黏土面膜和其他去皱产品；她还强调一定要遵守这些方法，例如：往脸上涂抹这些产品时，要用指尖，这样可以保护皮肤的弹性。所有这些妇女都非常忠实地按照辛迪说的做了。可是对任何一个理智的旁观者来说，无论她们如何认真地使用这些产品，她们都不可能拥有辛迪那样的面容或肤色。

I'm not saying that men are superior. I'm just saying that you're not going to get a group of middle-aged men to plaster cosmetics to themselves under the instruction of Brad Pitt in hopes of looking more like him. Men don't face the same societal focus purely on physical beauty, and they're encouraged to reach out to other characteristics to promote their self-esteem. They might say to Brad: \know about lawn care, pretty boy?\

Of course women argue that they become obsessed with appearance as a reaction to pressure from men. The truth is that most men think beauty is more than just lipstick and perfume and take no notice of these extra details. I have never once, in more than 40 years of listening to men talk about women, heard a man say, \fingernails!\and one woman's flawless pink polish is exactly as invisible as another's bare nails. By participating in this system of extreme conformity, women are actually opening themselves up to the scrutiny of other women, the only ones qualified to judge their efforts. What is the real benefit of working this hard to appease men who don't notice when it only exposes women to prosecution from other women?

Anyway, to get back to my original point: If you're a man, and a woman asks you how she looks, you can't say she looks bad without receiving immediate and well-deserved outrage. But you also can't shower her with empty compliments about how her shoes complement her dress nicely because she'll know you're lying. She has spent countless hours worrying about the differences between her looks and Cindy Crawford's. Also,she suspects that you're not qualified to voice a subjective opinion on anybody's

appearance. This may be because you have shaving cream in your hair and inside the folds of your ears.

我并不是说男性优于女性。我的意思是你不可能让一群中年男子在布拉德?皮特的指导下把化妆品敷到自己脸上，期望自己能看起来更像布拉德。与女性不同，男性的外貌美不是社会所关注的唯一焦点。人们会鼓励男性借助其他特征来提升自尊。他们也许会对布拉德说：“是吗？那么帅哥，你对草坪维护又知道多少？” 当然，女性会争辩说她们对外表的热衷追求是出于对来自男性的压力的一种反应。而事实是，大多数男性认为美丽不仅仅来自于口红和香水，而且他们也不会去注意这些额外的细节。四十多年来，我在听男性谈论女性时，从来没有一次听到过哪位男性这样说：“她的指甲真漂亮啊！”对大多数男性来说，像指甲这样小的东西看起来都一样，无论一个女士的指甲是用粉色指甲油涂得完美无瑕，还是光光的毫无修饰，男性都一概视而不见。

女性参与这种极端的从众行为，实际上是把自己置于其他女性的审视之下，因为只有那些女性才有资格评价她们所付出的努力。但是，如此费力地去取悦男性而他们却根本不会注意，同时又只是招致其他女性的指责，这样做究竟有什么好处呢？

不管怎样，言归正传：如果你是一位男性，当有女士问你她看起来怎么样时，你千万不能说她看起来很糟糕，那样肯定会使她立刻迁怒于你，这也是你咎由自取。但是，你也不能慷慨地大放空洞之词，赞美她的鞋子和裙子是多么相配，因为她知道你是在说谎。她已经花费了无数个小时发愁自己的容貌不能和辛迪?克劳馥的一样。而且，也许因为你的头发和耳廓上粘着剃须膏，她会怀疑你根本没有资格对任何人的外表给出主观评价。 Unit 3

Fred Smith and FedEx: The vision that changed the world

Every night several hundred planes bearing a purple, white, and orange design touch down at Memphis Airport, in Tennessee. What precedes this landing are package pickups from locations all over the United States earlier in the day. Crews unload the planes' cargo of more than half a million parcels and letters. The rectangular packages and e

nvelopes are rapidly reshuffled and sorted according to address, then loaded onto other aircraft, and flown to their destinations to be dispersed by hand - many within 24 hours of leaving their senders. This is the culmination of a dream of Frederick W. Smith, the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of the FedEx Corp. - known originally as Federal Express - the largest and most successful overnight delivery service in the world. Conceived when he was in college and now in its 28th year of operation, Smith's exquisite brainchild has become the standard for door-to-door package delivery.

