I was around 10 when one day, I discovered a box of my father's old things. In it, under a bunch of his college textbooks, was a pair of black corduroy bell-bottom pants. These pants were awful -- musty and moth-eaten. And of course, I fell in love with them. I'd never seen anything like them. Until that day, all I'd ever known and worn was my school uniform, which, in fact, I was pretty grateful for, because from quite a young age, I'd realized I was somewhat different. I'd never been one of the boys my age; terrible at sports, possibly the unmanliest little boy ever.
我大約十歲時,有一天, 我發現了一個盒子, 裡面有我爸爸的舊東西。 盒子裡,在一堆他的 大學教科書底下, 有一件黑色燈芯絨的喇叭褲。 這褲子糟透了── 發霉且還長了蛀蟲。 當然,我愛上了它。 我從來沒看過這樣的東西。 在那天之前, 我所知道、所穿過的, 都是我的學校制服。 事實上,我對制服 是抱持感恩態度的, 因為,很小的時候, 我就知道我和別人有某些不同之處。 我從來不像我那個年齡的男孩; 我的體育很糟, 可能是史上最無男子漢氣概的男孩。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I was bullied quite a bit. And so, I figured that to survive I would be invisible, and the uniform helped me to seem no different from any other child.
我蠻常被霸凌。 所以我知道,如果 想要生存,我就得隱形, 而制服幫了我大忙, 讓我看起來和其他孩子沒有什麼不同。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Well, almost. This became my daily prayer: "God, please make me just like everybody else." I think this went straight to God's voicemail, though.
嗯,是幾乎沒有什麼不同。 我每日的禱告便是: 「主啊,請讓我和其他人一樣。」 不過,這禱告大概直接 進到了上帝的語音信箱。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And eventually, it became pretty clear that I was not growing up to be the son that my father always wanted. Sorry, Dad.
最終,非常顯然 我長大後不會成為 我爸爸希望的樣子。 抱歉,老爹。
No, I was not going to magically change. And over time, I grew less and less sure that I actually wanted to. Therefore, the day those black corduroy bell-bottom pants came into my life, something happened. I didn't see pants; I saw opportunity. The very next day, I had to wear them to school, come what may. And once I pulled on those god-awful pants and belted them tight, almost instantly, I developed what can only be called a swagger.
不,我不會神奇地突然改變。 但隨時間過去,我也 越來越不確定我真想要改變。 因此,那件黑色燈芯絨的喇叭褲 出現在我人生中的那一天, 奇妙的事情發生了。 我看到的不是褲子; 我看到的是機會。 隔天,我非得要穿這條褲子上學, 不管會發生什麼。 當我穿上了那條 非常可怕的褲子並把它扣緊時, 我幾乎是立刻就大搖大擺起來。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
All the way to school, and then all the way back because I was sent home at once --
到學校的一路上, 以及回家的一路上, 因為我馬上就被趕回了家──
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I transformed into a little brown rock star.
我變身成為了一個 黝黑的小搖滾明星。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I finally didn't care anymore that I could not conform. That day, I was suddenly celebrating it. That day, instead of being invisible, I chose to be looked at, just by wearing something different. That day, I discovered the power of what we wear. That day, I discovered the power of fashion, and I've been in love with it ever since.
我終於不再在乎我無法跟大家一樣。 那天,我突然在慶祝我的與眾不同。 那天,我不再隱形, 我選擇被大家看到, 只因為我不同的穿著。 那天,我發現了穿著的力量。 那天,我發現了時尚的力量, 我從此就愛上了它。
Fashion can communicate our differences to the world for us. And with this simple act of truth, I realized that these differences -- they stopped being our shame. They became our expressions, expressions of our very unique identities. And we should express ourselves, wear what we want. What's the worst that could happen? The fashion police are going to get you for being so last season?
