MARILYN MANSON: My mom used to put her wigs and lipstick on me when I was little. I have one weird picture of me as a toddler with an unlit cigarette in my mouth, wearing her blonde wig and a diaper, sitting on the couch. Wonder how I ended up here.

I suppose my fascination with makeup comes from me having a great imagination and not being able to contain it just to a piece of paper or a piece of music. When I was a kid, I used to do the KISS makeup with watercolor paints. I was into KISS mostly because I was told not to listen to it in Christian school. But Alice Cooper and Bowie were more important to me. KISS wore too much of a mask; it was too much kabuki. I wanted to be seen, I just didn't want to be seen the same way that I was. Ziggy Stardust first led me to shave off my eyebrows. People look at you trying to figure out what's missing or wrong, and you can do a lot more with makeup when your eyebrows are out of the way.

In the beginning, I was never intending to be androgynous in the sense that people thought. I wasn't trying to look like a girl; I was hiding something. I had a really bad complexion as a teenager, but I wasn't insecure: I tried to look worse. I liked to put lipstick on my teeth because it was always something that people didn't like to have.

The early performances I did, I wore Maybelline eyeliner that I would steal from grocery stores late at night. I had a mild bout of kleptomania in Florida. I stole Max Factor Pan-Cake foundation, which was all-in-one: you just wet a sponge, and you put it on, and done. So when people say, "Marilyn Manson wears pancake makeup," technically that was true, though only back in the day. Lipstick came a little bit later. Someone threw a bottle at me on stage once. I just cracked my chest with it and rubbed the blood across my mouth.

I think the first makeup I ever paid for was in '95 or '96, before recording Antichrist Superstar. I was in New York for seven months, and I remember going into the MAC store and being very excited. I bought this foundation that they don't make anymore, and lipliner and lipstick. I've been using MAC's Diva lipstick since they invented the color. I haven't really varied since. My makeup kit now is pretty small, about five items. I think limitations make creativity.