People are obsessed with my haircut; everyone wants to do something with my hair before the ceremony. Very senior figures tell me their hairstylist wants to do my hair for free. It's surprising. People from television are interested almost exclusively in aspects of my hair and my hairdresser.
The great challenge working on this show for me is wearing polyester all day long and having the worst haircut known to man at the top of my head and sitting under fluorescent lights. That is America, people. Polyester, bad haircuts, under fluorescent lights.
When people ask how have I kept on top, I have to say with the help of every photographer, make-up artist and hairdresser I've ever worked with.
I've had the honor of working with so many trans people as a hairdresser over my career in some way.
I find it alarming that people are so convinced they're the best at anything - presenting, hairdressing, getting dressed.
I don't want to get into splitting hairs. Trauma is trauma. I'm not in a position to quantify or qualify people's trauma.
A lot of people live in fear because they haven't figured out how you're going to react when faced with a certain set of circumstances. I've come to terms with this by looking deeply into whatever makes me fearful - what are the key elements that get the hairs up on the back of my neck - and then figuring out what I can do about it.
I don't have to psych myself up, or do something special mentally - I look through the scope, get my target in the cross hairs, and kill my enemy, before he kills one of my people.
People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.
It's always great to see grey hairs in a crowd; people who are older have been to a lot more gigs than the kids; they've seen everything, so seeing them in the crowd means we've earned their applause.
'Hairspray' maybe did change people's minds, and that's how you get your political enemies to change their minds - by making them laugh and making them look at something in a way they haven't seen it. Not by preaching and cutting them off and being a separatist.
I think people assume I only do light things because of the movies that are like 'Hairspray' and 'John Tucker Must Die.' But I think it's all just based on material that I really like and that speaks to me.
I always try and put out posts on social media about feeling good inside, and there's so much pressure for people to look a certain way and have a certain hairstyle or a certain lipstick.
I use my hair as a tool for portraying characters. When I'm auditioning for a role, when I'm putting myself on tape for something, I always consider what the hairstyle is going to be because it changes the way people perceive me.
As an artist, you can always learn different ways to refine your look. I mean, you look at any one time in my career and you see all the hairstyles I went through. You make changes until something feels comfortable with you. And people vibe with it because they can see the difference.
When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism. You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.
I get people being frightened of me. One time I did this photo shoot where I had hairy armpits - I was really digging it, but they were like, 'We'll airbrush that out.'
It's so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there's truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there's so much more. There are multiple truths.
Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.
If you're going to write, then write a novel with a Haitian woman in it and try and describe her accurately. When you can do that, you can write about people.
