2012年考研英语二阅读 Text 2 原文翻译及答案解析

Pretty in pink: adult women do not remember being so obsessed with the colour, yet it is pervasive in our young girls' lives. It is not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls' identity to appearance. Then it presents that connection, even among two-year-olds, between girls as not only innocent but as evidence of innocence. Looking around, I despaired at the singular lack of imagination about girls' lives and interests.

粉色魅力：成年女性不记得曾如此痴迷于这种颜色，但它在年轻女孩的生活中无处不在。并非粉色本身不好，但它只是彩虹中微小的一部分，尽管它可能以某种方式庆祝女孩身份，但它也反复而坚定地将女孩的身份与外表融合。然后，它呈现了这种联系，即使是两岁女孩之间，不仅天真无邪，而且作为天真无邪的证据。环顾四周，我对女孩生活和兴趣的极度缺乏想象力感到绝望。

Girls' attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American Studies, it is not. Children were not colour-coded at all until the early 20th century: in the era before domestic washing machines all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What's more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses. When nursery colours were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine colour, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, symbolised femininity. It was not until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children's marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem inherently attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years.

女孩对粉色的吸引力似乎不可避免，似乎编码在她们的DNA中，但根据美国研究副教授乔·帕奥莱蒂的说法，并非如此。直到20世纪初，儿童根本没有颜色编码：在家用洗衣机出现之前，所有婴儿都穿白色，这是出于实用考虑，因为唯一能清洁衣物的方法是煮沸它们。更重要的是，男孩和女孩都穿被认为是性别中立的连衣裙。当育婴室颜色被引入时，粉色实际上被认为更具男性化，是红色的柔和版本，与力量相关。蓝色，因其与圣母玛利亚、恒常和忠诚的关联，象征着女性气质。直到1980年代中期，当放大年龄和性别差异成为主导的儿童营销策略时，粉色才真正崭露头角，开始似乎对女孩具有内在吸引力，成为定义她们为女性的一部分，至少在最初的关键几年里。

I had not realised how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kids, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. I assumed that phase was something experts developed after years of research into children's behaviour: wrong. Turns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularised as a marketing trick by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s.

我没有意识到营销趋势如何深刻地主宰了我们对儿童自然本质的看法，包括我们对他们心理发展的核心信念。以幼儿为例。我原以为那个阶段是专家们多年研究儿童行为后发展出来的：错了。根据童年消费史学家丹尼尔·库克的说法，它是在1930年代被服装制造商作为营销伎俩而普及的。

Trade publications counselled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a "third stepping stone" between infant wear and older kids' clothes. It was only after "toddler" became a common shoppers' term that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage. Splitting kids, or adults, into ever-tinier categories has proved a sure-fire way to boost profits. And one of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences — or invent them where they did not previously exist.

行业出版物建议百货商店，为了增加销售，应该在婴儿服装和较年长儿童服装之间创造一个'第三块垫脚石'。只有在'幼儿'成为一个常见的购物术语后，它才演变成一个被广泛接受的发展阶段。将儿童或成人分成越来越细小的类别已被证明是提高利润的可靠方法。而细分市场最简单的方法之一是放大性别差异——或在之前不存在的地方发明它们。

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