to be about beauty and my relationship to it. i feel this enormous responsibility, as a mother of two little girls, to lead you down a path that is relatively healthy when it comes to beauty and self image. in a lot of women’s eyes i’ve probably already failed in that respect due to the amount of pink-princess-barbie mess cluttering up vera’s room right now.

不管怎么樣，我希望談談關于美以及我對美的看法。作為一個有兩個女兒的母親，在談到美和自身形象的問題，我有重要的責任為你們引導相對健康的認識之路。雖然在許多女人眼里，我這方面做得并不值得稱贊，因為現在在vera的房間里還亂糟糟地塞滿了卡哇伊的芭比娃娃。

but i will say this about barbie (and all the rest of that princess garbage): i played with that stuff for a solid decade when i was growing up and here i am now at a healthy weight with a healthy outlook about my body and image. i have a masters degree and have a successful career and a published book. if barbie were really so damaging to my femininity and self-image i highly doubt i could list all of the latter as accomplishments.

但對于芭比娃娃(以及系列相關的公主垃圾玩具)我想說的是，我小時候玩了整整十年的洋娃娃，現在我是一個擁有體重標準、保持健康外貌的女性，我獲得了碩士學位，我事業成功還出版了一本書。如果芭比娃娃真的對我的女性特質和個人形象有破壞性的影響，那么我真是非常懷疑我列出的那些成就是怎么來的。

but i get it too. it’s hard for women to maintain a healthy self-image. it’s hard not to obsess over our weight and to wish we could afford more stylish clothes. it’s hard not to covet someone else’s hair or hips or eyelashes, and to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to achieve looks that we were never suited for in the first place.

但是我也懂，對女人來講保持健康的形象很不容易。想要不被體重困擾，不奢求自己能有經濟能力購買更時尚的衣服，這真的很難;不覬覦別的女生的發型、翹臀和睫毛，不在自己身上無節制的花時間試圖讓自己駕馭那些完全不適合的造型，這些也都太難了。

i have girlfriends around whom i have to brace myself to see, because even though i love them, just being around them makes me self-conscious. i look at old pictures of my mother and wonder why i’ve never been able to be as skinny as she was. and then i have friends who are thinner than their mothers ever were. we women go round and round in circles, holding hands and trying to be one another sometimes.

我身邊有一群女性朋友，雖然我很愛她們，但每次跟她們接觸我都需要打起精神，只是和她們待在一起我都會覺得不自然。看著我媽媽的老照片，我總是納悶為什么自己永遠不能像她那么骨感，然后我發現身邊有朋友比她媽媽年輕時還要瘦。我們女人總在轉圈圈，有時還牽著彼此的手試著扮演對方的角色。