紐時賞析／肉毒桿菌素的藝術

The Art of Botox

肉毒杆菌素的艺术

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，「保妥适」肉毒杆菌素推出一系列由电影制作人埃洛．莫里斯执导的广告。这些广告就像非常短的纪录片，由鳏居者、单亲妈妈和变装皇后三位保妥适使用者，诉说动人、悲伤和最终具救赎力量的故事。2019年，一支典型的保妥适广告把产品描绘成女强人的补品，能让梦幻女子从董事会会议室溜到酒吧高脚凳时，赋予她们勇气。现在保妥适被重新定位成一种能让人吐露真相的药，一种个人深刻自省的工具。这名母亲凝视着旧照片。鳏居者回想起他丈夫的眼神而落泪。虽然这三人没提到保妥适，但镜头拍摄她们平滑的额头时带着赞许意味，暗示这个疗程有深刻疗效。广告语写着「你还是你」（译注：此为双关语，也有「抚平你」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.

肉毒杆菌素是一种毒素，可怕的巧合是，它既能让人肉毒杆菌中毒，又能除皱，低剂量注射到有皱纹的额头上，能阻断给肌肉的神经讯号，因而抚平肌肉上方的皮肤。虽然市面上有几种竞争品牌，但保妥适是其中佼佼者。这种药提供你可能和邪恶海巫达成的那类交易：她能让你青春永驻，但价格之高足以让你动容。

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.

以前有一阵子，用肉毒杆菌素除皱的趋势被视为是不良风气，对演艺人员、社会，尤其是女性都如此。打过肉毒杆菌素的脸曾经被观众认为是不自然的奇观，但这种奇观助长了电视实境秀和网路文化，多亏了这些日益兴盛的类型，肉毒杆菌素累积了一种搞笑虚饰的光环，有助于消减使用上的文化恐惧。

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.

肉毒杆菌素一度意味虚荣、错觉和局促不安，但现在给人新的联想：自信、坚韧，甚至真实可靠，因为「进厂维修」已经被认为是正经事。

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.”

在我看来，女人皱纹被污名化的原因，不只是显老，还会让女人看似在生气、难过、惊讶和焦虑，也就是让女人看来活生生。即使肉毒杆菌素成了可能被逐出好莱坞女人的停靠站，仍鲜明地显示了失落的东西。女性影星过了某个年纪不再被埋葬，而是做防腐处理。新的保妥适广告语是「你还是你」，但其实可能是「你还在这里」。

文／Amanda Hess 译／李京伦