（2011年5月17日第一次发表在《more》杂志上）

眉批：

1994年，当帕蒂•戴维斯在《花花公子》杂志展示裸体时，她的年龄已经是同伴的一倍了。今年，她已58岁，又一次向人们展示了自己的裸体，并且讲述了她展现的经过和展示裸体的动机。帕蒂  戴维斯是美国前总统里根的女儿。她写过8本书，其中包括《漫长的再见》和，《过母亲留给我们的生活》，她还在杂志上发表过很多文章。现在她生活在洛杉矶。

具有讽刺意味的是，当我迈上台阶，走入一个狭小房间的时候，在那里听到的是举重杠铃的铿锵声，看到的是刺眼的荧光灯。第一个迎接我的是挂在墙上的黑白照片---—一个叫丽莎•莱昂的健身者的裸体照片。我发现自己瞪着眼球盯着那里，忽然意识到这就是我想要成为的形象。她既自信又自豪，肌肉精瘦，雕琢得清晰而美丽。（是某些女性健身者没有服用类固醇时的样子）我在想，有朝一日我也能像这样展现自己的裸体，那是以后某一天，而不是现在。这并不只是因为现在我照镜子看到了自己，还在一生那么长的时间里看到过曾经是我的那个女孩。那个女孩曾一度甘愿深深陷入毒瘾的深渊。15岁的时候，我在家里的实验室或车库里发现了配制的药用苯丙胺和白色安非他明药丸，于是就到大街上去卖。小药丸在瓶中发出的哗啦啦响声，成了我痛苦灵魂的催眠曲。几年中，从服用安非他明到可卡因，一直到20几岁，陷入了严重问题之中。我的身体毁掉了，肌肉细小清晰可见。在20大几岁时，我终于戒掉了毒瘾，就像抓住了我从来不知道的、存在于我心中的一条绳索。被埋葬了的那一部分我渴望着复生，顽强的决心终于占了优势。我下决心使自己回归到健康。这就是那个人，走进健身房，在那镜子一样的墙面上端详着自己，走向她从来没有举起过的杠铃。

我们都是在镜子中见证着我们自己。镜子可能是在洗手间，也可能是健身房和商场的试衣间，我们站在它们面前暴露着自己。我们穿着衣服或者脱掉衣服，在那里是从不设防的。似乎还有一面镜子，深深置于我们心底。我们曾经是谁？这样一个问题从来不会得到一个完整的答案。每当我们凝视折射出来的影子时，随时都在和那个人相遇。

一月月，一年年，我终于变得健壮了。我的体型变了，我随时都在记录在镜子中看到的自己的变化。在治愈后的欣慰时刻，我看到自己长满肌肉的身体，消除了心中的恐惧。我对自己说，你怎么会感到不自信呢，瞧那置于你体中丰满的肌肉！瞧那双结实的腿，它们可以跑很远的路程，推很重的东西！瞧那从体中汲取营养而显示出来的力量！曾经一度被我瞧不起的身体，被我用毒品毁掉的身体，现在成了我的治疗医生。

1944年我42岁，一个在《花花公子》展示身姿的机会来到我面前。这一愿望早在我看到丽莎• 莱昂照片的时候就产生了。一个早就拭目以待的想法，现在就要变成现实。我告诉杂志社我想要的设计方案：健美的，艺术的，聚焦于我艰苦锻炼出来的体型和肌肉组织。他们很快就同意了。如果他们一定要坚持床上的优雅姿势，我就会退出的。我要的是我那么多年以前所看到的，在这一点上我是不会妥协的。我知道，我为《花花公子》做节目，可能会因此成为一个叛逆“第一女儿”（虽然那时已经离开了总统职位）的形象，从而受到抨击，但是我不会在意的。 我做这件事，并非无视我的父母，我是在为我自己做这件事。这是我比赛中领先一步的胜利。当我裸身站在世人面前时，展现的是一个奇迹，我居然还活在这个世界上。人是不会那么容易就死掉的，我就是一个例证。从15岁起，一直到到20几岁，我在死亡的边沿挣扎着。大多数染上毒瘾的人都是这样。

尽管我受到了批评，那么多的批评，我仍然为那一张照片而骄傲。42岁时，我已经比一般为《花花公子》做模特的梦幻女性年龄大了许多，但是从所拍的照片可以看到，我多少年来的梦想成了现实，是我经过努力使它变成现实的。拍裸模照片仍然是我的一大优势。它很自然，自然得就像洗脸和刷牙一样。我的身体是我居住的房间，我一直没有停止通过努力把打扮得更漂亮。我不能理解那种通常的态度，在40年后任凭你的身体松弛萎靡，弓腰弯曲，以不能取悦于人的方式肥胖起来。

