《经济学人》双语：精致美甲艺术，进入博物馆

原文标题：

A cuticle above the rest

Does nail art have art nailed?

Ever more elaborate designs are at people’s fingertips

美甲艺术，技艺超群

美甲艺术是否已臻于完美？

人们指尖上的设计越来越精致

[Paragraph 1]

YOU HAVE to hand it to them: the contestants at Nailympia, the world’s leading nail-art competition, take talons very seriously.

不得不承认，全球顶级美甲赛事“美甲奥林匹亚”的参赛者们对美甲极为重视。

Some paint their keratin canvases under time pressure. Others show off designs they have been crafting for months.

有些选手要在限时压力下在指甲这片“角蛋白画布”上创作，而另一些选手展示了他们耗时数月精心打造的杰作。

Fingers are festooned with portraits and acrylic sculptures, such as a dinky cup filled with real red wine. Polished would be an understatement.

选手们的指尖上有肖像画和丙烯雕塑，甚至还有装着真红酒的迷你小杯子。用“精致”二字来形容都显得不够贴切。

[Paragraph 2]

Nail art is enjoying triple-digit growth. The number of nail salons in America has doubled since 2012, to around 35,000, according to the most recent census data.

美甲艺术正以三位数的速度增长。最新统计显示，美国的美甲沙龙数量自2012年以来已翻倍，现在约有3.5万家。

In Britain nails are the second-most popular beauty treatment, after hair styling.

在英国，美甲是仅次于美发的第二大热门美容项目。

According to Jonathan Millet, chief executive of Townhouse, a luxury chain, the nail-salon market is worth around $10bn in America and £2bn ($2.7bn) in Britain.

高端连锁品牌Townhouse的首席执行官乔纳森·米利特称，美国美甲市场价值约100亿美元，英国市场价值约20亿英镑（27亿美元）。

[Paragraph 3]

Ever more elaborate designs are at people’s fingertips.

人们能轻松拥有越来越精致的美甲图案。

You can embellish your nails with tiny 3D orchids or hand-painted portraits of Shakespeare or Snow White.

你可以用小巧的3D兰花装饰指甲，也能选择手工绘制的莎士比亚或白雪公主肖像。

Jacqueline McClement, a Canadian nail artist, recently filmed herself painting Vermeer’s“Girl with a Pearl Earring” in polish.

加拿大美甲师杰奎琳·麦克莱门特最近发布了一段视频，展示自己用指甲油复刻出维米尔的《戴珍珠耳环的少女》。

If you have $800 to spare, you can buy fake talons carved from real crystals.

若有800美元预算，你还可以买到天然水晶雕刻的假指甲。

Styles spread online. The hashtag #nailart has more than 120bn views on TikTok.

各种美甲风格在网上迅速传播。TikTok平台上#nailart 标签浏览量超1200亿次。

[Paragraph 4]

The desire to decorate nails is not new. In Babylon men dyed their nails with kohl before going to war to seem fearsome.

装饰指甲的需求历史悠久。古巴比伦的男人们上战场前，会用涂料把指甲染得漆黑，以显得更威猛。

In ancient Egypt people stained theirs with henna as a mark of social status.

古埃及时期，人们用指甲花染指甲，以此作为社会地位的象征。

The earliest example of nail polish, in China in around 3000BC, was made from egg whites, gelatin and beeswax.

最早的指甲油出现在公元前3000年左右的中国，原料是蛋清、明胶和蜂蜡。

Today nails are not embellished for battle, but they are still used to communicate a message.

如今，人们装饰指甲不再是为了作战，但它依然是一种传递信息的方式。

Nick Knight, a British fashion photographer, sees nails as a form of self-expression, “the last note in a melody”.

英国时尚摄影师尼克·奈特将指甲视为自我表达的一种形式，是“旋律中的最后一个音符”。

[Paragraph 5]

Some nail artists go further, arguing that they produce the modern equivalent of portrait miniatures, which were coveted by 18th-century European nobility.

有些美甲师更进一步，认为自己的作品相当于现代版的微型肖像画，这种微型画曾是18世纪欧洲贵族梦寐以求的珍品。

Like miniaturists, nail artists hold their breath and paint in between heartbeats. “One brushstroke out of line and it will throw the whole thing off,” says Anouska Scarlet Anastasia, who specialises in miniature sculptures.

与微型画家一样，美甲师创作时需要屏住呼吸，在心跳的间隙落笔。“一笔走偏就会毁了整个作品，”专攻微型雕塑的美甲师阿努斯卡·斯嘉丽·阿纳斯塔西娅说道。

Her models—which include a tiny, hyperreal bottle of Heinz ketchup and one of Baileys Irish Cream—take two or three painstaking weeks to craft.

她的作品包括：超逼真迷你亨氏番茄酱瓶、百利甜酒瓶，每一件都要耗费两三周时间精心打造。

[Paragraph 6]

“This should be in a museum not on a finger,” reads one comment on Ms Anastasia’s Instagram. And curators, it seems, have come to agree.

阿纳斯塔西娅的Instagram有一条网友评论写道：“这作品应该放进博物馆，而不是戴在手指上。”博物馆馆长们似乎也认同这一观点。

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has a set of dollar-bill-inspired artificial nails, which were designed for Lil’ Kim, a rapper, in the 1990s.

纽约现代艺术博物馆收藏着一套以美元纸币为灵感的假指甲，这套指甲是1990年代为说唱歌手莉儿·金设计的。

The first museum dedicated to nail art will open next year in Shanghai; contestants at Nailympia have been invited to donate their creations.

全球第一家美甲艺术专属博物馆将于明年在上海开馆，美甲奥林匹亚的选手们已受邀捐赠展示自己的作品。

Plenty will thumb their nose at all this. But manicurists aver that few art forms are as tough as nails.

许多人会对此不屑一顾。但美甲师们坚称，很少有艺术形式能像美甲这样极具挑战性。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇458左右）

原文出自：2025年11月1日《TE》Culture版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路VIP群
本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【重点句子】（3个）

In Britain nails are the second-most popular beauty treatment, after hair styling.

在英国，美甲是仅次于美发的第二大热门美容项目。

Ever more elaborate designs are at people’s fingertips.

人们能轻松拥有越来越精致的美甲图案。

Today nails are not embellished for battle, but they are still used to communicate a message.

如今，人们装饰指甲不再是为了作战，但它依然是一种传递信息的方式。

自由英语之路