This post is for all the lovely people who blogged and emailed and tweeted and insta’d and left comments and questions about my Beauty Uniform over at Cup of Jo yesterday. It makes me so happy that you guys enjoyed it.

In the Burgess spirit of ‘more is more’ I thought that maybe I would post some extra things about beauty. When it comes to this stuff I can talk for a long, long time, with a lot of product-specific information, and it was edited a bit for JoGo. If make-up and skincare is your bag, then you’re in the right place, kitten pants. Welcome to the motherload.

About my daily skincare routine:

I don’t do anything in the morning. I have dry, dry, dry skin but since I started using the Yu-Be stuff at night, I don’t need to moisturize in the morning, I just slather on the SPF and go. At night I cleanse, spritz that SK-II liquid hope stuff (which by the way is way cheaper at Sasa, where I have been shopping since it was just a tiny cut-price corner beauty store in Hong Kong), and moisturize. I couldn’t do anything more on a daily basis. I would never stick to it, and I have better things to do. On beauty blogs, whenever they have a post like ‘it’s a morning-and-night 15-step regime that has changed my life!’ I always think ‘oh darling, you need to get laid’. Then again, sometimes I stare into space and think about AHA moisturizers for a really long time, so what do I know?

About face masks:

My favorite is definitely this one, but I have a few others I play with from time to time. I really like this Korres one, I sometimes exfoliate with this lovely powdery thing, I have a smidge of this wonderful stuff leftover from London (it’s hard to find Environ in the US and I’m never sure if the online retailers are legit, but if you’re in the UK, find an Environ place stat and try it out), and in the depths of winter when my face feels like an elbow, I put this on. It smells like herbs and makes my eyes water but it is veh healing.

I don’t know if any of these products are really necessary, by the way. Every six months or so I’ll try a new mask and be like WOW THIS IS THE ANSWER. Obviously it’s not really the answer. The answer is sleep and happiness. But masks are fun and easy. By the way, when you try a new mask, or any make-up product, if you don’t think it’s working for you, then for Pete’s sake return it. I return everything that doesn’t work for me, always – life is too short to waste money and shelf space on bad products. (Yah. I am DEEP.)

About aging:

I used Retinol for about a year before getting knocked up, but you can’t use it while you’re pregnant or breastfeeding and somehow I never got back in the habit.

I don’t use eye creams, even though the crepey-ness of my eyelids is not about to spontaneously reverse, because all the experts say that they don’t really work or matter (unless said experts are, of course, selling their own brand’s eye cream). I know I look tired all the time, but then again, I am tired all the time. So I’m not sure an eye cream would make much difference.

And I know the point is probably coming for Botox because I’m quite frowny (I have resting bitch face), but I just can’t quite accept it yet. Recently I found out about a thing called Juvederm and every now and again I google ‘Juvederm before after’ and ‘Juvederm eye hollows’ but then I google ‘Wildenstein cat lady face’ and the fantasy ends.

On hair:

Now that my hair is shorter I make the effort to blow-dry it properly, with a round ceramic brush, and Bumble and Bumble Prep Spray, every time I wash it. I find blow-drying it so extraordinarily boring that I never used to bother, but now when I do it my husband tells me I look pretty, so I do it just for the compliment. I know, I’m very shallow.

I don’t do any hair masks or any of that stuff. Too boring.

When I go out at night I always want to look like Drew Barrymore or Cindy Crawford in the early 90s, you know, BIG HAIR with oomph and attitude, hair that you can flip around and use to punctuate your sentences. (“Screw him, darling. Screw. Him.” FLIP.). So I’m on a constant quest to find bouffy products. Schwarzkopf Osis Dust It Mattifying Powder is what would happen if talcum powder and super glue made sweet, sweet love. I also lovelovelove Sam Brocato Full Body Styling Clay, applied to damp hair then blowdried.

See? Big hair.

