自我接受，總是一種帶有深刻革命性的舉動

That was the line that stuck with me when my 17-year-old daughter recently regaled me with the minutiae of a lighthearted argument she’d had with a friend. It was about my daughter’s staunch resistance to straightening or altering her hair in any way.

我17歲的女兒最近饒有興致地向我詳細地轉述了，她與一個朋友之間一段輕松爭辯。爭辯的話題是，我的女兒堅決不愿意拉直頭發(fā)，或者以任何方式改變自己的頭發(fā)。

The friend had insisted that such alterations were no big deal, to which my daughter took umbrage and shot back, “Hair is political.”

那位朋友堅持說，這樣的改變沒什么大不了的。我女兒惱火地回擊道，“發(fā)型事關政治。”

In my daughter’s view, such alterations were a sign of suppressive concepts of worth and beauty of which she would have no part. Presenting herself as nature made her was an act of self-loving defiance that demanded not her alteration but the alteration of others’ attitudes about how we expect people to bend in order to belong, about how many destructive subliminal messages we’ve all absorbed and how we must search ourselves for the truth of our own prejudices.

在我女兒看來，這樣的改變象征著那些她不認同的壓抑的價值觀和審美觀。以大自然創(chuàng)造出的模樣展示自己，是一種出于自愛的反抗。這種姿態(tài)不會要求她自己改變，而是要求其他人改變那種期望別人為了贏得歸屬感，進而屈從的態(tài)度;要求其他人認識到，我們吸收了多少破壞性的潛在訊息;也要求人們認識到，需要怎樣自我探究，才能明白關于自身偏見的真相。

It reminded me of the profound commentary on the subject by the actress Tracie Thoms in Chris Rock’s 2009 documentary “Good Hair”: “To keep my hair the same texture as it grows out of my head is looked at as revolutionary. Why is that?”

這讓我想起演員翠茜·索姆斯(Tracie Thoms)在克里斯·洛克(Chris Rock) 2009年的紀錄片《好頭發(fā)》(Good Hair)中，對這個話題做出的深刻評論：“我把頭發(fā)保留成從腦袋上長出來的那種質地，就被當成具有革命性。為什么會這樣?”

But to me, my daughter’s message was bigger than her, or hair, or a debate between teenagers. It was a life lesson that we all have to learn, over and over: Self-acceptance, of all stripes, large and small, is always an inherently political and profoundly revolutionary act.

但在我看來，我的女兒表達的觀點比她本人、頭發(fā)，或是少年之間的一場爭辯都更為宏大。這是一則我們所有人都一再溫習的人生教訓：自我接受，無論大小或形式，總是具有內在的政治性，也總是一種帶有深刻革命性的舉動。

We are so suffused in a mix of misogyny, patriarchy, racism, sexism, homophobia and hetero-normative exclusionary idealism that we can easily lose sight of the singular acts of ordinary bravery that each of us displays every time we choose not to play along.

我們身邊充斥著一種仇視女性、父權至上、種族主義、性別歧視、恐懼同性戀、異性戀才正常的偏狹的理想主義，所以可能很容易會忽視我們每一次選擇不隨大流之時，所表現(xiàn)出的日常的、個體的勇氣。

Life is an endless negotiation with ourselves and with the world about who we are — the truest truth of who we are — and whether we have the mettle to simply be us, all of us, as we are, backlash notwithstanding.

生命就是我們與自己、與周遭的世界進行的一番永無止境的談判，涉及“我們是誰”這個問題的最真答案，也涉及我們有沒有勇氣干脆以自己的本來面貌存在，遭遇沖擊也在所不惜。

And every time we answer “yes” to the question of courage, we stand an inch taller and we rise closer to the light.

每一次我們對勇氣的問題給出肯定的回答，我們站定的身姿就能高大一寸，距離光明也就更近一分。