Jared Leto 和他的护肤品牌 Twentynine Palms
图源：cn.bing.com
近期，又有一位名人宣布推出自己的护肤品牌，他就是美国摇滚歌手杰瑞德·莱托（Jared Leto）。尽管他表示此前从未对美容产业抱有兴趣，在这一领域，他还只是前辈们的“学生”。
然而，其护肤品牌 Twentynine Palms 高昂的价格却令人望而却步，不禁使人联想到另一位前不久宣布进军护肤产业的名人——影帝布莱德·皮特（Brad Pitt）。其品牌 Le Domaine 的一瓶精华液竟然高达300英镑。
Ariana Grande和她的品牌 R.E.M Beauty
图源：cn/.bing.vn
更早之前，还有美国女歌手赛琳娜·戈麦斯（Selena Gomez）的品牌 Rare Beauty，流行天后爱莉安娜·格兰德（Ariana Grande）的品牌 R.E.M Beauty，以及其他细数不过来的名人和品牌。
Selena Gomez 和她的品牌 Rare Beaut
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人们认为歌坛天后蕾哈娜（Rihanna）和时尚名媛金·卡戴珊（Kim Kardashian）是第一波“吃螃蟹的人”，也是她们拉开了名人涌入美容护肤行业的序幕。
Kim Kardashian 和她的品牌 KKW Beauty
图源：cn.bing.com
什么？
其实明星不用自己代言的护肤品！
Brad Pitt 和 他的护肤品牌 "Le Domaine" 美国电影演员、制片人。图源：www.newseek.com
From Rihanna to Brad Pitt, celebrities everywhere seem to be starting their own skincare lines. And they all seem to promise to help us achieve healthy, glowing, youthful skin – just like theirs. And yet most of those stars didn't use their own products. So why are they cashing in? And why can't we seem to stop buying in?
从蕾哈娜到布拉德·皮特，名人发展自己的护肤产业似乎早已司空见惯。他们都曾承诺，自己的产品能够让人保持年轻的皮肤、健康的身体和容光焕发的状态——就像他们自己那样。然而，大多数明星甚至都不用自己的产品。那么，为什么他们热衷于投资这片商业蓝海？为什么我们不能遏制购买的欲望呢？
名人效应：浮躁的逐利赛道
Skin care is big business. U.S. sales revenue for prestige skin care was $6.3 billion in 2021, according to market research firm NPD.
护肤产业利润丰厚。市场调研机构NPD数据指出，2021年美国高档护肤品的营业额高达63亿美元。
Winnie Awa, founder of personalized hair advice platform Carra, said "Over the past few years, it seems that every celebrity feels like they can waltz into the industry that we have worked in our whole careers and gain the awareness overnight that we are so fighting for. We've had so many new celebrity brands in such a short period of time that this was the straw that broke the camel's back."
个性化发型咨询服务平台Carria的创始人温妮·阿瓦称：“在过去的几年里，似乎名人都觉得他们能轻松进军护肤产业，一夜走红。然而这却是我们我们投入一生心血、辛苦打拼才能做到的。那么多名人创立的品牌在如此短的时间里挤占市场，成为压垮护肤市场的最后一根稻草。”
美容师Tiara Willis 图源：www.brydie.com
Tiara Willis, an aesthetician and content creator, thinks these brands have a specific audience. "Celebrity skin care is more about creating merchandise for their fans than trying to innovate," she said. "I just don't see their intention being to add something of value to the skin-care community."
作为一名美容师和社交媒体创作者，提亚拉·威利斯认为这些品牌有特定的受众群体。“名人的护肤产业更倾向于向粉丝群体输出商品，而不是尝试去创新。”她说道，“我觉得他们没有为护肤领域做出有价值的贡献。”
护肤潮流抓住了人们什么心态？
Rihanna和她的品牌 Fenty Beauty 图源：cn.bing.com
"Rihanna wanted us to glow so she gave us Fenty Beauty. Now, Rihanna is making sure we're all taking care of bodies and skin underneath it all with a "Fenty Skin" line." ——EllE
“蕾哈娜想让我们焕发光彩，所以她向我们推荐了自己的品牌Fenty Beauty。现在，蕾哈娜试图借助“Fenty skin”产品系列，让我们能好好保养身体和皮肤。”——ELLE杂志
Color cosmetics are sometimes seen as superficial or like a vapid pursuit. Skincare has all of these claims to health and wellness, so it's easier for people to feel like they are taking care of themselves that this is for their health, their well-being, and not feel like they're funneling time into perpetuating beauty standards, even though that is, for the most part, what skincare is as well.