I get my hair cut anywhere. I am too impatient for the boring wash-your-hair-blow-out thing, it’s such a waste of time. My hair is thin and straight and not exactly high-maintenance, plus I really like my own shampoo and conditioner. So I just walk in with freshly washed hair, tell them what I want, and then walk out 15 minutes later.

More about make-up:

Back in my 20s in London, I had fun experimenting with a different look every day, particularly dramatic rock-goth eyeliners, because, well, why not? I had the time and there’s something about London that makes you want to dress up when you leave the house, just because it’s so damn fun. These days I work from home in New York City (which is, strangely, far more low-key than London in terms of fashion, and or maybe it’s just that fashion has changed, plus I’m older… but then again, I can’t imagine girls in London wearing Lululemon workout clothes to hang out in all weekend like New York girls do, with zero make-up or perfume, because where is the fun in that? Or maybe that’s a worldwide phenomenon now – do you do that, London girls? Okay, that’s a conversation for another time, let’s move on). But I try to make myself wear a little makeup every day, just because I find it depressing when I go to pee and then wash my hands and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, looking all pale and drawn and ancient, like that spooky breastfeeding queen in Game Of Thrones.

So. Anyway. I have a couple of weirdly specific make-up techniques and products that sound REALLY strange to explain, but they’ve just sort of evolved over the years and I swear by them. (You know how people who are good with eggs just make an effortlessly fluffy perfect omelet, and if they were to explain it step-by-step it would seem incredibly over-specific but to them it’s just how you make a good omelet? It’s like that.)

I always use this strange-but-amazing little brush from Sephora, the Pro Full Coverage Airbrush 53, and sort of smoosh it over my skin after applying concealer – I don’t know how but this thing really does make you look airbrushed, and blends out little red spots and broken blood vessels, without covering up nice things like freckles.

For nights out, if you want to dial up on the whole glam thing and have ten minutes to kill: take a pea-sized amount of a liquidy highlighter like Becca Skin Perfector (in Pearl if you are super-pale, Moonstone if you’re more olive-skinned, Opal or Topaz if you’re darker-skinned, and honestly, I don’t know who would wear the Rose Gold shade but if it floats your boat let me know) in the C-shape around the outside of your eyes – i.e., from the outer top of your cheekbone, up your temple to above your eyebrow. A tiny pea, mind you, and blendy blend blend. It’s like having your own personal lighting director.

If you want to do evening supermodel cheekbones without looking like, you know, an over-Kontoured Kardashian or Boy George: use a tiny swipe of neutral-nude blush with the MAC 138 Tapered Face Brush. (I know, good brushes are so freaking expensive but they will last you for years so if you’re a make-up person, it’s worth buying one, if you’re not, don’t bother because it’ll just annoy you every time you look at it.) This is the perfect blush brush: it kind of contours softly and gently, never in a harsh draggy way. Pick a color with no glitter at all, that looks almost boring in the pan – somewhere between pale brown, rose and beige. I use Armani Sheer Blush 5 but it’s DISCONTINUED which makes me feel a mild panic inside, obviously, but I did some research for you and MAC Blush All Day seems to be about the same. Pout, swipe, and go.

Okay, last tip: if I’m feeling shiny in the wrong places (quick note – wrong shiny: nose, centre of forehead, chin, bottom of cheeks - right shiny is where you put luminizer ie,: cheekbones, over eyebrows, top lipline), I fluff a tiny bit of yellow powder on my nose and forehead. I started wearing yellow-tinted powder a million years ago, after reading in a magazine that all the supermodels did, and obviously I believe everything I read in magazines, don’t you? I used to use T LeClerc in Banane but it’s hard to find in the US, so now I use Bobbi Brown Sheer Finish Pressed Powder in Pale Yellow.

On beauty guilty pleasures:

My main beauty pleasure is probably enjoying it way more than a grown-ass woman with two babies and a job should enjoy it. Sometimes I feel a bit ashamed for being self-indulgent and vain… But then I think, screw it, who cares? It doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s easy, it’s fun. And how many things can you say that about?

