BECAUSE BEAUTY IS OBJECTIVE:

There's a scene in Easy Beauty, one of many in Chloé Cooper Jones' complex and exceedingly intelligent memoir, that speaks volumes. In it, the author is asked why she doesn't write about disability. She replies, "As soon as you identify as something, people start telling you who you are and what you mean. They put you in a little box and leave you there." [...]

Chloé Cooper Jones and I connected via Zoom to talk about beauty, transformation, and the art of being fully present--all timeless topics covered thoughtfully in Easy Beauty.

Wynter K Miller: One of the theses underlying Easy Beauty is the belief that proximity to beauty can be transformative for the individual. Assuming that society operates on the same belief--what do you think we're being transformed into, writ large?

Chloé Cooper Jones: I think that what's important about this idea that beauty is transformative is that there is a threshold, in a certain sense, in which beauty can be transformative, and in a way that I would associate with positive growth. There's this operating idea in the book that beauty can give us a chance. And this is not really my idea. It's Iris Murdoch's idea, that beauty can give us this chance to escape ourselves, to actually move outside of our ego or our own limited perspective, and that we can use beauty, or the aesthetic experience, or art in general, to step outside of your palace of self-regard, engage in the world, and then to return to yourself further enriched. I think there's a lot in society that does support that aim, and I think that aim is unbelievably worthwhile and is transformative in the very best sense because it literally lifts us outside of the limits of being just one single person.

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