我马上就要58岁了。我的泰式拳击教练和我认识几乎有20年了。他最近评论说，我现在的体型比我为《花花公子》拍裸照时还要好。他也许就是随便一说。听到他这么说，我只是当作戏言，放在了脑后。那天夜里我站在镜子前想了又想，他说对了。我的肌肉精瘦，而且很长，更加条纹清晰。经过这么多年我施加于它的摧残，因毒瘾荒废了那么长的时间之后，我再一次享受到胜利的感觉。每一次做健身活动时，我都感到是在把失去的时间赢回来。

当然，这个宇宙中没有一种健身房可以使钟表完全停下来。时间在我的身上以我不喜欢的方式打着印记。我的皮质和以前不一样了，在这里或那里可以看到一点点褶皱。肘部也使我我非常烦恼，如果近距离拍下它们的照片，你会想，哇喔，是很老的一个人呀！确实有一种肘部皮肤整形手术，但对于我虽不能说昂贵，似乎也过分了一点。

说到整形手术，让我来回答一个人们难免会提出的问题：我在颈部以下没有做过任何整形手术，但是在50岁的时候我做过面部整容手术。坦白讲，那时候这个区域的皮肤开始耷拉下来，我要使它重新提起来。你没有理由不喜欢在镜子里看到的自己。你每天早晨起来要第一个看到它，如果你非要在黑暗中刷牙那是愚蠢的做法。

珍妮•特温特荪还有一句话，我很喜欢:“失去的东西是珍贵的。”我失去了我的10几岁的少年时光和20几岁的青年时光。我失去了我的健康，甚至我的生命，但是我通过决心和努力把它们夺了回来。现在我学会了把时间当做珍贵商品去重视，它本来就是珍贵的。我学会了重视身体，学会了站在镜子前看着从那里反映出来的力量------几个钟头的锻炼，数英里的跑步，这是从现在一个健壮的女人回溯到曾经一度废掉的女孩数十年的距离。总之，我们和镜子中的我们自己是有着某种联系的。它在我们大家看来，就像一曲优雅的舞蹈。虽然大部分时候我做的是正确的……，如果我我不再把注意力集中在肘部。

             Patti Davis: My Body, Then and Now 

                         First Published May 17, 2011 more

   When Patti Davis posed nude for Playboy in 1994, she was twice as old as the typical Playmate. Now 58, she’s posing for us—and telling the naked truth about her motives

     "Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there." ~Jean Winterson from her novel Written on the Body。

     IN 1986, I walked into World Gym in Venice, California—at that time, a small, space that women typically did not enter, except for a few female bodybuilders. At age 34 I’d left the tights-and-leg-warmers world of -Jane Fonda’s Workout to come to a hard-core, -pumping-iron, no-frills place, having decided I wanted more muscles, more strength. And no more pink leg warmers. I had a very clear idea of what and whom I wanted to see in the mirror, and I had a long way to go.

    Ironically, one of the first things that greeted me when I walked up the stairs into a cramped room full of clanking weights and harsh fluorescent lights was a wall of black-and-white photographs—nude images of a bodybuilder named Lisa Lyon. I found myself staring and realized this was the image of who I wanted to be. She was confident and proud; her muscles were lean, defined and beautifully sculpted. (This was before some female bodybuilders began taking steroids.) I thought, Someday I want to feel that I deserve to pose nude like that. Not yet, but someday.

    Not yet because when I looked in the mirror, I still saw the girl I’d been for so much of my life. The girl who had fallen willingly into the deep and dangerous waters of drug addiction. I was 15 when I discovered both pharmaceutical amphetamines and tiny white tablets of speed, concocted in home labs or garages and sold on the street. The sound of pills rattling in a bottle was a lullaby to the pain in my soul. Over the years, I went on from speed to coke, and by the time I was in my twenties, I was in trouble. My body was wasted, my muscles thin and barely visible.

     I did finally quit, late in my twenties, grabbing onto some rope in my heart that I hadn’t even known was there. A stubborn determination took over, a buried part of me that wanted to survive. I resolved to work my way back to health.That’s who walked into the gym that morning and watched herself in the walls of mirrors, reaching for weights she’d never lifted before.