My friend Yoko, the founder of Mitera Collection, just got in touch to tell me that she’s doing a special offer on Mitera dresses for June!

Mitera Collection makes truly beautiful, responsibly-produced, brilliantly designed dresses for pregnant and breastfeeding women. You can read more about them here. If you are looking for something incredibly well-made and stylish that you can wear every day, to work and play and everything else as you grow and then shrink, these are the answer. Just use the code ’25%’.

As you guys may know, my lovely friend and kindred spirit Joanna is the uber-blogger behind CupOfJo. She asked me to write a post for her Beauty Uniform series. I was like FOR SUREBIES JOGO. (Well, no, I wasn’t really, I was like ‘Really? Me? Are you sure? You know it’s going to be REALLY STUPIDLY LONG if I write it, right? Like your readers will probably get bored and thirsty and leave. And all my photos have the babies in, literally all of them, it’s tragic, is that okay?’ and so on.) If you’re in the mood, you can read it here.

PS Edit: Joanna tells me everyone is obsessed with these sunglasses! They’re Sabre Runaways, and I LOVE them. Go forth and purchase, my friends.

This is the perfect black sleeveless tshirt.

Bonus: made by Road Twenty-Two – an American-owned and American-based company that employs women who need a chance – women who were formerly incarcerated, homeless, or fighting drug addiction.

The mission of the company was what appealed to me at first (after reading Orange Is The New Black I realized the US prison system is like one of those 70s dystopia movies where you keep thinking ‘this is a horrifying nightmare, who would make this shit up?’ but IT’S REAL). And the fact that it’s made here in the States also makes me very happy. Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about how the purchasing decisions I make impact people – there was a great John Oliver piece about it. Yes, that’s probably the most bourgeois-yupster way to become aware of a problem but WHATEVER.

Of course, now I’m like, okay, but what should I do? Because I don’t see that many alternatives. I either buy that fast-fashion H&M and Gap and Zara clothing that some impoverished child in Bangladesh was forced to stich with her tiny hands while crouching in a rat-infested asbestos-scented tinderbox, or I buy American Apparel clothing that was probably used by a hapless SoCal millennial to mop up the aftermath of one of Don whateverhisnamewas’s forced BJs. Like, ew.  These are not great choices.

I guess the answer is to buy less and buy thoughtfully, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

Starting with Road Twenty-Two.

Everyone (including me) has been talking non-stop about the new season of Inside Amy Schumer, particularly because of this and this, but this song is just as brilliant, and I have been singing it nonstop for a week, so I figured I should share it with you guys.

Also, just because I keep telling people to look this up: one of the Chris Hemsworth bits from SNL a few months ago.

When I got my very first job in advertising in London in my early 20s, I was clueless. And I knew it.

First, I panicked.

Then I read every industry book and magazine I could find. I wrote down advertising phrases I didn’t understand in meetings, and looked them up straightaway afterwards. I read this and this and this and this and this. I researched the last twenty years of major advertising awards to figure out which campaigns won, why they won, and who created them. It helped, in a million tiny ways, totally separate from any creative ability I had, to learn more about the world that I was trying to join. It made me feel more in control of that impossible-to-control thing I was starting to call a career. I started to understand the industry, and – not to sound even more nerdy – respected it. (Of course, by the middle of my 20s, thought ‘why the hell am I trying to sell people shit they don’t need? I’d prefer to just entertain them’. But before that came research.)

Becoming an author was far more point-and-shoot: I was still working in advertising, decided to write a book when I hurt my back and was stuck at home with no wifi, wrote three chapters, sent it to ten book agents I found on Google, got some replies, finished the book, and got a book deal with Harper Collins, all in just over a year. Obviously there was a lot of angst in that year too, but it didn’t take much research. I had a story and a voice and a bit of luck, and that’s all you really need. (After writing two books I read this, and it’s brilliant, but it’s not going to teach you how to write a book, it’s just interesting.)