時尚使我們能夠 向世界表達我們的差異。 透過這樣一個簡單的真誠之舉, 我了解到,這些差異── 我們不用再為它們感到羞恥。 它們變成了我們的表達方式, 他們表達了我們非常獨特的身份。 我們應該表達自己, 穿我們想穿的。 最糟的狀況會如何呢? 難道會有時尚警察因為你 穿得太「過季」而來抓你嗎?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Yeah. Well, unless the fashion police meant something entirely different. Nobel Prize laureate Malala survived Taliban extremists in October 2012. However, in October 2017, she faced a different enemy, when online trolls viciously attacked the photograph that showed the 20-year-old wearing jeans that day. The comments, the hatred she received, ranged from "How long before the scarf comes off?" to, and I quote, "That's the reason the bullet directly targeted her head a long time ago." Now, when most of us decide to wear a pair of jeans someplace like New York, London, Milan, Paris, we possibly don't stop to think that it's a privilege; something that somewhere else can have consequences, something that can one day be taken away from us.
是啊, 當然除非時尚警察 有完全不同的意思。 諾貝爾獎得主馬拉拉 逃過了塔利班極端份子 在 2012 年 10 月下的毒手。 然而,在 2017 年 10 月, 她面臨了不同的敵人, 網路酸民惡毒地攻擊一張照片, 照片中這位二十歲女子 在那天穿著牛仔褲。 她收到的評論和仇恨, 從「何時頭巾也要脫下來了?」 到,這是直接引述, 「這就是為什麼之前 子彈會直接瞄準她的頭。」 (註:她頭部中彈但活下來了) 當我們大部分人決定要穿牛仔褲時, 在像紐約、倫敦、 米蘭、巴黎這類地方, 我們可能不會認為這是一項特權; 無法想像在其他地方這是會有後果的, 是一項有一天可能會被剝奪的權利。
My grandmother was a woman who took extraordinary pleasure in dressing up. Her fashion was colorful. And the color she loved to wear so much was possibly the only thing that was truly about her, the one thing she had agency over, because like most other women of her generation in India, she'd never been allowed to exist beyond what was dictated by custom and tradition. She'd been married at 17, and after 65 years of marriage, when my grandfather died suddenly one day, her loss was unbearable. But that day, she was going to lose something else as well, the one joy she had: to wear color. In India, according to custom, when a Hindu woman becomes a widow, all she's allowed to wear is white from the day of the death of her husband. No one made my grandmother wear white. However, every woman she'd known who had outlived her husband, including her mother, had done it. This oppression was so internalized, so deep-rooted, that she herself refused a choice. She passed away this year, and until the day she died, she continued to wear only white.
我的祖母,是個非常 會享受打扮的女人。 她的時尚色彩鮮艷。 而她非常喜歡穿在身上的顏色, 可能是唯一她能為自己做的事, 她唯一能掌控的事, 因為在印度,她與她那個世代的 大部分女性一樣, 從來不被允許存在於 規定的習俗和傳統以外。 她在十七歲時結婚, 婚姻持續了六十五年, 直到我祖父有一天突然過世, 她的損失是無法承受的。 但那天,她同時還失去了 她唯一的喜悅: 把顏色穿在身上。 在印度,根據習俗, 當印度教女子成為寡婦時, 她只能穿白色, 從她的丈夫過世那天起都是如此。 沒有人要求我祖母穿白色。 然而,她認識的 每一個失去了丈夫的女人, 包括她母親, 都會穿白色。 這種壓迫感如此深入人心、 如此根深蒂固, 讓她自己拒絕了選擇。 她今年過世了, 到她辭世之前, 她都一直只穿白色。
I have a photograph with her from earlier, happier times. In it, you can't really see what she's wearing -- the photo is in black and white. However, from the way she's smiling in it, you just know she's wearing color. This is also what fashion can do. It has the power to fill us with joy, the joy of freedom to choose for ourselves how we want to look, how we want to live -- a freedom worth fighting for. And fighting for freedom, protest, comes in many forms.