有时人们认为，彩妆是一种肤浅的、无趣的追求；相对而言，护肤这个概念则强调关于人们的皮肤健康，因此更容易让人觉得，购买护肤产品是为了保养自己、为了健康和幸福，而不是把时间花在对标准美貌的无尽追求之上 ——虽然美丽实际上也是护肤追求的主要目的。
“We keep buying and trying to make ourselves look different because that inherent human longing for beauty is not satisfied by the physical, standardized, industrialized stuff. ”
cultural critic Jessica DeFino said.
文学评论家杰西卡·德菲诺说：“我们内心对美丽的追求不会被有形的、标准化和产业化的东西彻底满足，因而我们才不停地购买美容产品，尝试改变自己的外貌。”
Beauty is an inherent human longing. Part of what makes the beauty industry so powerful is that it co-opts this instinctual need, this instinctual craving for this free, beautiful, energetic, three-dimensional version of beauty.
美，是人类与生俱来的一种心理诉求。人们本能地渴求着自由、美好、充满活力的三维的美，正是利用了这种心理，美容产业才能变得庞大。
“完美皮肤”意义的流变：从平面影像到虚妄想象
"I personally despise the term "good skin." I think good skin is an excellent example of how beauty has been wrapped up in morality." DeFino said. "We have been fed messages since the minute we pop out of the womb: to be a good person is to be a beautiful person."
德菲诺说：“我个人很厌恶“好皮肤”这个词。我认为，这个词很好地说明了“美”是如何被道德裹挟的。我们从出生开始就被灌输这样的思想：做一个好人就等同于做一个漂亮的人。”
Hedy Lamarr 美国女演员 图源：cn.bing.com
Currently, the ideal of good skin is very smooth, extremely shiny and wet looking. There is no allowance for changes in tone or texture. It's very flat and glass-like. It reflects the state of our largely virtual digital lives. We're expecting our faces to look like a screen.
如今，人们公认的理想皮肤状态是肤如凝脂、光泽莹润、吹弹可破。人们不允许自己的皮肤变差，最好和玻璃一样平滑。就像我们的生活状态趋于虚拟数字化一样，我们希望自己的脸也看起来像一面无瑕的荧屏。
When you look back on the history of beauty standards, this isn't a new phenomenon. When movies first came out and we could see actresses on the screen, the lighting wasn't that great, the camera quality wasn't that great, and it led to this sort of blurred, ethereal look. And all of a sudden people were like, "This is what somebody famous and worthy looks like. I want to look like that, too."
当回顾历史上美的标准时，不难发现，人们对好皮肤的追求古今一辙。电影刚问世时，灯光技术和镜头质量还没有如此发达，因此女演员的脸看起来朦胧、空灵。在那一瞬间，人们认定：“这就是有头有脸的人的样子。我也想变成那样。”
Every advancement in screens – in cinema, in digital – has had that moment. And we are trying to adapt our real life human faces to a virtual, hyperreal standard of beauty.
电影业和数字屏幕的每一次进步都会带来这种时刻。我们正试图让现实生活中的人脸符合虚拟的、超真实的美的标准。
被“青春至上”裹挟的文化
图源：cn.bing.com
In the beauty industry at large, we are seeing a backlash to negative sounding terms like "anti-aging". But the underlying ideology hasn't changed. Our society and our beauty industry is more youth obsessed than ever. We are living in a youth glorifying culture. Even if we don't say anti-aging.
在整个美容领域里，人们虽然开始抵制使用”抗老“等听起来负面的词汇，但潜意识里对于“抗老”的追求并没有改变。我们的社会和美容业比以往任何时候都更追捧年轻状态。即使不说抗衰老，我们依旧生活在一个“青春至上”的文化里。
图源：cn.bing.com
If we can take away some of our age anxiety by temporarily erasing our wrinkles with a shot of Botox, we're going to go for that because we have been trained to want a quick and easy sweep-it-under the rug fix for what is actually a societal problem.
如果一剂肉毒素针*能够短暂消除皱纹、缓解年龄焦虑，那么我们都会去打——因为我们被社会压力裹挟，想要快速且简单地掩盖真实的自我。这才是真正的社会问题所在。
译注：Botox 肉毒素针在微整形领域用于瘦脸。
重点词汇
prestige
the respect and admiration that sb/sth has because of their social position, or what they have done 威信；声望；威望
例句：There is a lot of prestige attached to owning a car like this.
vapid
lacking interest or intelligence 乏味的；枯燥的；愚蠢的
例句：She made a vapid comment about the weather.
原文链接：
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1133969652/skincare-culture-runs-deep-and-celebrities-are-cashing-in
https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/a27126113/rihanna-fenty-skin-trademark/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/04/celebrity-skin-care-brad-pitt/
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/brad-pitt-skincare-le-domaine-intl-scli/index.html
编译 | 虞佳盟 吾丽巴丽亚 玛迪娜 张若楠
排版 | 虞佳盟