Then at some point last year, as I was doing a screenplay rewrite for a producer and wondering how many rewrites happen and how many screenplays go unproduced and just what ARE the odds of a movie being made anyway, I realized I didn’t know much about the entertainment business. I mean, I know how it works theoretically, obviously. I love movies. I love television. I was as obsessed with watching (and re-watching and re-watching) old movies as any other shy, creative teenager. I’ve always read scripts for fun (particularly, and predictably, Nora Ephron, Richard Curtis and William Goldman). I read a zillion old movie star biographies when I was younger, because hello, Ingrid Bergman.

But I didn’t know much about the history, the people, the culture, the machine. The business of the business. I didn’t know it worked. I didn’t know how other people got into the industry, how they survived, how they succeeded. It was just an amorphous mass in my imagination: Hollywood. And I really hated feeling clueless again.

So I started to read. My OCD took over. I’ve tracked down dozens of in-and-out-of-print books about producers, directors, writers, agenting, movie deals – biographies, autobiographies, how-to books – anything to do with the entertainment business. And I LOVE them. Some of the authors of these books – particularly some of the producers – I now think of with such affection and respect, they’re practically mentors. They just don’t know it. (I’m sure they’d be thrilled.) These books are inspiring and impressive – and almost always extremely entertaining. So in case you’re interested in this subject, too, let me save you some time: here are the 29 books that you might like to read. The three that have stuck with me are compulsively readable, well-written and absolutely fascinating: Top Of The Rock by Warren Littlefield, The Men Who Would Be King by Nicole LaPorte, and The Mailroom by David Rensin.

(I read quite a few how-to books about writing for movies and TV years ago too, of course, books like this and this and this - as with writing novels, they’re interesting but they won’t teach you how to actually write. You can read about writing forever but at some point you have to just fucking write. Then get sharp, incisive feedback from someone very smart, then rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. And rewrite some more.)

I’m probably still pretty clueless, but that’s okay. I’m getting there.

I know I’ve barely touched the surface, so if you think I’ve missed a great book, email gemma@gemmaburgess.com

Once I finished that last book, by the way, I craved fiction. So I read Persuasion, and am now reading Pride and Prejudice. I know, I know. Hearing about someone reading Jane Austen is so fucking annoying. Austen has totally jumped the shark in the past decade. But then when you get back to the books, she’s just that good – funny and intense and romantic and wise – that you don’t care. Read Pride and Prejudice again. It’s worth it.

Every year on our anniversary, Fox and I go back to City Hall in NYC, where we got married, and take another photo outside. We did it again today, and this is the photo. Ned’s face kills me. And Errol refused to take off his shades.

This is 2014.
2013.

2012. (There was no 2011 as we didn’t live here yet, anyway I was pregnant with Errol so it would have been a photo of me throwing up.)

And this is the day we got mawwied in 2010.

Okay, so this started as a post about Amy Schumer’s speech at the Gloria awards last year, but then I saw this and… I had to post about it, too. The world’s first-ever funny rape joke. Amy Schumer is a golden god.

Also, her speech is so brilliant that I stood up at my desk and gave her a standing ovation. Enjoy.

“Here I go, and if it doesn’t go well, please just don’t blog about it.

Right before I left for college, I was running my high school. Feel it. I knew where to park, I knew where to get the best chicken-cutlet sandwich, I knew which custodians had pot. People knew me. They liked me. I was an athlete and a good friend. I felt pretty, I felt funny, I felt sane. Then I got to college in Maryland. My school was voted number one … for the hottest freshman girls in Playboy that year. And not because of me. All of a sudden, being witty and charismatic didn’t mean shit. Day after day, I could feel the confidence drain from my body. I was not what these guys wanted. They wanted thinner, blonder, dumber … My sassy one-liners were only working on the cafeteria employees, who I was visiting all too frequently, tacking on not the Freshman 15, but the 30, in record-breaking time, which led my mother to make comments over winter break like, “You look healthy!” I was getting no male attention, and I’m embarrassed to say, it was killing me.

