Medieval noblewomen swallowed arsenic¹ and dabbed³ on bats' blood to improve their complexions⁴; 18th-century Americans prized the warm urine of young boys to erase⁵ their freckles⁶; Victorian ladies removed their ribs⁷ to give themselves a wasp⁸ waist.(1) The desire to be beautiful is as old as civilisation⁹, as is the pain that it can cause.

The pain has not stopped the passion from creating a $160 billion-a-year global industry, encompassing¹⁰ make-up, skin and hair care, fragrances¹¹, cosmetic¹² surgery, health clubs and diet pills. Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education. Such spending is not mere¹³ vanity. Being pretty -or just not ugly -confers enormous genetic¹⁴ and social advantages.(2) Attractive people (both men and women) are judged to be more intelligent and sexy; they earn more, and they are more likely to marry.

Beauty matters most, though, for reproductive success.(3) A study by an American scientist, logged the mating preferences of more than 10,000 people across 37 cultures(4). It found that a woman's physical attractiveness came top or near top of every man's list. Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist and author of "Survival of the Prettiest", argues that "good looks are a woman's most fungible(5) asset, exchangeable for social position, money, even love."Beauty is something that we recognise instinctively¹⁵.(6) A baby of three months will smile longer at a face judged by adults to be "attractive". Such beauty signals health and fertility(7). Long lustrous¹⁶ hair has always been a sign of good health; mascara makes eyes look bigger and younger; blusher and red lipstick¹⁷ mimic¹⁸ signs of sexual arousal.(8) Whatever the culture, relatively¹⁹ light and flawless skin is seen as a testament(9) to both youth and health.

Then again, a curvy body, with big breasts and a waist-to-hip ratio of less than 0.8 -Barbie's is 0.54 -shows an ideal stage of readiness for conception.(10) Plastic surgery to pad breasts or lift buttocks serves to make a woman look as though she was in her late teens or early 20s.(11)Basic instinct(12) keeps the beauty industry powerful. In medieval times, recipes for homemade cosmetics²⁰(13) were kept in the kitchen right beside those used to feed the family. But it was not until the start of the 20th century, when mass production coincided with mass exposure to an idealised standard of beauty (through photography, magazines and movies) that the industry first took off.(14)In 1909, Eugene Schueller founded the French Harmless Hair Colouring Co., which later became L'Oreal(15) -today's industry leader. Two years later, Paul Beiersdorf, a Hamburg pharmacist(16), developed the first cream to bind²¹ oil and water. Today, it sells in 150 countries as Nivea, the biggest personal-care brand in the world.

But it was the great rivalry²² between two women in America that made the industry what it is today. Elizabeth Arden opened the first modern beauty salon²³(17) in 1910, followed a few years later by Helena Rubinstein, a Polish immigrant. The two took cosmetics out of household pots and pans and into the modern era.(18) Both thought beauty and health were interlinked. They combined facials with diets and exercise classes in a holistic²⁴ approach that the industry is now returning to.(19)The emerging beauty industry played on the fear of looking ugly as much as on the pleasure of looking beautiful, drawing on the new science of psychology²⁵ to convince women that an inferiority complex could be cured by a dab² of lipstick.(20) On launching her famous eight-hour cream, developed for her horses, Arden quipped: "I judge a woman and a horse by the same criteria²⁶: legs, head and rear end."(21)Notes:

1. 中世纪时，贵妇们服食砒霜、敷蝙蝠血来改善面色；18世纪的美国妇女则将男童的新鲜尿液视为去除雀斑的上好佳品；维多利亚时期的妇女更是不惜抽去肋骨来获得纤细的腰肢。arsenic：砒霜；dab：轻敷，轻涂。

2. 容貌姣好，或者说不难看，具有遗传和社会两方面的极大优势。也就是下面一句中说的，挣得更多，婚配机率更高。

3. 不过，美对于繁衍生息才是至关重要的。

4. 调查了37种文化1万多人心目中理想异性的取舍标准。log：把……记入记录簿。

5. fungible：可替代的，可互换的。fungible asset即“容易折现的资产”。

6. 美是凭直觉就能感觉到的东西。

7. fertility：繁殖力。

8. 有光泽的长发一向代表健康，睫毛膏衬得眼睛更大更有活力，腮红和红色唇膏使人性感。后一句话直译应为“腮红和红色唇膏模拟性唤起的特征。”

9. testament：证明，证据。

10. 还有，女性优美的身段——丰满的胸部和不足0.8的腰臀比(芭比娃娃是0.54)，显现出适合生育的理想状态。curvy：（女性）体型富于曲线美的；Barbie：即Barbie Doll，芭比娃娃，一种金发碧眼的玩具娃娃。

11. plastic surgery：整形外科(手术)，即美容手术；pad breasts or lift buttocks：隆胸或提臀。

12. basic instinct：这里指“爱美的天性”。

13. recipes for homemade cosmetics：自制化妆品的配方。

14. 直到20世纪初，一方面(美容品)实现了大规模生产，另一方面大众(通过照片、杂志和电影)大量接触到近乎理想化的美，两者的契合才使美容业第一次起飞。

15. LOreal：欧莱雅，世界知名的化妆品品牌。下面的Nivea（妮维雅)是一种护肤品的品牌。

16. pharmacist：药剂师。

17. beauty salon：美容院。

18. 这两位女性使化妆品脱离了家中的瓶瓶罐罐，跨入了一个全新的时代。

19. 她们把美容、节食和健身课程有机结合起来，这也正是目前美容业回归的方向。holistic：全盘的，全面的。

20. 美容业的兴起不仅有赖于人们对丑的恐惧，同样也得益于人们对美貌的追求，并利用新的心理学知识让女士们相信一抹唇膏就可以让自卑情结一扫而光。

21.雅顿俏皮地说：“我评判一个女人和一匹马的标准是一样的：腿、头和臀部。”quip：俏皮地说，挖苦；rear end：<口>臀部，屁股。