“I’m in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to 2 men, my friends, discuss whether my life is price living.”

So begins Easy Beauty, the debut book and genre-bending memoir from philosophy professor and Pulitzer Prize-finalist author Chloé Cooper Jones. It’s not the primary time her body – its autonomy and inherent value – has been discussed in front of her. Not the primary time it’s been discussed as if separate from her, the person sat right there, listening as friends, colleagues or strangers evaluate her existence, dismissing her perspective within the name of “objectivity”. It also won’t be the last.

Weaving together aesthetic philosophy, art history, travel writing and private narrative, Easy Beauty is a confronting and eye-opening exploration of beauty from someone who exists on the periphery of our cultural beauty ideals. Born with a rare spinal condition called sacral agenesis, Cooper Jones has lived her life having to contend with not only her own physical limitations and chronic pain, but with the restrictions and definitions placed onto her body by others.

In an try and carve out an area in a conversation that has previously excluded her, Easy Beauty sees Cooper Jones embark on a quest to re-negotiate her perception of beauty – each the concept itself and the way in which she’s forgotten in it. Ahead of the book’s release tomorrow (April 5), we discuss easy versus difficult beauty, reclaiming space, and navigating beauty culture in a body that appears different to most.

Did you set out with the intention of difficult our perception of beauty – how we see and are seen – or was that something that happened organically?

Chloé Cooper Jones: It was something that happened pretty organically. Throughout the book, I’m going and search out beauty wherever I’m, and I’m enthusiastic about how my very own body suits right into a discussion of beauty. The reply is that it just hasn’t been anywhere within the narrative. The thought of the disabled body being beautiful, there’s no narrative for that and there’s no history of that. The truth is, the disabled body is at all times, stereotypically, seen as an absence or a deficit, something to pity or something that’s inherently inferior.

We’re on this moment where individuals are really expanding their conceptions of beauty increasingly… but I feel disability continues to be really far behind. Not totally absent, but still far behind.

I read Easy Beauty as a reappraisal of what beauty means, an try and remove that limited definition we hold around beauty in relation to our bodies.

Chloé Cooper Jones: That was very intentional, each chapter takes us to a special site of what could possibly be termed ‘beauty’ [from art galleries in Rome to a Beyoncé concert]. It’s such an interesting word because what can often occur after we apply it to so many things, is that it just starts to lose its meaning altogether. Then people say things like “beauty is in the attention of the beholder”, which I hate. Like, why can we deflate this really necessary and weighty concept?

But at the identical time, the opposite side of that spectrum was really hard to seek out too – to pinpoint beauty as an objective state. I feel that’s great since it signifies that beauty is only a mysterious, shifting and sophisticated idea. My hope is that throughout every chapter and throughout the movement of the book, an individual’s relationship to that thorny idea of what we consider beauty to be, or what we recognise as beauty, is always shifting.

“No amount of exercise, no amount of product, is ever going to make me not a disabled woman. Conceptualising my very own beauty in that way just felt inconceivable” – Chloé Cooper Jones

I like what you simply said, that we will consider beauty as a shifting state, something that comes and goes. As an alternative of a goal or a singular point that we aim for, beauty may be moments that come to us throughout life in various guises, and it’s something we must always just embrace when it appears. There’s a notion that nobody is ever secure inside our culture’s rigid and yet fluctuating beauty trends. They’re always cycling at an ever-faster rate – but surely there comes some extent when we want to only stop partaking on this culture?

Chloé Cooper Jones: In case you’re chasing those trends they’re going to always make you’re feeling inadequate, but in the event you just let those things swirl around you, you have got a chance to face within the centre and take into consideration them critically. You get to form your individual core, moderately than getting caught up in ephemeral things.

As I become old, I’m really enthusiastic about what it means for me to think about myself as beautiful. And that’s probably not an idea I had for a very long time, because, especially once I was very young and reading magazines, all you do is have a look at these women and see a deficit. No amount of exercise, no amount of product, is ever going to make me not a disabled woman. Conceptualising my very own beauty in that way just felt inconceivable. But then these women just kept changing, and it’s like, wait a minute, it’s actually not me that’s the deficit, the usual is just always shifting. Regardless of what I do, I’d at all times be somewhat bit out of step or out of time, or doing something after which reversing it.

In Easy Beauty, you very much consider yourself (no less than initially) as not an element of the conversation on beauty. The book feels to me like a reclamation of that space and of that word. Was it an empowering process? 

Chloé Cooper Jones: Certainly one of the core experiences of being disabled is being aware that there’s no space made for you or your body. People have little or no imagination for what the disabled body is, the way it takes up space or what it needs. The inaccessibility of the world is just in every single place. And so to speak concerning the disabled body moving in space is a really explicit, political and intentional thing to do. I like this concept of it being a reclamation, and I feel it very much is, on a variety of different levels. 

It wasn’t a process through which every thing got fixed, but a process through which my awareness increased, and that at all times appears like power. The forces of capitalism, misogyny, racism, ableism, have a variety of power because for essentially the most part, they’ll operate quite invisibly. They’re working on us in such profound and subtle ways. We’re not going to do away with this stuff overnight, but we will just lessen their ability to affect us subconsciously by increasing our awareness.

“The goal of this book is to shift your perspective so that you just’ll see beauty otherwise” – Chloé Cooper Jones

How did you land on Easy Beauty because the title? What does it mean to you?

Chloé Cooper Jones: The thought comes from the philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, who talks about how there’s easy beauty on this planet that hits you instantly – like a rose. Then there’s difficult beauty, which requires a capability to take a seat with complexity and intention. Bosanquet says that you could discover difficult beauty if you’re more thoughtful, in the event you spend more time with something. I made a decision that I only cope with difficult beauty, that, as a disabled woman, I am difficult beauty. 

Bosanquet says that to be really good at recognising beauty, sometimes you have got to permit the dissolution of your conventional world. You’ve to have the opportunity to reimagine your individual ideas, and you have got to permit yourself to be very incorrect. I feel a variety of the journey of the book is me pondering I’m doing that, but I’m by no means, as a substitute I’m actually keeping myself at a really secure distance to maintain that protection in place.

You speak throughout the book about beauty as a type of currency, but in addition you discuss utilising your disability as a type of currency. It’s something you consciously took advantage of at one point?

Chloé Cooper Jones: It may possibly be a source of power to control any person’s stereotypes of you, especially when it feels oppressive, cruel or reductive. However the flip side of that’s, by doing that I’m – in some ways – reinforcing that stereotype. I do that within the Beyoncé chapter where I play on my disability to get into the VIP area, and I get what I need. But then I say to myself, my son can never see me do that. I’m never going to do that again. I’m never going to bolster that negative association, or play on people’s infantilising tendencies towards disabled people. It’s a cruel thing to do. After which in the following chapter, I do it again. Those things are ingrained in us so deeply, it’s really easy to revert to that behaviour.

I’d like to know what your foremost hope for the book is? 

Chloé Cooper Jones: The goal of this book is to shift your perspective so that you just’ll see beauty otherwise. My biggest hope is that individuals feel like this book is about them and for them. I need people to feel like I’m engaging with them on an equal footing, there’s no judging or prescribing. This can be a real invitation to a conversation that will not be nearly disability but is… as relevant to your life because it does to mine.

Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones is out on April 5 and is obtainable to pre-order now.