考研英語閱讀材料匯編之文教類(3)

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閱讀是考研英語的重要題型之一，也是保障英語成績的關(guān)鍵題目。因此，考研學(xué)子們要充分重視英語閱讀，除了平時(shí)多多閱讀英語雜志、報(bào)紙外，還需要針對閱讀進(jìn)行專項(xiàng)訓(xùn)練。小編整理了關(guān)于考研英語閱讀題源的系列文章——考研英語閱讀材料匯編之文教類(3)，請參考!

Girls Going Mild(er)

Consider the following style tips for girls: skirts and dresses should fall no more than four fingers above the knee. No tank tops without a sweater or jacket over them. Choose a bra that has a little padding to help disguise when you are cold. These fashion hints may sound like the prim mandates of a 1950s "health" film.

But they are from the Web site of Pure Fashion, a modeling and etiquette program for teen girls whose goal is "to show the public it is possible to be cute, stylish and modest." Pure Fashion has put on 13 shows in 2007 featuring 600 models. National director Brenda Sharman estimates there will be 25 shows in 2008. It is not the only newfangled outlet for old-school ideas about how girls should dress: ModestAPParelUSA.com, ModestByDesign. com and DressModestly.com all advocate a return to styles that leave almost everything to the imagination. They cater to what writer Wendy Shalit claims is a growing movement of "girls gone mild"--teens and young women who are rejecting promiscuous "bad girl" roles embodied by Britney Spears, Bratz Dolls and the nameless. shirtless thousands in “Girls Gone Wild" videos. Instead, these girls cover up, insist on enforced curfews on college campuses, bring their moms on their dates and pledge to stay virgins until married. And they spread the word: in Pennsylvania, a group of high-school girls "girlcotted" Abercrombie & Fitch for selling T shirts with suggestive slogans (who needs brains when you have these?). Newly launched Eliza magazine bills itself as a "modest fashion" magazine for the 17- to 34-year-old demographic. Macy's has begun carrying garments by Shade Clothing, which was founded by two Mormon women wanting trendy, but not-revealing, clothes. And Miss Utah strode the runway of the 2007 Miss America pageant in a modestly cut one-piece swimsuit. (She didn't win the crown.) According to Shalit, this "youth-led rebellion" is a welcome corrective to our licentious, oversexed times. But is the new modesty truly a revolution, or is it merely an inevitable reaction to a culture of increased female sexual empowerment, similar to the backlash against flappers in the 1920s and second-wave feminists in the 1970s?

Shalit has made a career of cataloging the degradations of our culture while championing crusades of virtue. Her first book, "A Return to Modesty," argued that chastity was hot--and informed readers she intended to remain a virgin until her wedding night. Shalit says she was inundated with letters and e-mail from girls dismayed by cultural pressure to be "bad." She began a Web site, ModestyZone.net--there are at least a dozen similar ones toddy—and started collecting information from 3,000 e-mail exchanges between 1999 and 2006. "There's a dawning awareness that maybe not everyone participating in these behaviors is happy with them, so let's not assume everyone doing this is empowered," she says. She blames the usual suspects: media, misguided feminist professors, overly permissive parents. Sharman also points a finger at Moms Cone Wild. "It used to be that moms would control the way their daughters dressed. But now we have this 'Desperate Housewives' culture, and the moms are as influenced by the media as the kids," she says. "They've lost the sense of encouraging their daughters to be ladylike." Pure Fashion, which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic organization Regnum Chrisri, aims to "help young ladies make better choices," say Sharman.

This not the first time women have been asked to make these choices. During a century of tumult over the roles and rights of women, fashion and sexual expression have remained lightning rods for controversy. The forward-thinking women of the 1920s who cut their hair, threw out their corsets and dared to smoke in public were the Britney Spearses and Paris Hiltons of their day, says Joshua Zeitz, author of "Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex,Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern". "Everything is relative—girls weren't wearing thongs or getting bikini waxes, but they were coming to school in knee-length skirts, wearing lipstick and smoking," Zeitz says. "The concern at the time was that the culture was sexualizing young girls. The backlash came during the Great Depression, when you see a movement to get women back into the home, in part to correct this culture of licentiousness."

