“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 to 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 am going and search out beauty wherever I’m, and I’m occupied with how my very own body matches right into a discussion of beauty. The reply is that it just hasn’t been anywhere within the narrative. The concept of the disabled body being beautiful, there’s no narrative for that and there’s no history of that. In actual fact, the disabled body is at all times, stereotypically, seen as a scarcity or a deficit, something to pity or something that’s inherently inferior.

We’re on this moment where persons are really expanding their conceptions of beauty increasingly… but I feel disability remains 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 to 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 might 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 will we deflate this really essential and weighty concept?

But at the identical time, the opposite side of that spectrum was really hard to search out too – to pinpoint beauty as an objective state. I feel that’s great since it implies 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 unattainable” – Chloé Cooper Jones

I really like what you only said, that we are able to consider beauty as a shifting state, something that comes and goes. As a substitute of a goal or a singular point that we aim for, beauty will be moments that come to us throughout life in various guises, and it’s something we should 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 a degree when we’d like to simply stop partaking on this culture?

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

As I become older, I’m really occupied with what it means for me to think about myself as beautiful. And that’s not likely 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 unattainable. 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. Irrespective of what I do, I might 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 (a minimum of 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: One among 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 all places. And so to speak in regards to the disabled body moving in space is a really explicit, political and intentional thing to do. I really like this concept of it being a reclamation, and I feel it very much is, on loads of different levels. 

It wasn’t a process wherein all the things got fixed, but a process wherein my awareness increased, and that at all times appears like power. The forces of capitalism, misogyny, racism, ableism, have loads of power because for probably the most part, they will operate quite invisibly. They’re working on us in such profound and subtle ways. We’re not going to eliminate these items overnight, but we are able to 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 in another way” – Chloé Cooper Jones

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

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

Bosanquet says that to be really good at recognising beauty, sometimes you might have to permit the dissolution of your conventional world. You could have to have the option to reimagine your personal ideas, and you might have to permit yourself to be very mistaken. I feel loads of the journey of the book is me considering I’m doing that, but I’m under no circumstances, as an alternative 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 govern any individual’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 would like. 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 subsequent 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 principal 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 in another way. My biggest hope is that individuals feel like this book is about them and for them. I would like people to feel like I’m engaging with them on an equal footing, there’s no judging or prescribing. It is a real invitation to a conversation that just isn’t 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 accessible to pre-order now.