How I get readyBeauty‘If I go to an event where I have to pass as a grown-up, I wash my hair’Since Neil [Gaiman] and I don’t really live anywhere, we’re usually at a hotel where I have all my stuff in one suitcase. Whether I am performing for 2,000 or going for a night out where makeup is necessary, I use a black liquid eyeliner, black mascara and a Mac pressed powder compact.
If I have to go to an event where I have to pass as a grown-up, I wash my hair. I don’t usually. I only wear it in an up-do, because it is too fine to wear long without heavy styling, and I am a low-maintenance lady.
I shave my eyebrows a couple of times a week, and doodle them in with the eyeliner. They’ve been like this since I was in my 20s, when I had a classic college nervous breakdown. I shaved my entire body, because I wanted to do something drastic. Next day, I regretted it, because I looked bizarre. The most offending aesthetic was that I had no eyebrows, so I experimented with doodling in my eyebrows instead of drawing straight lines, and I got heavily complimented.
Because I travel permanently, I don’t buy clothes that need dry cleaning or ironing, and I tend to have a favourite dress that I wear until it is exhausted. At the moment that’s a beautiful striped parachute gown I bought in California – it can live at the bottom of a suitcase for weeks and look passable.
I’m fairly confident, but my achilles heel is my pot belly. Up there with that is the furrow between my eyebrows. I have named it after stressful boyfriends or bandmates. It deepens when I am stressed, and I try to appreciate it as a message rather than as a flaw.
Amanda Palmer’s memoir, The Art Of Asking, is published by Piatkus at £13.99.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJ6RqLWqu81oaWlpZGS7sMKOamxomZ2Wu6WtjKmYpaWVp3qpu9ZmoGaflal6s7HAnbA%3D