The most recent attempt to turn back the clock may be a reaction to yet another sexual revolution: "Gays and lesbians are becoming mainstreamed, women make up more than half of college populations, they're becoming full partners in the workplace and there's a general cultural deconstruction of what gender means," Zeitz says. "We go through waves of progress and reaction, but you can never bottle these things back up for real."

Another explanation may be the mainstreaming of conservative religious values. Just as what would Jesus do, bracelets enjoyed a cultural moment on par with rubber live strong bands, faith-based programs like Pure Fashion (which theoretically answers the question "What Would Mary Wear?") are gaining acceptance in the culture at large. Most modest-clothing Web sites have religious underpinnings, from Mormon to Christian to Muslim, but attract nonreligious customers as well. Shalit is an Orthodox Jew, now married to a rabbi, and many girls she profiles see religion as motivating. "Since the good girl today is often socially ostracized, a lot of girl naturally find solace in their faith in God," she says.

What makes the movement unique, according to Shalit, is that it's the adults who are often pushing sexual boundaries, and the kids who are slamming on the brakes. "Well-meaning experts and parents say that they understand kids ’wanting to be ‘bad’ instead of ‘good’," she writes in her book. "Yet this reversal of adults’ expectations is often experienced not as a gift of freedom but a new Kind of oppression." which just may prove that rebelling against Mom and Dad is one trend that will never go out of style.

詞匯注解

重點(diǎn)單詞：

hint /hint/

【文中釋義】n.提示

【大綱全義】n.暗示，提示，線索 v.暗示，示意

cute /kju:t/

【文中釋義】adj.可愛的

【大綱全義】adj.逗人喜愛的，聰明的，伶俐的

漂亮的

estimate /'estimeit/

【文中釋義】v.估計(jì)

【大綱全義】v./n.估計(jì)，估價(jià); 評估

outlet /'autlet/

【文中釋義】n.出路

【大綱全義】n.出路，出口; 銷路，市場;發(fā)泄 方法; 電源插座

mild /maild/

【文中釋義】adj.才溫柔的

【大綱全義】adj.溫和的，輕徽的，味淡的，不含有害物質(zhì)的，不嚴(yán)重的

embody / im'b?di/

【文中釋義】v.包含

【大綱全義】v.具體表達(dá)，使具體化;包含，收錄

insist / in'sist/

【文中釋義】v.堅(jiān)持

【大綱全義】v.(on)堅(jiān)持要求，堅(jiān)決主張，堅(jiān)持

campus /'kæmp?s/

【文中釋義】n.校園

【大綱全義】n.(大學(xué))校園

virgin /'v?:d?in/

【文中釋義】n.處女

【大綱全義】n.處女 adj.處女的; 純潔的;原

始的; 未使用的

slogan /'sl?ug?n /

【文中釋義】n.標(biāo)語

【大綱全義】n.標(biāo)語，口號

garment /'ga:m?nt/

【文中釋義】n.衣服

【大綱全義】n.(一件)衣服

rebellion / ri' belj?n/

【文中釋義】n.反抗，不服從

【大綱全義】n.叛亂，反抗，起義

inevitable / in'evit?bl/

【文中釋義】adj.不可避免的

【大綱全義】adj.不可避免的，必然發(fā)生的

controversy /'k?ntr?v?:si/

【文中釋義】n.爭論

【大綱全義】n.爭論，辮論，論戰(zhàn)

超綱單詞

prim adj.整潔的，古板的 mandate n.要求

etiquette n.禮節(jié) newfangled adj.街奇的

promiscuous adj.混雜的 curfew n.宵禁令(時(shí)間)

girlcott v.使受婦女的聯(lián)合抵制 demographic adj.人口統(tǒng)計(jì)的

thong n.皮帶 backlash n.后沖力; 反撞

重點(diǎn)段落譯文

看看下列有關(guān)女孩子在穿衣風(fēng)格上的小貼士：短裙和連衣裙擺距膝蓋的長度應(yīng)該在4指以內(nèi)，吊帶衫外面要套一件毛衣或者夾克衫......這些時(shí)尚小貼士可能聽起來像20世紀(jì)50年代的“健康”電影中的古板穿衣指南。

