Easy Beauty
On Seeing and Being Seen
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- € 3,99
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- € 3,99
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FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR
'An exquisite exploration of disability, identity and the human capacity to do (and be) more than we've ever dreamed' Time
'Gorgeously, vividly alive' New York Times
'Challenges the unspoken social taboos about the disabled body, unpacking myths of beauty and our complicity in upholding those myths' Lit Hub
Born with sacral agenesis, a visible congenital disability that affects her stature and gait, Chloé Cooper Jones had always found solace in what she thought of as 'the neutral room' - a dissociative space in her mind that offered her solace and self-protection, but also kept her isolated.
When she became pregnant (disproving her doctor, who had assumed it impossible), something necessary in her started to crack, forcing her to reckon with her defensive positionality to the world and the people in it. This prompted an odyssey across time and space as Chloé - while at museums, operas, concerts and sporting events, and in the presence of awe-inspiring nature - reconsidered the consciousness-shifting power of beauty.
A book of the year for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, BuzzFeed, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and New York Public Library
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones, a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist for feature writing, takes aim at beauty standards in her dazzling debut. Born with a rare congenital condition that left her with a curved spine and "mismatched hips," Jones became accustomed early on to "triggering pity" and stares from others around her. "Measure and proportion are everywhere identified with beauty and virtue," Jones writes. "My body did not fit into any narrative of order, proportion, plan.... disorder threatened beauty." But just as she defied doctors' claims that she'd never walk or stand on her own (even getting the "classic college experience" and, later, having a child), she challenges society's rules of attraction with razor-sharp wit and intellect. Framing her physical appearance within the context of British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet's theory of "easy beauty"—which describes the "plain straightforward pleasure" brought by the "apparent and unchallenging"—she makes a thrilling defense of "difficult beauty," where "one often encounters intricacy, tension, and width." As Jones explores this paradigm, she experiences the "blunt, triumphant beauty" of Beyoncé at a concert in Milan and the "energy of the aggrieved" of Bernini's Proserpine, while a Cambodian massage moves her to consider her own complicity in the "fixed distance" she seeks to dismantle. This makes a brilliant case for the beauty of complexity.
