新托福阅读：A beauty that cannot be weighed

胖女孩之秀

In the award-winning American film Precious, the title character dreams of receiving the red-carpet treatment.Yet her excessive weight effectively rules it out.

在备受赞誉的美国影片《珍爱》中，主人公梦想能够接受红地毯般的礼遇。但是由于她严重超标的体重，这个梦想几乎不可能实现。

Thousands of miles from Hollywood, a young Chinese woman named Zeng Jing is realizing Precious' dream by posing in front of the camera - and pictures of the overweight girl modeling large-size garments for her clothing store have brought her rave reviews.

在距好莱坞千里之外的地方，一位名叫曾晶的中国女孩在镜头面前展示着自己，《珍爱》中主角的梦想正在慢慢实现。与此同时，胖女孩曾晶为自己服装店拍摄了大码服装展示照片，网友们对这组照片好评如潮。

"I think someone needs to stand out and demonstrate our beauty because it's not easy to be appreciated by society," said Zeng, "And I think I can be the one." In 2008, a story about Zeng vying to become a model, together with a series of offbeat photos of her, including one half naked, were published in a Nanjing newspaper and its affiliated website. The photos received tens of thousands of hits and comments that day and were linked by numerous portals.

“我觉得总得有人站出来展示我们胖人的美，因为我们这种美是很难被社会欣赏认可的，”曾晶说，“而我就是这个人。”2008年，一家南京媒体在其报纸及网站上发表了曾晶立志成为模特的故事，同时刊登了她的一组个性写真照，包括一张半裸照。这组照片吸引了成千上万人的跟帖评论。许多门户网站也将其转载发布。

"I think she is amazingly beautiful," commented one of the netizens, "It seems a bit unfair that overweight girls have long been excluded from the notion of beauty."

“我觉得她真的很漂亮，”一位网友评论道，“胖女孩与美无缘，似乎有点不公平。”

In a country where the average weight for a girl is 60 kg, Zeng Jing weighs 110 kg, subverting the stereotypical view about models being tall and slim. Zeng's blog is admired by many women who are also overweight. They praise her courage for being a model, because they usually consider themselves "too weird to be exposed to the lens."

在一个女孩平均体重60公斤的国家里，曾晶重大110公斤，颠覆了模特需又瘦又高的传统观念。曾的博客受到了许许多多同样有超标体重困扰的女孩们的追捧。他们称赞她当模特的勇气，因为这些女孩子通常认为自己出现在镜头前太过奇怪。

Photographer Huang Hao was impressed by Zeng's outgoing and optimistic character. "Confidence is what I wanted to demonstrate most through the photos," said Huang. "It is not very common for a girl to maintain such a weight and such a sunny disposition at the same time." Born at a regular 3.5 kg, she soared to 110 kg at age 16 and most of her schoolmates took her for a geek. Nicknames were common for Zeng. "Titanic" was one she remembers most clearly. Living with sneers and stares all through puberty, it was in the virtual world that Zeng was hailed as a "beauty" for the first time in her life. She was working in a clothing store for overweight girls in Guangzhou in 2005 when she came across the Internet forum "Girls Happy Being Fat", where most of the members were girls weighing over 70 kg. Zeng initially posted photos of herself wearing clothes from the store, simply as a promotion. To her surprise, the photos won her top billing as "Forum Beauty". She was thrilled to be appreciated by strangers for the first time in her life. Instead of promoting clothes, Zeng made a handful of good friends in the forum who shared a lot of similarities besides weight. Most hated going out alone and preferred to stay holed up at home to avoid sneers from their peers. Soon they moved from the virtual world to hanging out together in real life.

曾晶的乐观，积极向上的性格特征给黄摄影师留下了深刻的影响。“我一直想透过照片传达出自信，”黄说。“一个同时拥有肥胖身体和阳光、乐观性格的人是非常少见的。”出生时体重正常，3.5公斤，但是到16岁时体重却飙升到110公斤，她的许多校友都把她当怪物看。绰号对她来说也是家常便饭。“泰坦尼克”是她影响最深刻的一个。在嘲笑声和别人的凝视中度过了整个青春期，在虚拟世界里，她有生以来第一次被欢呼为“美女”。2005年，她在广州一家专营胖女孩服装的专卖店工作时，偶遇到一个叫“开心胖女孩”的网络论坛，大部分的会员都是体重超过70公斤的女孩。最初，仅仅为了宣传推广胖女孩服装店，曾晶上传了几张穿着该店服装的照片。令她出乎意料的是，这些照片为她赢得了“论坛头号美女”的称号。生平第一次有陌生人欣赏自己，她有些喜出望外。曾晶不再推销服装，而是在论坛上交到了一群好友，除体重之外，她们还有许多共同点。大多数胖女孩都讨厌独自出门，宁愿躲在家里避免同龄人的冷嘲热讽。很快她们就在现实生活中见面了，并且经常一起出去玩。