在奥运会引发轰动比你想象的更容易。你可以训练多年，牺牲良多，然后在数十亿观众前一展风采，可你只消说“大姨妈”驾到，竟也能火遍全球。
This is what Fu Yuanhui, China’s rather adorable swimmer, did when asked about her team’s fourth place finish in the medley relay. “It’s because my period came yesterday, so I felt particularly tired,” she said.
这是中国人钟爱的游泳运动员傅园慧的方式，她被问到在混合泳接力中国家队为何名列第四时说：“来例假了，特别累。”
Because she is Fu Yuanhui and rather adorable, she finished the sentence by saying “this isn’t an excuse, I still didn’t swim well enough”. It may not have been an excuse, but it was a disclosure that was revolutionary, because, stupidly, recognising that sportswomen have to perform even with menstrual cramps and while bleeding is still exceptional and newsworthy.
因为她是傅园慧，相当讨人喜爱，她最后说：“但这都不是理由，是我自己没游好。”这可能不是理由，可大方承认却具有革命性，因为她傻傻地承认，女运动员就算经痛和流血也必须参加比赛，这依然不同寻常，值得报道。
Fu isn’t the first sportswoman to admit that her uterus shedding its endometrial lining has impacted her job: Heather Watson famously alluded to her period affecting her performance in the Australian Open last year. But she only implied, and the media inferred, that “girl things” meant bleeding.
傅园慧不是第一个承认子宫内膜脱落影响工作的女运动员，去年澳网公开赛上，沃森拐弯抹角地说来例假影响了表现，可她只是暗示，媒体推测“女孩那些事”说的是流血。
What Fu did was extraordinary. And how pathetic that that’s the case, especially when new research done by Georgie Bruinvels and colleagues at UCL found that 37% of elite athletes suffer heavy menstrual bleeding – despite the impact that anaemia can have on performance – only 22% had sought medical advice. A recent survey by WaterAid found that 56% of women in the UK avoid swimming during their period.
傅园慧不简单，但也很可怜，伦敦大学Georgie Bruinvels和同事的新研究发现，37%的顶尖运动员经期出血严重，尽管贫血症对运动表现有影响，只有22%选择就医。水援助组织最近调查发现，英国56%的女性不在经期游泳。
Fu Yuanhui’s statement is being called historic. Since most historical records were written or sung by men, we don’t know much about how women managed their menstruation or how they were treated in the past.
人们认为傅园慧的发言具有历史意义，这是因为大部分历史纪录由男人创造或赞颂，过去女人如何应对月经，如何加以治疗，我们所知不多。
Probably, as the historian Sara Read has written, they bled into their clothes, much as many rural Indian women still prefer to do (when I asked one woman whether she would wear a sanitary pad, she said, “we don’t even wear underwear. What do you expect? We are jungle people.”).
可能正如历史学家萨拉·里德写的那样，她们的血流到衣服上，就像许多印第安农村女人仍然延续的习俗——我问一个女人垫不垫卫生巾，她说，“我们都不穿内裤，你以为如何？我们生活在丛林里。”
There are hints here and there in history that women’s ability to bleed without injury was seen by male medical professionals as either mystical, marvellous or terrifying.
女人流血却不会受伤，历史上不乏有男性医学人士认为这件事神秘、不可思议，甚至可怖。
Read cites Lazare Rivière, author of a 17th-century anatomy guide, as saying that the womb was the source of “six hundred miseries and innumerable calamities”.
里德引用一本17世纪解剖指南作者Lazare Rivière的话说，子宫是“六百种不幸和难以尽述的灾难”之源泉。
The Roman author Pliny thought menstrual blood was poisonous and could cause “wine to sour, trees and crops to die, mirrors to cloud, swords to blunt, and dogs to go mad should they chance to taste it”. I’ve always wanted to blunt a sword and cloud a mirror.
罗马作家普林尼认为经血有毒，会让“美酒变酸，树木、庄稼死亡，镜子起雾，剑锋变钝，狗要是尝一口也会发疯”。我倒是一直想让剑锋变钝，镜子起雾。
As for women who didn’t bleed and were menopausal: they were often locked up. You think your period is just a pain, but given the amount of effort expended by men to keep bleeding women in their place, it’s obviously a superpower.
