双语揭秘：高跟鞋原来是男士们专属？

冬咚

如果你做的某件事取得了成功，你会用什么手势来表示胜利？表示victory的剪刀手吗？这好像还不足以表达你的兴奋之情。那么，就一起来“挥拳庆祝”吧。

英语热词：成功时的“挥拳庆祝”air punch

这种庆祝方式在英文中叫air punch，字面意思就是对着空气挥拳，其实就是我们常见的一种表达胜利的手势。

我们来看看权威的牛津词典和剑桥英语(精品课)词典是怎么定义air punch的。

牛津词典解释：

Air punch is an act of thrusting one’s clenched fist up into the air, typically as a gesture of triumph or elation.

剑桥英语词典解释：

Air punch is an act of hitting upwards with your fist to show that you are happy because you have been successful.

总的来说，air punch就是指向上挥舞着攥紧的拳头庆祝胜利或者表达兴奋之情，我们称之为“挥拳庆祝”。

For example:

There were air punches as he holed the ball.

他进球以后，旁边都是挥拳庆祝的人。

The verdict was greeted with cheers and air punches by her family and friends.

她的家人和朋友为这个判决结果欢呼，并挥拳庆祝。(中国日报网)

冬咚

By the 19th century, the invention of photography, and its immediate adoption by pornographers, established the curious convention of depicting women stripped of their clothing with the exception of their shoes.

　　到19世纪，摄影术的发明及其在色情作品中的迅速普及，催生了一种古怪的惯例：描绘除了鞋子之外不着其他衣物的女性。

　　The heel also retained its associations with female irrationality. As one anti-suffrage agitator wrote in The New York Times in 1871, “Suffrage! Right to hold office! Show us first the woman who has ... sense and taste enough to dress attractively and yet to walk down Fifth-avenue wearing ... a shoe which does not destroy both her comfort and her gait.”

　　高跟鞋仍然保持着与女性非理性形象之间的联系。一个反对女性参政的煽动者，在1871年的《纽约时报》上写道：“选举权！担任公职的权利！先让我们看看，哪个女人有足够的理性和品味，穿着让她舒适，又不破坏步态的鞋子，风姿绰约地走过第五大道。”

　　With all this baggage weighing down high heels, it’s no wonder they couldn’t gain a foothold in men’s fashion — even when men’s stature became a cultural focus in the early decades of the 20th century. Pseudoscientific ideas promoted Darwinian concepts of survival of the fittest and linked male height directly to sexual attractiveness. Heels could have been pressed back into service in men’s fashion, yet they were rejected. Heels on men detracted from their masculinity by highlighting a natural lack of height, rather than conferring any advantage gained from artificially increased stature.

　　高 跟鞋被这种种包袱所拖累，难 怪无法在男士时装中拥有一席之地——即使在20世纪最初几十年，男人的身高成为一个文化焦点的时候。一些伪科学观念引入达尔文优胜劣汰概念，把男性身高和 性吸引力直接联系起来。高跟鞋本有可能回到男士时装界，但遭到了他们的拒绝。男人穿着高跟减损了他们的阳刚之气，突出了天生的身高不足，人为增加的身高不 会赋予他们任何优势。

　　High heels on women, however, remained the cultural norm. Even when heels temporarily went out of fashion, they retained a prominent place in erotica. At the conclusion of World War II, this association led to the invention of the stiletto. The exceptionally thin heels depicted in wartime pinup art were made reality in the early 1950s and real-life women were encouraged to emulate those pinup ideals. Marilyn Monroe — alluring, playful and invariably stiletto shod — became one of the principal feminine archetypes of the period.

　　然 而，女性穿着高跟鞋仍然是一种文化规范。即使在时装领域，高跟鞋会暂时过气，在情色领域，它也始终屹立不倒。第二次世界大战结束后，这种联系催生了细高跟 鞋的发明。战时美女招贴中细到极致的高跟鞋，在50年代初成了现实，社会鼓励现实生活中的女性去模仿那些画报女郎。诱人、顽皮，总是穿细高跟鞋的玛丽莲· 梦露(Marilyn Monroe)，成为了这一时期女性的典型形象。

　　By the 1960s, the high heel fell somewhat from favor; too “mature” for the Youthquake style revolution and too problematic for emerging feminists. It returned to fashion in the 1970s, perfectly in tune with the disco era (when some men did allow heels back into their wardrobe, too).

　　到 了20世纪60年代，高鞋跟变得不那么受青睐了；对于“青年风暴”(Youthquake)的风格革命而言，它太“成熟”；而对新锐女权主义者来说，它又 太容易惹麻烦。到70年代，高跟鞋重新流行起来，与那个迪斯科时代完美契合（高跟鞋当时也确实出现在了一些男性的衣柜中）。

　　In the 1980s, as unprecedented numbers of women entered the white-collar workplace, climbing the corporate ladder was perceived as socially risky — it could strip a woman of her desirability. High fashion offered an antidote: Toweringly high “killer heels” that insinuated that business acumen alone was not the reason for women’s success. By the early 2000s, designer heels were perceived as “power tools” — as one Times story called them — to be used, like lingerie, by professional women to manipulate people through the “power” of sex appeal, an idea that continues to resonate to this day.

　　上 世纪80年代，前所未有的大批女性进入职场，事业心太强开始被认为是社交生活的不利因素——它可能会让女性不招人喜欢。高端时尚提供了一个对策：高耸入云 的“致命高跟”。它可以旁敲侧击地告诉对方，女性的成功并非只是因为她的商业头脑。本世纪初，设计师版的高跟鞋被认为是“影响力工具”——时报的一篇报道 也曾使用这种说法——职业女性利用高跟鞋，通过性感的“力量”来操纵他人，这个想法在今天仍然会得到认同。

　　Linking sex appeal to power also clearly suggests that women have a very short window of opportunity for when they can be seen as powerful. The common comment about the Cannes debacle — that a handful of middle-aged women in flats were turned away — illustrates this issue. In an apologist manner, this observation seemed to suggest that perhaps if these women hadn’t been so aged they wouldn’t have worn sensible shoes. Never mind what accomplishments or connections brought them to the festival.

　　性 魅力与影响力之间的关联还可以清晰地表明，女性一生中只有很短暂的一段时间可以显得富有权力。对于今年戛纳电影节上的事故——少数穿着平底鞋的中年女性被 拒绝入场——的普遍看法就突显了这个问题。虽然带有道歉的姿态，但这种观点似乎在暗示，或许如果这些女性不这么老，就根本不会去穿舒服的平底鞋，无论她们 是凭借什么成绩或关系来参加庆典的。

　　This is the ultimate problem with sexual allure as a purported means to power: The power lies in the eye of the beholder, not the beheld.

　　这就是把性诱惑力视作影响力工具要面对的终极问题：你是否有影响力取决于观察者的主观看法。

　　If the argument for heels is that they are part of traditional attire for women, that is not wrong. The body-revealing gowns and barely there footwear worn by women on the red carpet have direct links to 18th-century ideas on gender, 19th-century pornographic images and midcentury concepts of a woman’s place in society.

　　如果倡导穿高跟鞋的人声称它属于女性的传统服饰，这也一点没错。暴露的礼服和藏在裙子下的鞋子与18世纪的性别观、19世纪的色情图片，以及上世纪中叶的女性社会地位有着直接的关系。

　　Perhaps it is a tradition we can upend in the 21st century, when it should be clear that a woman’s power has nothing to do with the height of her heel.

　　或许我们可以在21世纪颠覆这个传统，因为我们现在都清楚，女性的影响力与鞋跟的高度无关。（爱语吧）