【英语生活】你会为保住工作整容吗?

Last week a woman I was at university with sent me an e-mail advertising a new website for the over-40s on which she had posted an article about her decision to have Botox.

When I last saw her a quarter of a century ago, she was a scruffy, cerebral Oxford undergraduate. So it should have come as a surprise to find her in Harley Street visiting a man with a syringe full of facial filler.

Yet she isn't the first person I know to have made the transition from bluestocking to Botox. In the last year, four other women have done the same, all with formidable educations and even more formidable careers.

When her e-mail landed, I was sitting at my desk pretending to read a report on corporate responsibility, but was actually thinking about face cream and ageing and what a troublesome business it is.

I had just read this sentence: “Embedding a corporate responsibility (CR) strategy can be a bit like using an anti-ageing cream – it takes time for the results to show and you have to keep rubbing it in.”

If that were true, I reasoned, it would bode ill for CR. From extensive personal experience, I can confirm that rubbing the cream in makes no difference at all. I have been applying L'Oréal's Wrinkle De-Crease and after frequent applications and tireless rubbing I have noticed an inexorable and unfortunate trend towards wrinkle in-crease.

This is called getting older. I suppose I always knew in a vague way that it happened to everyone, but I'm still shocked to find it happening to me. I'm even more shocked to find that I mind: every time I go to the loo at work and scrutinise myself under the unforgiving fluorescent lights I feel a bit worse than I did the time before.

Thus when I received this e-mail about Botox I abandoned the CR report altogether and visited the website (www.writeonthecusp.com) to read her compelling story about her pact with the cosmetic devil.

In the UK, spending on cosmetic surgery is up almost 50 per cent on a year ago, and it seems many of the people accounting for the rise are bankers, lawyers, headhunters and senior managers. In these sorts of industries, looking old is becoming even worse than looking fat.

The career women I know who have gone for the knife or the needle say it is not just about being attractive to men. It is the fear of becoming invisible to everyone – especially at work. One happily married investment banker who had Botox on the eve of her 40th birthday tells me that it is simply because so many of her colleagues are in their 20s and next to them she feels ancient and washed-up.

It is all most annoying: I thought women with good jobs would escape this sort of thing. Botox was surely for Americans and TV presenters and housewives worried that their rich husbands might run off with something more nubile. For women like me, who never measured themselves by their looks, it surely wouldn't matter when they lost them.

It turns out to matter rather a lot. Almost all the successful women I know have used their femininity on the way up so instinctively that they are barely aware of doing it. They don't behave in an outrageously flirty way, but have varieties of female charm that work well on both men and women. The trouble is that female charm of any variety feels less charming when it is accompanied with grey hair and a saggy face and body. You only realise how important the charm has been when you fear it is about to stop working.

Very few men have made this sort of charm part of their ascent. If you look in annual reports at the pictures of the directors you see ranks of uglyish, oldish men with bald heads and pot bellies who nevertheless pass themselves off as senior, powerful people to be reckoned with. None of the women dare to look so old or so awful; instead they strive to look young(ish) by whatever means they can. At the age of 52, a board member of a well-known grocery retailer has even been wearing braces to straighten her teeth.

The latest Financial Times survey of Europe's most successful women shows pictures of women looking suspiciously younger than their years. Clearly a bit has been spent on anti-ageing, although I wouldn't want to name names as people can get funny about this sort of thing.

All this is most disheartening. I had thought the hard decade for working women was in their 30s, when the huge issue was how to mix work and babies. Back then, I had assumed that, by the time I was in my late 40s, I would be senior and established and so used to juggling I wouldn't notice any more. I would be in my prime and everything would be tickety-snitch.

But now when I see my female friends we moan as much as we always did. The difference is we have stopped moaning about childcare and moan about how old we look instead.

Distressing as it all is, I'm not – yet – leaning towards the Botox option myself. Not because I disapprove, but because I don't want to end up looking like Cliff Richard. Instead, I have a beauty tip that I'd like to share with readers. I have found a great moisturiser that is a lot better than Wrinkle De-crease. It is called aqueous cream. You buy it from the pharmacy counter where it costs about £3.99 for a bucketful.

It won't turn back the clock or even hold it still. But I have found an answer there, too. My solution is free, involves no knives, nasty injections or sneaky feelings that you have entered a pact with the devil, but it works for me. I never change my picture byline. That way I stay under 40 forever

最近，我一位大学女同学发来电邮，宣传一个面向40岁以上人群的新网站。她在这个网站上发表了一篇文章，表示自己决定进行Botox注射除皱术（又称：肉毒杆菌素注射美容法）。

我上一次见她，还是25年前。那时候，她是个不修边幅、思维理智的牛津大学学生。所以，想到她要去哈利街(Harley Street)拜访一位手拿针管、里面装满面部填充物的整容真是让人惊讶。