至于那些不流血的绝经妇女，她们常常被锁起来。你以为月信只是一种疼痛，可考虑到男人们耗费努力来控制流血的女人，这显然是一种超能力。
Daft menstrual taboos persist in certain countries and religions, where menstruating women have amazing power to make pickles go rotten (leading to a delightful Proctor & Gamble campaign called Touch the Pickle), pollute temples, make snakes materialise or sour buffalo milk. But we have no grounds to feel superior in our supposedly enlightened societies.
愚蠢的经期禁忌在某些国家和宗教中并未消失，在这些故事中，来月经的女人们拥有惊人的能力，让咸菜腐烂（这让可爱的保洁公司发起“摸咸菜”活动），玷污了庙宇，引蛇出洞，使水牛奶变质。可在我们这个自认为受启蒙的社会中，我们却没有感觉有高人一等的理由。
How many women and girls ask for time off work for menstrual cramps, or admit that that’s why they are off sick? How many would admit to feeling appalling and weepy because of pre-menstrual tension? The only situation in which periods are talked about in the workplace – be it an office or an Olympic stadium – is in banter and jokes, and that is not funny.
有多少女人和女生会因经痛请假，或是承认那是她们请病假的原因？又有多少会承认由于经前综合征，她们感到糟糕透顶甚至想哭？在工作场所谈到月经的唯一情况——不论在办公室还是在奥运场馆——就是戏谑和开玩笑，可这一点也不好玩。
This self-censorship is why women have put up with sanitary products being taxed as luxury items for years. It’s why it takes on average 10 years for women to be diagnosed with endometriosis, a gynaecological condition linked with painful periods, because either women and girls or GPs – or both – think painful periods are normal. (I was prescribed prescription-strength painkillers for years and never thought to question it; nor did a series of GPs.)
这种自我过滤让女人忍受多年以来卫生用品被当做奢侈品课以重税。这也是为何女人平均十年才能查出子宫内膜异位，这一妇科症状与经痛有关，因为女人或普通医生，抑或两者都是，认为经痛很正常。（医生给我开了多年处方剂量的止痛药，我从来没想过去怀疑，许多普通医生也一样。）
But things are better now, right? Bodyform’s recent ad Blood, showing women doing sport, fiercely, and bleeding to a soundtrack of thumping electronica, must mean that talking about periods and performance is now acceptable.
可情况有所好转，对吗？卫生巾品牌“体态美”最近的广告《血》展示了激烈运动的女人，她们在轰鸣的电子乐背景音下流血，这意味着现在谈论经期和运动表现是可以接受的。
Except the only blood they don’t show is the menstrual kind. All this positive period empowerment, and yet we’re still being shown blue liquids in most period advertising and treating an athlete’s statement of fact as a massive revelation.
可没有展示出来的一种流血方式就是月经。 尽管给女人月经正了名，可大多数经期广告中仍然使用蓝色的液体，我们还是把一个运动员的实话实说当做泄露天机。
Athletes, who must know their bodies and abilities forensically and intimately, may well be the best women to loudly talk about periods. So Fu deserves her bronze in the 100m backstroke, but I’d give her a gold medal too: not for admitting that she had a period, but for conveying that it was no big deal. And now, women, let’s get over ourselves and follow in her wake.
运动员必须从生理构造上深入了解自己的身体和能力，她们最适宜大胆谈论自己的经期。傅园慧在100米蛙泳项目上获得铜牌，但我要给她颁发金牌，并非因为她承认自己来了例假，而是她传达了这样一层意思，这没什么大不了。现在，女人们，让我们战胜自己，跟随她一起吧。
报道集锦
CNN
BBC
纽约时报
卫报
词汇
adorable
例句：But long before Miss Richards, now 52, was tabloid fodder, she was an adorable child actress.（《华盛顿时报》7月26日）
现在52岁的理查兹小姐很久以前是小报主角，她是个讨人喜爱的儿童演员。
pathetic
例句：'I suppose every filmmaker has the naive, even pathetic dream that his film could be the one that finally stops a war, ' said Maoz.
我猜每个电影导演都有这样一个幼稚的、可怜的梦想，梦想自己的电影可以最终制止一场战争。
weepy
例句：Fans ripped up Durant jerseys and delivered weepy testimonials to the powerful bonds between a city and its star athlete.（《纽约时报》8月16日）
粉丝们撕碎杜兰特运动衫，声泪俱下，证明一个城市和一个明星运动员之间的强大联系。
口语
Today we have an expression that can be used in a very friendly way, but it can also be used in a very negative way. Make sure YOU understand the difference.
口语栏目来自Let's master English
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