我有張和她的合照, 是早期她較快樂的時候拍的。 你看不太出來照片中她穿什麼顏色── 這是張黑白照片。 然而,從她在照片中的笑容, 你就能知道她的衣服是彩色的。 這也是時尚的功能之一。 它有種力量,能讓我們充滿喜悅, 這種喜悅是來自於有 能選擇自己想要的外觀、 自己想要的生活的自由── 這是值得我們去爭取的自由。 而爭取自由、抗議, 有許多不同的形式。
Widows in India like my grandmother, thousands of them, live in a city called Vrindavan. And so, it's been a sea of white for centuries. However, only as recently as 2013, the widows of Vrindavan have started to celebrate Holi, the Indian festival of color, which they are prohibited from participating in. On this one day in March, these women take the traditional colored powder of the festival and color each other. With every handful of the powder they throw into the air, their white saris slowly start to suffuse with color. And they don't stop until they're completely covered in every hue of the rainbow that's forbidden to them. The color washes off the next day, however, for that moment in time, it's their beautiful disruption. This disruption, any kind of dissonance, can be the first gauntlet we throw down in a battle against oppression. And fashion -- it can create visual disruption for us -- on us, literally.
印度有數以千計的寡婦, 我祖母是其一, 住在叫做沃林達文的城市。 數世紀來,那裡就像一片白色海洋。 然而,直到 2013 年, 沃林達文的寡婦才開始慶祝灑紅節, 它是印度的顏色節慶, 過去寡婦被禁止參加這個節慶。 在三月的某一天, 這些女性拿著這節慶傳統 所使用的彩色粉末, 為彼此上色。 她們每向空中灑出一把粉末, 她們的白色紗麗(傳統服飾) 便慢慢地沾上了顏色。 一直到完全沾滿了 彩虹的每一道色彩── 那些她們平時無法碰觸的色彩, 她們才肯停止。 隔天那些顏色就洗掉了, 然而,那個時刻 是屬於她們的美麗的顛覆性時刻。 這種顛覆, 任何一種不和諧, 都可以是我們的第一波攻勢, 引領我們對抗壓迫的抗戰。 而時尚── 它能為我們呈現視覺顛覆── 就在我們身上呈現。
Lessons of defiance have always been taught by fashion's great revolutionaries: its designers. Jean Paul Gaultier taught us that women can be kings. Thom Browne -- he taught us that men can wear heels. And Alexander McQueen, in his spring 1999 show, had two giant robotic arms in the middle of his runway. And as the model, Shalom Harlow began to spin in between them, these two giant arms -- furtively at first and then furiously, began to spray color onto her. McQueen, thus, before he took his own life, taught us that this body of ours is a canvas, a canvas we get to paint however we want.
反抗的教訓 向來是由時尚的偉大革命家教導的: 時尚設計師。 尚·保羅·高緹耶教導我們, 女人也可以當國王。 托姆·布朗恩── 他教導我們,男人也可以穿高跟鞋。 亞歷山大·麥昆,在他 1999 年春天的時裝秀中, 在他的伸展台兩側裝了 兩隻巨大的機械手臂。 模特兒莎琳·夏露開始 在兩隻手臂之間轉圈, 這兩隻巨大的手臂── 一開始是偷偷地,接著是猛烈地 開始對她噴灑顏色。 因此,麥昆, 在他自殺之前, 教導我們,我們自己的 身體就是畫布, 我們可以依自己的喜好在上面揮灑。
Somebody who loved this world of fashion was Karar Nushi. He was a student and actor from Iraq. He loved his vibrant, eclectic clothes. However, he soon started receiving death threats for how he looked. He remained unfazed. He remained fabulous, until July 2017, when Karar was discovered dead on a busy street in Baghdad. He'd been kidnapped. He'd been tortured. And eyewitnesses say that his body showed multiple wounds. Stab wounds.