然而，在我认识的才女中，她并不是第一个接受Botox手术的人。去年，还有4个女人做出了同样的举动，而她们都受过令人敬畏的教育，从事更加令人敬畏的职业。

收到她邮件的时候，我正坐在自己的办公桌前，装模作样地读一份关于公司责任的报告，其实却在想面霜和衰老的问题，并在念叨这真是件麻烦事。

我刚刚读到这句话：“贯彻公司责任战略，可能有点儿像使用抗皱面霜——需要一定的时间才能看到效果，而且你必须持之以恒。”

我想，如果这是真的，对公司责任来讲可是不祥之兆。出于丰富的个人经验，我能肯定，长期费劲使用面霜根本没有用。我一直在用欧莱雅(L'Oréal)的舒颜除皱修纹日霜(Wrinkle De-Crease)，在频繁使用和不厌其烦地擦来擦去之后，我注意到一个无情而不幸的趋势：皱纹一直在增加。

这就叫变老。我想，我隐约知道这会发生在每个人身上。不过，当我发现自己也在变老时，仍然感到震惊。当我发现自己对此非常介意时，就更震惊了。每次我在上班时间去洗手间，在那不可原谅的荧光灯下端详自己的时候，都比上次的感觉更糟糕。

于是，当我收到这封关于Botox的邮件时，我把公司责任报告一股脑抛下，去那个网站(www.writeonthecusp.com)读那个关于她与美容魔鬼订立协定的引人入胜的故事。

在英国，美容手术的费用比一年前提高了近50%，而造成这种费用上涨的人，似乎有很多是银行家、律师、猎头人士和高级经理人。在这些类型的行业里，“看起来老了”正变成一件比“看起来胖了”更糟糕的事情。

我认识的那些去动刀或打针的职业女性表示，这不光是为了对男人有吸引力，而是担心自己变得越来越“目不忍睹”——特别是在工作中。一位幸福的已婚投资银行家在她40岁生日前夕进行了Botox注射除皱。她对我说，这么做就是因为她有太多同事才20多岁，在他们身边，她觉得自己高龄，筋疲力尽。

这是最讨厌的事了。我原以为身居要职的女性可以摆脱这种事情。Botox显然是给美国人、电视广告演员和担心自己富有的丈夫出轨的家庭主妇们准备的。对于像我这样的女人——从不凭借外貌衡量自己，即便青春已逝，当然也没什么关系。

结果，事实证明这有很大关系。在我认识的成功女性中，几乎所有人在她们晋升的道路上都使用了自己的女性特质——由于这是如此本能的做法，以至于她们自己几乎意识不到。她们没有采取令人不能容忍的轻佻方式，但都拥有各种各样对男性和女性都很起作用的女性魅力。麻烦的是，任何一种女性魅力如果有灰白的头发、松懈下垂的脸庞和身体，感觉上就没那么有魅力了。只有在你担心这即将影响你的职业前途的时候，你才意识到魅力有多么重要。

很少有哪个男性会借助自己的性别魅力去实现升迁。如果你去看看各公司年报上的董事照片，就能看见形形色色、丑陋、衰老、秃顶、大腹便便的男人——但他们都是不可小觑的高管人员、权势人物。没有哪个女人敢让自己看起来这么老或这么难看；相反，她们会用尽一切方法，拼命让自己看起来年轻（或者娇小）。在一家知名的杂货零售公司，一位52岁的女董事现在还戴着牙套矫正牙齿。

英国《金融时报》最近进行了一次关于欧洲最成功女性的调查，并刊登了她们的照片。在照片上，她们看起来似乎比实际年纪年轻很多。显然，有人在抗皱方面是花了点小钱的，不过，我不想指名道姓，因为人们可能会拿这种事插科打诨。

这太让人沮丧了。我曾经以为，工作女性最艰难的十年是她们30多岁的时候——在这个时候，又要工作，又要照顾孩子，如何两者兼顾可是个大问题。我在30多岁的时候曾想，等我过了45岁，我就是资深人士，就会地位稳固。于是，我一直骗自己，以后就再也不用注意这些问题了，我将会处于全盛时期，一切都会好起来。

不过，当我现在看着女性朋友的时候，却发现悲叹和过去一样多。区别在于，我们不再悲叹照顾孩子问题，而是悲叹我们看起来有多老。

尽管这样烦恼，我本人仍然不倾向于Botox注射除皱术这种选择。不是因为我反对手术美容，而是因为我不希望自己最后看起来像克利夫•理查(Cliff Richard，英国男歌手，接受过Botox注射除皱术——译者注)。相反，我有一个美容窍门很愿意和读者分享。我发现了一种很棒的保湿霜，比舒颜除皱修纹日霜好多了。这是一种叫做“aqueous cream”的湿润软膏，你可以在药房柜台买到，每瓶大概3.99英镑。

不过，这个东西也无法让时钟倒转，甚至无法让它停下。可我找出了一个对策。这个方法是免费的，不用动刀，不用进行讨厌的注射，也没有与美容魔鬼订立协议时鬼鬼祟祟的感觉，但它对我挺管用。这个方法就是：永远不更换作者资料上的头像照片。这样，我就永远不到40岁了。

译者/徐柳

《FT商学院》