南向き翻訳事務所 岩渕デボラ ブログ

娘を二人育てて、体重は避けて通る話題ではありません。

そこで、二人が20歳を過ぎて、私の意見を聞き慣れたので、体重について一言を言わせて下さい。

安室なみえが｢小さい顔」を流行らせて以来、生まれて持った丸顔の日本人の 女の子はどんどん痩せる方向に走っています。新聞折り込みのちらしを読んでも、「憧れの40キロ代は夢ではない」と書いて、ダイエット食品を売っています。40キロ代？年々背が高くなっていく日本女性にとって、憧れの40キロ代が栄養失調への道です。

「ァ、太った。見て、太ももがくっついている！」そんな言葉聞いたことありませんか。

何で「太もも」と よばれると思いますか。太ってお互いにくっついているからです！

最後になりますが、スポーツクラブに通って思ったことです。ちょっと肉がついている、ちょっと胸がゆたか、ちょっとおなかがぽっちゃ り、そんな女子も男子もとても魅力的です。個性があって、柔らかさもあります。健康志向は大変良いことですが、ちゃんと肉を残した健康になりましょう！

Manna Frances went off to California without her trusty cookbook because she did not want to deal with converting the measurements. Her parting remark: “Doesn’t the US realize that grams and centimeters are the international standard?”

It took me back to the 1960s. One year when I was still in elementary school, we had a math unit on grams and centimeters because “as of 19XX the US will be converting to the universal standard of weights and measures.” I seem to recall that it would be a few years into the future–soon enough to be intimidating, but far enough into the future to lack urgency.

Looking back, I was very much in touch with my “inner American.” I could be obsessive about school rules and getting homework in on time, but I distinctly recall (along with just the tiniest bit of reassurance that a liter and a quart were pretty much the same) that I shrugged it off. “Surely they will review it all again when the time comes.”

And sure enough, even though I spend a good part of my days mentally converting kilograms and meters into pounds and yards, and yen into dollars, and don’t even get me started on the euro and the Czech krone, I am still very satisfied that I did not waste my time at that young age because the US has remained aloof from the rest of the world in its complete and utter failure to convert.