dear girls,

我亲爱的孩子们，

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.

你们现在如此稚嫩，但我希望将来某一天等你们长大了，这封信将会对你们有帮助。作为一个成年女人，我也有很多想问我妈妈的问题，有很多我和她从未谈及过的事情。在你们的成长中，我会在你们身边帮你们过好生活长大成人，但即使这样，我认为这封信也能通过其他方式使你们获益。谁也不知道将来会发生什么，但至少你们会有我这个34岁的母亲把想法写下来供你们参考。

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.

不管怎么样，我希望谈谈关于美以及我对美的看法。作为一个有两个女儿的母亲，在谈到美和自身形象的问题，我有重要的责任为你们引导相对健康的认识之路。虽然在许多女人眼里，我这方面做得并不值得称赞，因为现在在vera的房间里还乱糟糟地塞满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.

但对于芭比娃娃(以及系列相关的公主垃圾玩具)我想说的是，我小时候玩了整整十年的洋娃娃，现在我是一个拥有体重标准、保持健康外貌的女性，我获得了硕士学位，我事业成功还出版了一本书。如果芭比娃娃真的对我的女性特质和个人形象有破坏性的影响，那么我真是非常怀疑我列出的那些成就是怎么来的。

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，对女人来讲保持健康的形象很不容易。想要不被体重困扰，不奢求自己能有经济能力购买更时尚的衣服，这真的很难;不觊觎别的女生的发型、翘臀和睫毛，不在自己身上无节制的花时间试图让自己驾驭那些完全不适合的造型，这些也都太难了。

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.

我身边有一群女性朋友，虽然我很爱她们，但每次跟她们接触我都需要打起精神，只是和她们待在一起我都会觉得不自然。看着我妈妈的老照片，我总是纳闷为什么自己永远不能像她那么骨感，然后我发现身边有朋友比她妈妈年轻时还要瘦。我们女人总在转圈圈，有时还牵着彼此的手试着扮演对方的角色。