有個人很喜愛這個時尚世界, 他就是卡拉·努希。 他是來自伊拉克的學生兼演員。 他很愛他那些明亮、不拘一格的衣服。 然而,他很快就開始因為 他的外觀而收到死亡威脅。 但是他不為所動, 他仍然保持光鮮亮麗。 直到 2017 年 7 月, 卡拉被發現陳屍在 巴格達的熱鬧街頭。 他被綁架了。 他遭受了虐待。 目擊證人說,他的身體有多個傷口, 刺傷的傷口。
Two thousand miles away in Peshawar, Pakistani transgender activist Alisha was shot multiple times in May 2016. She was taken to the hospital, but because she dressed in women's clothing, she was refused access to either the men's or the women's wards. What we choose to wear can sometimes be literally life and death. And even in death, we sometimes don't get to choose. Alisha died that day and then was buried as a man.
在兩千英哩外的白沙瓦, 巴基斯坦變性激進份子阿莉莎 在 2016 年 5 月身中數槍。 她被送到醫院, 但因為她穿著女性服裝, 醫院拒絕給她使用男病房或女病房。 我們選擇的穿著有時真的攸關生死。 有時甚至即使是死了, 我們也無法選擇穿著。 阿莉莎那天過世了, 她被當作男人埋葬。
What kind of world is this? Well, it's one in which it's natural to be afraid, to be frightened of this surveillance, this violence against our bodies and what we wear on them. However, the greater fear is that once we surrender, blend in and begin to disappear one after the other, the more normal this false conformity will look, the less shocking this oppression will feel.
這是個什麼樣的世界? 在這個世界裡,害怕是很自然的, 懼怕這種監視, 這種衝著我們的身體、 我們的穿著而來的暴力。 然而,更大的恐懼卻是, 一旦我們投降了, 融入了, 開始一個接著一個消失了, 這虛假的順從看起來越正常, 這種壓迫的震撼感就會越低。
For the children we are raising, the injustice of today could become the ordinary of tomorrow. They'll get used to this, and they, too, might begin to see anything different as dirty, something to be hated, something to be extinguished, like lights to be put out, one by one, until darkness becomes a way of life. However, if I today, then you tomorrow, maybe even more of us someday, if we embrace our right to look like ourselves, then in the world that's been violently whitewashed, we will become the pinpricks of color pushing through, much like those widows of Vrindavan.
對於我們正在養育的孩子們, 現今的不公正可能會變成明天的常態。 他們會習慣這樣, 他們也會開始把與他們 不同的差異視為是骯髒的, 應該要被仇視的, 應該要趕盡殺絕的, 就像是要被滅掉的光, 一盞接著一盞, 直到完全被黑暗包圍。 然而,如果今天是由我開始, 明天是你們接續下去, 有一天可能會有更多的人, 如果我們能擁抱我們 在外觀上忠於自我的權利, 那麼在這個被無情粉飾的世界上, 我們就會變成讓顏色奪勢而出的針孔, 就像那些沃林達文的寡婦一樣。
How then, with so many of us, will the crosshairs of a gun be able to pick out Karar, Malala, Alisha? Can they kill us all?
等我們的人數越來越多的時候, 槍的十字瞄準線 怎麼能分辨出誰是卡拉、 馬拉拉、 阿莉莎? 他們能把我們殺光嗎?
The time is now to stand up, to stand out. Where sameness is safeness, with something as simple as what we wear, we can draw every eye to ourselves to say that there are differences in this world, and there always will be. Get used to it. And this we can say without a single word. Fashion can give us a language for dissent. It can give us courage. Fashion can let us literally wear our courage on our sleeves. So wear it. Wear it like armor. Wear it because it matters. And wear it because you matter.
現在該是我們站起來、 站出來的時候了。 在一個「相同」 等於「安全」的世界裡, 我們用很簡單的東西, 比如我們的穿著, 就能夠把目光吸引到我們身上, 讓大家知道,世界上有差異存在, 且永遠都會有。 習慣它吧! 這是我們可以不用開口 就能說出來的訊息。 時尚能給我們一種表示異議的語言。 它能給我們勇氣, 時尚能讓我們自由地 把我們的勇氣穿在身上。 那就穿上去吧, 像盔甲一樣穿上去。 把它穿上去,因為它很重要, 把它穿上去,因為你很重要。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)