Chloe Cooper-Jones, author of Easy Beauty, shares her experience of being categorized based on her appearance due to a rare congenital condition. She discusses feeling othered due to her visible disability but finding empowerment through art and self-expression, breaking free from narrow societal classifications. Cooper-Jones highlights the importance of embracing one's complexity and rejecting reductive labels imposed by society.
Exploring Disability Identity and Challenging Misconceptions
Cooper-Jones elaborates on how she came to embrace her identity as disabled, emphasizing that disability is a broad term that can be part of anyone's life. She addresses the damaging narrative portraying disability as a sign of weakness, encouraging individuals to recognize disability as a natural aspect of the human experience.
The Essence of Beauty and Art as Tools for Self-Expansion
Discussing Bernard Bosanquet's concepts, Cooper-Jones delves into 'easy beauty' and 'difficult beauty,' highlighting how the latter requires patience and depth to appreciate. She underscores the role of art and aesthetic experiences in broadening one's perspective and fostering empathy towards others.
Navigating Pain, Love, and Self-Acceptance
Reflecting on facing pain and challenges, Cooper-Jones emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and making peace with difficult emotions. She advocates for embracing all facets of love, including its complexities and conflicts, as key elements of human connection and self-understanding.
Chloe Cooper Jones knows how it feels to be complicit. The critically acclaimed author has moved through life with a rare disability that brings incredible physical pain and plenty of outward judgment. And she’s even guilty of judging herself. But now, she’s challenging our ideas of motherhood, disability and beauty in her memoir, Easy Beauty. In this episode, she talks about using art to step outside of your own mind, sitting with difficult experiences, embracing the messy contradictions of the human experience, and more!