Some makeup companies have really good recycling policies, and it's worth finding out whether your favourites are among them. With MAC, for instance, you can take any of your old makeup containers into its shops, and the sweetest deal is that, once you've racked up six containers, you get a free lipstick or lip gloss.

I never went to college and I was raised in Arkansas so there wasn't a lot of academic language being thrown around my house. We weren't idiots, but I didn't have that access to academic feminism. I had to realize, on my own, that feminism is not just about how far ahead you can get in a job and it isn't about not wearing makeup. It isn't about not watching your waistline. I had to recreate the world entirely.

For years now I have run a kitchen-sink punk salon in my house, called Salon du Gay. In the early days, people would pay for a riot grrrl bob or a passable bleach job with a mixtape, $3 or a selection of baked goods - whichever they could afford. More recently though, with Gossip doing well, I've performed these punk hair transformations for free.

There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade.

Someone told me once that Lucinda Williams takes six years between albums, and that's what stuck to me; it's like, you really are a factory. You don't do things to make them, on your own time.

My number-one theory in life is that style is proportional to your lack of resources - the less you have, the more stylish you're likely to be.

I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter - I just didn't identify as a songwriter at all.