自我接受，总是一种带有深刻革命性的举动

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岁的女儿最近饶有兴致地向我详细地转述了，她与一个朋友之间一段轻松争辩。争辩的话题是，我的女儿坚决不愿意拉直头发，或者以任何方式改变自己的头发。

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

那位朋友坚持说，这样的改变没什么大不了的。我女儿恼火地回击道，“发型事关政治。”

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.

在我女儿看来，这样的改变象征着那些她不认同的压抑的价值观和审美观。以大自然创造出的模样展示自己，是一种出于自爱的反抗。这种姿态不会要求她自己改变，而是要求其他人改变那种期望别人为了赢得归属感，进而屈从的态度;要求其他人认识到，我们吸收了多少破坏性的潜在讯息;也要求人们认识到，需要怎样自我探究，才能明白关于自身偏见的真相。

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?”

这让我想起演员翠茜·索姆斯(Tracie Thoms)在克里斯·洛克(Chris Rock) 2009年的纪录片《好头发》(Good Hair)中，对这个话题做出的深刻评论：“我把头发保留成从脑袋上长出来的那种质地，就被当成具有革命性。为什么会这样?”

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.

但在我看来，我的女儿表达的观点比她本人、头发，或是少年之间的一场争辩都更为宏大。这是一则我们所有人都一再温习的人生教训：自我接受，无论大小或形式，总是具有内在的政治性，也总是一种带有深刻革命性的举动。

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.

我们身边充斥着一种仇视女性、父权至上、种族主义、性别歧视、恐惧同性恋、异性恋才正常的偏狭的理想主义，所以可能很容易会忽视我们每一次选择不随大流之时，所表现出的日常的、个体的勇气。

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.

生命就是我们与自己、与周遭的世界进行的一番永无止境的谈判，涉及“我们是谁”这个问题的最真答案，也涉及我们有没有勇气干脆以自己的本来面貌存在，遭遇冲击也在所不惜。

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

每一次我们对勇气的问题给出肯定的回答，我们站定的身姿就能高大一寸，距离光明也就更近一分。