But one guy paid me some attention — Matt. Matt was six feet tall, he looked like a grown-up von Trapp child, and he was five years older than me. What?! An older boy, paying attention to me? I must be okay. Uff. I made him laugh in our bio lab, and I could tell a couple times that we had a vibe. He was a super senior, which is a sexy way of saying “should have graduated, but needed an extra year.” He barely spoke, which was perfect for all the projecting I had planned for him. We grew up in the same town, and getting attention from him felt like success. When I would see him on campus, my heart would race, and I would smile as he passed. I’d look in the mirror and see all the blood rise to my face. I’d spend time analyzing the interaction, and planning my outfit for the next time I saw him. I wanted him to call. He never called. But then finally, he called.

It was 8 a.m., my dorm room phone rang. “Amy, wassup? It’s Matt. Come over.” Holy shit! This is it, I thought.He woke up thinking about me! He realized we’re meant to start a life together! Let’s just stop all this pretending that we weren’t free just to love one another! I wondered, would we raise our kids in the town we both grew up in, or has he taken a liking to Baltimore? I don’t care. I’ll settle wherever he’s most comfortable. Will he want to raise our kids Jewish? Who cares? I shaved my legs in the sink, I splashed some water under my armpits, and my randomly assigned Albanian roommate stared at me from under her sheets as I rushed around our shitty dorm room. I ran right over to his place, ready for our day together. What would we do? It’s still early enough, maybe we’re going fishing? Or maybe his mom’s in town, and he wanted me to join them for breakfast. Knock-knock. Is he going to carry me over the threshold? I bet he’s fixing his hair and telling his mom, “Be cool, this may be the one!” I’ll be very sweet with her, but assert myself, so she doesn’t think she’s completely in charge of all the holiday dinners we’re going to plan together. I’ll call her by her first name, too, so she knows she can’t mess with me. “Rita! I’m going to make the green bean casserole this year, and that’s that!” Knock-knock. Ring ring. Where is he?

Finally, the door opens. It’s Matt, but not really. He’s there, but not really. His face is kind of distorted, and his eyes seem like he can’t focus on me. He’s actually trying to see me from the side, like a shark. “Hey!” he yells, too loud, and gives me a hug, too hard. He’s fucking wasted. I’m not the first person he thought of that morning. I’m the last person he called that night. I wonder, how many girls didn’t answer before he got to fat freshman me? Am I in his phone as Schumer? Probably. But I was here, and I wanted to be held and touched and felt desired, despite everything. I wanted to be with him. I imagined us on campus together, holding hands, proving, “Look! I am lovable! And this cool older guy likes me!” I can’t be the troll doll I’m afraid I’ve become.

He put on some music, and we got in bed. As that sexy maneuver where the guy pushes you on the bed, you know, like, “I’m taking the wheel on this one. Now I’m going to blow your mind,” which is almost never followed up with anything. He smelled like skunk microwaved with cheeseburgers, which I planned on finding and eating in the bathroom, as soon as he was asleep. We tried kissing. His 9 a.m. shadow was scratching my face — I knew it’d look like I had fruit-punch mouth for days after. His alcohol-swollen mouth, I felt like I was being tongued by someone who had just been given Novocain. I felt faceless, and nameless. I was just a warm body, and I was freezing cold. His fingers poked inside me like they had lost their keys in there. And then came the sex, and I use that word very loosely. His penis was so soft, it felt like one of those de-stress things that slips from your hand? So he was pushing aggressively into my thigh, and during this failed penetration, I looked around the room to try and distract myself or God willing, disassociate. What’s on the wall? A Scarface poster, of course. Mandatory. Anything else? That’s it? This Irish-Catholic son of bank teller who played JV soccer and did Mathletes feels the most connection with a Cuban refugee drug lord. The place looked like it was decorated by an overeager set designer who took the note “temporary and without substance” too far.

