![]() ![]() She notices a man in the gallery and the encounter becomes charged with another type of seeing – that of the erotic gaze, of voyeurism – only to immediately crumble when she feels her disability come into play. ![]() When considering age-old ideas of beauty, we are immediately drawn to how disability functions in the context of looking, gazing and seeing. Ancient beauty is ‘symmetrical’, ‘orderly’, and ‘easy’, Chloé remarks all the things she has never felt about her body – a body that has caused her pain and drawn the eyes of those around her. The art is founded on concepts of symmetry – Grecian and Roman notions of beauty – an archaic aestheticism that has ebbed into the present. The memoir begins in Rome, between the four walls of the Galleria Borghese, encircled by an array of classical sculptures: Pluto, Venus, Proserpine, Cupid, and so on. ![]() These comments on her body, what is and what is not best for it, strip back her sense of autonomy. After a harrowing conversation between a colleague and his friend, Chloé is propelled to leave her family to travel across the globe, to envelope herself in those spaces and experiences she always felt had been denied from her. Doctors told her parents that she probably wouldn’t be able to walk, that she won’t be able to have children her friends assume what she can’t do, angering her in their misplaced displays of helpfulness. Born with a rare congenital ailment called sacral agenesis, Chloé has lived her life on the margins. ![]()
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