Text 2 The modern cult of beauty is a success in so far as more women retain their youthful appearance to a greater age than in the past. "Old ladies" are already becoming rare. In a few years, we may well believe, they will be extinct. White hair and wrinkles, a bent back and hollow cheeks will come to be regarded as medievally old-fashioned. The crone of the future will be golden, curly and cherry-lipped, and slender. This desirable consummation will be due in part to skin foods and injections of paraffin-wax, facial surgery, mud baths, and paint, in part to improved health, due in its turn to a more rational mode of life. Ugliness is one of the symptoms of disease, beauty of health. In so far as the campaign for beauty is also a campaign for more health, it is admirable and, up to a point, genuinely successful. Beauty that is merely the artificial shadow of these symptoms of health is intrinsically of poorer quality than the genuine article. Still, it is a sufficiently good imitation to be sometimes mistakeable for the real thing. The apparatus for mimicking the symptoms of health is now within the reach of every moderately prosperous person; the knowledge of the way in which real health can be achieved is growing, and will in time, no doubt, be universally acted upon. When that happy moment comes, will every woman be beautiful―as beautiful, at any rate, as the natural shape of her features, with or without surgical and chemical aid, permits The answer is emphatically: No. For real beauty is as much an affair of the inner as of the outer self. The beauty of a porcelain jar is a matter of shape, of color, of surface texture. The jar may be empty or tenanted by spiders, full of honey or stinking slime―it makes no difference to its beauty or ugliness. But a woman is alive, and her beauty is therefore not skin deep. The surface of the human vessel is affected by the nature of its spiritual contents. I have seen women who, by the standards of a connoisseur of porcelain, were ravishingly lovely. Their shape, their colour, their surface texture were perfect. And yet they were not beautiful. For the lovely vase was either empty or filled with some corruption. Spiritual emptiness or ugliness shows through. And conversely, there is an interior light that can transfigure forms that the pure aesthetician would regard as imperfect or downright ugly. There are numerous forms of psychological ugliness. There is an ugliness of stupidity, for example, of unawareness (distressingly common among pretty women). An ugliness also of greed, of lasciviousness, of avarice. All the deadly sins, indeed, have their own peculiar negation of beauty. On the pretty faces of those especially who are trying to have a continuous "good time", one sees very often a kind of bored sullenness that ruin all their charm. I remember in particular two young American girls I once met in North Africa. Form the porcelain specialist’s point of view, they were extremely beautiful. But a sullen boredom was so deeply stamped into their fresh faces, their gait and gestures expressed so weary a listlessness, that it was unbearable to look at them. These exquisite creatures were positively repulsive.Because of skin foods, paraffin wax, facial surgery, mud-baths and paint, ______. A．wrinkles and hollow cheeks will not be foundB．the desirable consummation will be achievedC．curly hair will look medievally old-fashionedD．the elderly women will no longer be able to exist
Text 2 The modern cult of beauty is a success in so far as more women retain their youthful appearance to a greater age than in the past. "Old ladies" are already becoming rare. In a few years, we may well believe, they will be extinct. White hair and wrinkles, a bent back and hollow cheeks will come to be regarded as medievally old-fashioned. The crone of the future will be golden, curly and cherry-lipped, and slender. This desirable consummation will be due in part to skin foods and injections of paraffin-wax, facial surgery, mud baths, and paint, in part to improved health, due in its turn to a more rational mode of life. Ugliness is one of the symptoms of disease, beauty of health. In so far as the campaign for beauty is also a campaign for more health, it is admirable and, up to a point, genuinely successful. Beauty that is merely the artificial shadow of these symptoms of health is intrinsically of poorer quality than the genuine article. Still, it is a sufficiently good imitation to be sometimes mistakeable for the real thing. The apparatus for mimicking the symptoms of health is now within the reach of every moderately prosperous person; the knowledge of the way in which real health can be achieved is growing, and will in time, no doubt, be universally acted upon. When that happy moment comes, will every woman be beautiful―as beautiful, at any rate, as the natural shape of her features, with or without surgical and chemical aid, permits The answer is emphatically: No. For real beauty is as much an affair of the inner as of the outer self. The beauty of a porcelain jar is a matter of shape, of color, of surface texture. The jar may be empty or tenanted by spiders, full of honey or stinking slime―it makes no difference to its beauty or ugliness. But a woman is alive, and her beauty is therefore not skin deep. The surface of the human vessel is affected by the nature of its spiritual contents. I have seen women who, by the standards of a connoisseur of porcelain, were ravishingly lovely. Their shape, their colour, their surface texture were perfect. And yet they were not beautiful. For the lovely vase was either empty or filled with some corruption. Spiritual emptiness or ugliness shows through. And conversely, there is an interior light that can transfigure forms that the pure aesthetician would regard as imperfect or downright ugly. There are numerous forms of psychological ugliness. There is an ugliness of stupidity, for example, of unawareness (distressingly common among pretty women). An ugliness also of greed, of lasciviousness, of avarice. All the deadly sins, indeed, have their own peculiar negation of beauty. On the pretty faces of those especially who are trying to have a continuous "good time", one sees very often a kind of bored sullenness that ruin all their charm. I remember in particular two young American girls I once met in North Africa. Form the porcelain specialist’s point of view, they were extremely beautiful. But a sullen boredom was so deeply stamped into their fresh faces, their gait and gestures expressed so weary a listlessness, that it was unbearable to look at them. These exquisite creatures were positively repulsive.Because of skin foods, paraffin wax, facial surgery, mud-baths and paint, ______. A．wrinkles and hollow cheeks will not be foundB．the desirable consummation will be achievedC．curly hair will look medievally old-fashionedD．the elderly women will no longer be able to exist
题目解答
答案
A
解析
考查要点：本题主要考查学生对文章细节的理解能力，需要结合上下文准确判断特定措施带来的结果。
解题核心思路：
- 定位关键段落：题目中的措施（皮肤食物、石蜡注射等）出现在文章第二段，需明确这些手段的作用。
- 排除干扰项：注意区分“直接结果”与“间接影响”，例如选项B中的“理想结果”涉及更广泛因素（健康改善），而题目仅问措施本身的效果。
破题关键点：
- 锁定因果关系：文章明确指出这些美容手段能消除皱纹、凹陷面颊等衰老特征，对应选项A。
- 辨析选项表述：选项D中的“老年妇女灭绝”是比喻性表达，而非字面结果，需结合语境排除。
关键信息提取：
文章第二段指出，未来“黄金老太婆”的形象将通过皮肤食物、石蜡注射、面部手术等手段实现，这些措施直接作用于外貌，消除衰老特征（如白发、皱纹、凹陷面颊）。因此，选项A“皱纹和凹陷面颊将不复存在”最符合题意。
选项分析：
- A：正确。文章明确提到这些手段能消除衰老特征。
- B：错误。理想结果（“黄金老太婆”形象）需结合健康因素，非仅靠美容手段。
- C：错误。鬈发是未来老太婆的典型特征，与措施无关。
- D：错误。“老年妇女灭绝”是比喻，指传统老态消失，而非实际灭绝。