He started to go down on me. That’s ambitious, I think. Is it still considered getting head if the guy falls asleep every three seconds and moves his tongue like an elderly person eating their last oatmeal? Chelsea? Is it? Yes? It is. I want to scream for myself, “Get out of here, Amy. You are beautiful, you are smart, and worth more than this. This is not where you stay.” I feel like Fantine and Cosette and every fucking sad French woman from Les Miz. And whoever that cat was who sang “Memories,” what was that musical? Suze Orman just goes, “Cats.” The only wetness between my legs is from his drool, because he’s now sleeping and snoring into me. I sigh, I hear my own heartbreak, I fight back my own tears, and then I notice a change in the music. Is this just a bagpipe solo? I shake him awake. “Matt, what is this? The Braveheart soundtrack? Can you put something else on, please?” He wakes up grumpily, falls to the floor, and crawls. I look at his exposed butt crack, a dark, unkempt abyss that I was falling into. I felt paralyzed. His asshole is a canyon, and this was my 127 Hours. I might chew my arm off.

I could feel I was losing myself to this girl in this bed. He stood up and put a new CD on. “Darling, you send me, I know you send me, honest, you do …” I’m thinking, “What is this?” He crawled back into bed, and tried to mash at this point his third ball into my vagina. On his fourth thrust, he gave up and fell asleep on my breast. His head was heavy and his breath was so sour, I had to turn my head so my eyes didn’t water. But they were watering anyway, because of this song. Who is this? This is so beautiful. I’ve never heard these songs before. They’re gutting me. The score attached to our morning couldn’t have been more off. His sloppy, tentative lovemaking was certainly not in the spirit of William Wallace. And now the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard play out as this man-boy laid in my arms, after diminishing me to a last-minute booty call. I listened to the songs and I cried. I was looking down at myself from the ceiling fan. What happened to this girl? How did she get here? I felt the fan on my skin and I went, “Oh, wait! I am this girl! We got to get me out of here!” I became my own fairy godmother. I waited until the last perfect note floated out, and escaped from under him and out the door. I never heard from Matt again, but felt only grateful for being introduced to my new self, a girl who got her value from within her. I’m also grateful to Matt for introducing me to my love Sam Cooke, who I’m still with today.

Now I feel strong and beautiful. I walk proudly down the streets of Manhattan. The people I love, love me. I make the funniest people in the country laugh, and they are my friends. I am a great friend and an even better sister. I have fought my way through harsh criticism and death threats for speaking my mind. I am alive, like the strong women in this room before me. I am a hot-blooded fighter and I am fearless. But I did morning radio last week, and a DJ asked, “Have you gained weight? You seem chunkier to me. You should strike while the iron is hot, Amy.” And it’s all gone. In an instant, it’s all stripped away. I wrote an article for Men’s Healthand was so proud, until I saw instead of using my photo, they used one of a 16-year-old model wearing a clown nose, to show that she’s hilarious. But those are my words. What about who I am, and what I have to say? I can be reduced to that lost college freshman so quickly sometimes, I want to quit. Not performing, but being a woman altogether. I want to throw my hands in the air, after reading a mean Twitter comment, and say, “All right! You got it. You figured me out. I’m not pretty. I’m not thin. I do not deserve to use my voice. I’ll start wearing a burqa and start waiting tables at a pancake house. All my self-worth is based on what you can see.” But then I think, Fuck that. I am not laying in that freshman year bed anymore ever again. I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story — I will. I will speak and share and fuck and love and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it. I stand here and I am amazing, for you. Not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself. And I am all of you, and I thank you.”

Yup. She’s the best.

If you haven’t watched Amy Schumer’s show yet, then get the hell off my blog and go watch it – Season 3 starts tonight – and prepare for Trainwreck, because it’s going to be your favorite movie this summer.