I'm a great believer in karma and the vengeance that it serves up to those who are deliberately mean is generally enough for me.

I'm passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.

I'm naturally a mousy blonde, so I dye my hair, and my eyebrows would disappear if I didn't get through at least a pencil a month.

It's funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day-your body-can be controversial. The shock value is intense. It's like carrying an art piece around with you all the time.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

We have to stop this idea that we have to be a certain shape.

In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: "That must be nice."