     WE bear witness to ourselves in mirrors. They could be in our bathrooms, where we stand exposed, or in gyms and department store changing rooms. Whether we’re clothed or not, the vulnerability is always there—as is the awareness that there is also, deep within us, an internal mirror. We are never completely finished with who we once were, and we meet that person every time we stare at our own reflection.

     Over months and years, I did get strong. My body changed, and I took note of the transformations I saw in the mirror. There were anodyne moments of healing when I’d dispel my fears by looking at the musculature of my body. How dare you feel insecure, I told myself—look at the abdominal muscles centering your body; look at your legs, which can run miles and push heavy weights. Look at the power reflected there and feed off that. The body I had once dis-respected, that I had ruined with drugs, was now my therapist.

    IN 1994, when I was 42, the chance to pose for Playboy was presented to me. The wish that had come to me long ago as I looked up at Lisa Lyon’s photographs—a thought I hadn’t really focused on for years—was about to become a reality. I told the magazine the kind of layout I wanted to do: athletic, artistic, focused on the shape and musculature I’d worked so hard to achieve. They quickly agreed. If they had insisted on some bedroomy, frilly layout, I would have walked away. 

    I wanted what I’d envisioned all those years earlier, and I wasn’t willing to compromise. I knew, given my reputation as the rebellious First Daughter (although my father was out of office by then), that I’d get criticized for doing Playboy, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t doing this to spite my parents; I was doing it for me. This was my victory lap. This was standing naked in front of the world when it was a miracle that I was even still in the world. I am proof that it isn’t that easy to die, because from the age of 15, well into my twenties, I was working on dying. Most addicts are.

    Despite all the criticism I got, which was plenty, I’m still proud of that shoot. At 42, I was older than the typical Playboy fantasy woman, but the photos showed that my own years-long fantasy had become a reality. And I had made that happen.

    WORKING out has remained a priority for me. It’s as natural as washing my face or brushing my teeth. My body is the house I live in, and I’ve never stopped trying to make it better. I don’t understand the common attitude that after 40, you might as well just accept that your body is going to sag and fold and expand in unflattering ways. Really? Our muscles are actually pretty democratic; if we work them, they’ll respond. I also don’t understand the attitude that who you are on the inside is all that matters. Obviously our interior landscape is profoundly important, but we are integrated beings; we don’t have to make a choice between interior and exterior. One has a lot to do with the other.

     I recently turned 58. My kickboxing teacher, who has known me for almost 20 years, recently commented, sort of in passing, that my body is in better shape now than when I posed for Playboy. I heard him, but I was concentrating on my spin kicks, so I put it on the back burner of my mind. That night, I stood in front of the mirror and thought, He’s right. My muscles are leaner, longer, more defined now, and I felt again a sense of victory over the years of abuse I’d subjected myself to, and also over the huge amount of time I’d wasted on addiction. With every workout, I feel as if I’m winning back lost time.

    Of course, there isn’t a gym in the universe that can completely stop the clock. Time has etched itself on my body in ways that I dislike. The texture of my skin is different; I can detect a bit of crinkliness here and there. And I’m quite upset with my elbows. If you took a close-up photo of them, you’d think, Wow, very old person. There is actually a plastic surgery procedure for tightening the skin on the elbows, but that seems a bit excessive to me, not to mention costly.

    Speaking of plastic surgery, let me answer the question that inevitably comes up: I have had nothing surgical done below the neck, but I did have a face-lift at 50. And frankly, the minute something in that zone starts drooping, I’m going to have it hoisted back up. There is just no reason to not like your face in the mirror. You see it first thing in the morning, and brushing your teeth in the dark is silly.

    There is another quote of Jeanette Winterson’s that I like: “What you risk reveals what you value.”

    I risked everything in my teens and twenties. I risked my health and even my life. I got both back through determination and hard work. I’ve now learned to respect time as the precious commodity that it is, and I’ve learned to respect my body. I’ve learned to stand in front of the mirror and look at the strength reflected there—the hours of training, the miles of running, the years of distance between the strong woman I am now and the wasted girl I once was. We do, after all, have a relationship with ourselves in the mirror.

    It’s sometimes a delicate dance for all of us. Most of the time, though, I get it right… as long as I don’t focus on my elbows.

    Patti Davis is the author of eight books, including The Long Goodbye and The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us, as well as numerous magazine articles. She lives in Los Angeles.