Recognized as an outstanding entrepreneur with an agreeable and winning personality, Smith is held in high regard by his competitors as well as his employees and stockholders. Fred Smith was just 27 when he founded FedEx. Now, so many years later, he's still the \hip, something he deduced from his years in the military, and from his family. Frederick Wallace Smith was born into a wealthy family clan on August 11, 1944 in Mississippi. His father died when he was just four years old. As a juvenile, Smith was an invalid, suffering from a disease that left him unable to walk normally. He was picked on by bullies, and he learned to defend himself by swinging at them with his alloy walking stick. Cured of the disease by the age of 10, he became a star athlete in high school, playing football, basketball, and baseball. 弗雷德·史密斯与联邦快递：一个改变了世界的创想

每天夜晚，在田纳西州的孟菲斯机场，都有几百架带着白、紫、桔色图案的飞机降落。而在每天此前的早些时候，这些飞机都在美国各地收集包裹。工作人员从飞机上卸下的包裹及信件数量超过五十万之巨。长方形的包裹和信封又在这里依据收件地址被迅速整理分拣，然后装载上其他飞机，飞往各自的目的地，在那儿再由人工投递——到这时很多邮件离开寄件人之手还不到 24 小时。这是弗雷德里克·W·史密斯的终极梦想，他就是联邦快递集团（最初为联邦快递）这一全球最大、最成功的隔夜送达服务企业的创始人、总裁、首席执行官及董事会主席。如今，史密斯这一源于大学时代的妙想已在现实中经营到了第 28 个年头，并已成为包裹快递入户行业的标杆。

史密斯被公认为是一位和蔼可亲、性格迷人的杰出企业家。无论是他的竞争者、员工，还是他公司股票的持有人，都对他十分敬重。弗雷德·史密斯创建“联邦快递”时只有 27 岁。现在多年过去了，他仍然坐在“掌门人”的位置上。他将公司的成功简单地归因于领导力，而这一推论则来自于他的军旅生涯及其家庭的影响。 弗雷德里克·华莱士·史密斯 1944 年 8 月 11 日出生于密西西比州一个富裕的家族。他四岁时父亲就离世了。史密斯年少时被视为病残者，因为他得了一种病，使他无法正常行走。为此他常遭受坏孩子的侮辱捉弄，他学会了挥舞合金拐杖来保护自己。十岁时他的病治好了，到了高中他则成了学校里的体育明星，足球、篮球、棒球样样能行。

Smith's passion was flying. At 15, he was operating a crop-duster over the skyline of the Mississippi Delta, a terrain so flat that there was little need for radar navigation. As a student at Yale University, he helped revive the Yale flying club; its alumni had populated naval aviation history, including the famous \War I. Smith administrated the club's business end and ran a small charter operation in New Haven.

With his study time disrupted by flying, his academic performance suffered, but Smith never stopped looking for his own \he wrote a term paper for an economics class. He drafted a prototype for a transportation company that would guarantee overnight delivery of small, time-sensitive goods, such as replacement parts and medical supplies, to major US regions. The professor wasn't impressed and told Smith he couldn't quantify the idea and clearly it wasn't feasible.

However, Smith was certain he was onto something, even though several more years elapsed before he could turn his idea into reality. In the interim, he graduated from Yale in 1966, just as America's involvement in the Vietnam War was deepening. Since he was a patriot and had attended officers' training classes, he joined the Marines.

Smith completed two tours in Vietnam, eventually flying more than 200 missions. \the military, leadership means getting a group of people to subordinate their

individual desires and ambitions for the achievement of organizational goals,\says, fusing together his military and business experiences. \very measurable effects on a company's bottom line.\

Home from Vietnam, Smith became fascinated by the notion that if you connected all the points of a network through an intermediary hub, the streamlined efficient could be enormous compared to other disjointed, decentralized businesses, whether the system involved moving packages and letters or people and planes. He decided to take a stab at starting his own business. With an investment from his father's company, as well as a chunk of his own inheritance, Smith bought his first delivery planes and in 1971 formed the Federal Express.

史密斯对飞行充满了激情。15 岁时，他就曾驾驶一架作物喷粉飞机在密西西比三角洲的天际翱翔，三角洲的地形平坦开阔，甚至都不需要雷达导航。在耶鲁大学上学时，他参与重建了耶鲁飞行倶乐部，在美国海军航空史的每个时期都有这一俱乐部出来的校友的身影，包括一战时期著名的“百万富翁飞行队”。史密斯负责管理俱乐部的事务，同时还在纽黑文经营一项小规模的租赁业务。

由于飞行打乱了学习时间，他的学业受到了影响，但史密斯从未停止寻找自己的“伟大想法”。在撰写一门经济学课程的学期论文时，他认为自己已经找到了它。他设计了一份运输企业的经营草案，该运输企业可以确保连夜递送小型或时间紧迫的货品到达美国的主要地区，如替换零件、医药用品等等。教授对这篇论文未予重视，他告诉史密斯说，他无法量化他的想法，并说这一想法明显不切合实际。 然而，史密斯确信自己已经发现了些什么，尽管又过了好几年他才得以把自己的想法付诸实施。在此期间，他于 1966 年从耶鲁大学毕业，那时正值美国在越战中越陷越深，而他是个充满爱国热情的人，又参加过士官训练课程，所以他加入了美国海军陆战队。

史密斯在越南战场上服役两期，完成了两百多次飞行任务。“在军队中，领导力意味着能使团队中所有成员将个人的期望与抱负置于从属地位，而以实现集体目标为重，”史密斯说道，这其中融合了他军旅生涯和经营管理的经验。“而优秀的领导力对控制一个公司的盈亏底线来说具有相当重要的作用。”