不過，它們可是來自“純粹時(shí)尚”網(wǎng)站，該網(wǎng)站上的模特禮儀活動針對以“向公眾展示可愛時(shí)髦、溫文爾雅的女孩形象”為目標(biāo)的少女。“純粹時(shí)尚”已經(jīng)在2007年組織600名模特兒演出了13場服裝秀。該項(xiàng)目負(fù)責(zé)人布倫達(dá)·莎萊曼估計(jì)2008年還將推出25場這樣的服裝秀。這并非守舊派關(guān)于女孩子該如何穿衣等保守思想的唯一一條新奇的出路:ModestApparelUSA.com, ModestByDesign.com以及DresaModestly.com等時(shí)尚網(wǎng)站均倡導(dǎo)保守著裝風(fēng)格的回歸——把一切留給想象。這與呼吁少女們“變淑女”的女作家溫蒂·沙利特不謀而合一一女孩和少婦們開始拒絕像布蘭妮、Bratz娃娃以及《美女也瘋狂》視頻中數(shù)千名衣著暴露的無名女子那樣的“壞女孩”。與之相反，她們穿著保守，堅(jiān)持大學(xué)校園的強(qiáng)制熄燈制度，約會時(shí)會帶上媽媽，并且承諾婚前不發(fā)生性行為。而且她們此類言行已經(jīng)傳播開來:在賓夕法尼亞，一群高校女生集體抵制著名服飾品牌“阿貝克隆比·費(fèi)奇”，就因?yàn)樵撆谱右豢頣恤衫上印有挑逗性的標(biāo)語—“當(dāng)你有這些(暗喻女性胸部)，還要頭腦做什么?”。新發(fā)行的時(shí)尚雜志《伊麗莎白》自我標(biāo)榜為“淑女時(shí)尚”，主攻17歲到34歲的讀者群。Macy's公司已經(jīng)開始出售由Shade Clothing公司生產(chǎn)的服裝。此公司是由兩個渴望服飾流行但不暴露的摩門教徒女性創(chuàng)立的。在2007年“美國小姐”競選中，猶他州小姐穿著一件剪裁保守的連身泳衣欣然登場(她沒有贏得桂冠)。在沙利特看來，這股“由年輕人引領(lǐng)的時(shí)尚逆流”是對放蕩、濫交成風(fēng)的社會現(xiàn)狀的一種矯正。不過，這種“淑女”路線到底是一場革命，還是僅僅作為一次女權(quán)主義復(fù)興背景下的必然回歸?就如同20世紀(jì)20年代的“反時(shí)髦少女”和70年代的“第二次浪潮”女權(quán)主義者一樣?

其實(shí)，這類要求女性端莊收斂的呼聲并非首次出現(xiàn)。關(guān)于女性的角色與權(quán)利已經(jīng)鬧哄哄地吵了整整一個世紀(jì)，衣著與性觀念一直是爭論的焦點(diǎn)。上個世紀(jì)20年代，思想前衛(wèi)的女性會做的是剪掉長發(fā)，拒穿緊身內(nèi)衣，明目張膽地在公共場合吞云吐霧?！稌r(shí)髦女郎：性、潮流、名聲的璀璨年華，創(chuàng)造美國時(shí)尚的女性們》一書的作者約舒亞·贊茨認(rèn)為，小甜甜布蘭妮與帕麗斯·希爾頓的舉止實(shí)質(zhì)上跟大半個世紀(jì)之前的她們并無區(qū)別。“凡事都是相對的—女孩們雖不再系皮帶，不再給比基尼部位除毛，但取而代之的是學(xué)校里隨處可見的超短裙、口紅與香煙。”贊茨說：“目前人們擔(dān)心這種文化正使少女們變得性開放。在20年代，時(shí)髦女郎現(xiàn)象后隨之而來的是婦女回歸家庭運(yùn)動，上世紀(jì)20年代末的經(jīng)濟(jì)危機(jī)促進(jìn)了這一點(diǎn)，某種程度上亦糾正了當(dāng)時(shí)濫交的風(fēng)潮。”

希望各位考生能夠每天堅(jiān)持閱讀，提高詞匯量和語感能力，為以后的系統(tǒng)復(fù)習(xí)打下堅(jiān)實(shí)的基礎(chǔ)。最后提醒大家，夏季來臨，復(fù)習(xí)備考需注意防暑降溫。預(yù)祝考研成功!