Bobbi Brown, 56, had a vision that helped create a New Face for the American Woman

Bobbi Brown, 56, was born in Chicago.  She attended Emerson College in Boston where she
majored in theatrical makeup.  She moved to New York after college and brought with her a different vision of beauty and how the American woman could look her prettiest.

While in New York she worked as a Professional Makeup Artist. At that time, in the mid 1980's, when look at me colors, stark colors and shiny red lips were in fashion, her vision was to create a more natural look for women. She and a chemist designed a brand of lipstick. "I had the idea to create a lipstick that didn't smell, wasn't dry or greasy, and looked like lips, only better—and I told the chemist about it," she says. She was hoping to sell 100 in a month, but ended up selling 100 the first day.  From the muted colors that continued to sell so rapidly, it was clear that women wanted makeup that was simpler, more natural looking and more wearable.

She extended her brands into foundation.  She changed it from being based in pink to yellow-based revolutionizing makeup as we know it today. By 1995 she became a product designer with her name behind a global company. At this point, she was approached by Estee Lauder who offered to buy her company. Bobbi sold it to the Lauder's but retains creative control of the brand. At the end of 2006, sales had reached one half billion dollars.

Bobbi has written five engaging and instructional beauty and lifestyle books and is a New York Times bestselling author. She has done appearances on the Today Show, Oprah, and many other television shows showing women how to apply makeup.  According to Bobbi, "Beauty isn't about looking perfect, it's about celebrating your individuality" At five feet tall, someone so short has done so much make women feel "ten feet tall." Celebrating one's individuality is priceless.

 i


  

Mature Adults, Over 50, are Active on Social Networks, and Some Are Even Sexting!!

Social Network Drama Doesn't

 Stop  At 50, Study Says

Just because they're considered "mature adults" doesn't mean post 50s are immune to the same kind of drama endured by teens on Facebook. A new survey conducted by the security technology company, McAfee, found four in five adults, ages 50-75, are active on social networks.

The majority, 75 percent, are active Facebook users. They're using the site to find long lost high school buddies, stay in touch with family and keep up with personal interests. That's the good part. Their behavior also puts them at risk of landing in some pretty hot water.

Just over 15 percent say they've experienced something negative on the site, including spats with friends and significant others sometimes leading to serious actions like defriending. They're also being worryingly trusting with sharing personal information online -- a trend that's common for social media users across the board.

More than half of the respondents said they've shared or posted personal information like addresses and cell numbers online, despite many saying they are aware of the security risks of online networking. This could be because people who use Facebookseveral times a day are 43 percent more likely than other Internet users to say they "feel that most people can be trusted," a 2011 Pew Research study found.

According to Michelle Dennedy, vice president and chief privacy officer at McAfee, the discovery that this confident, self-proclaimed tech-savvy group exhibits high-risk online behavior is reason to raise awareness.

“The use of social networks among people 50+ is trending now that it’s become more commonplace across all age groups,” said Dennedy. “It seems counterintuitive that sharing personal information with strangers would not concern them, however. This further highlights their need to better understand the difference between the real and perceived dangers online and how to best protect themselves."

And they're not just accessing the Internet and social networks from their clunky desktop computers. Just under 40 percent of post 50s are surfing the web using tablets and smartphones. Research shows they're actually the fastest growing segment of smartphone users.

They're no strangers to "sexting"
A surprising 24 percent of mobile users admitted they've sent intimate or personal photos, texts or emails at some point. So you'll want to think before you decide to use your parents' cell phones to make a call, especially as a third of them aren't putting password protection on their devices.

While older Internet users show no sign of slowing down with their social media and mobile usage, McAfee suggests they ensure their personal information is secure by making sure all Internet connected devices have up-to-date security software installed.

For the survey, the Futures Company conducted a total of 1,258 online interviews in the United States among consumers ages 50-75. Interviews were distributed evenly by age and gender.

Huffington Post 10-23-2013

Vogue and Bazaar Don't Care About Women and their Fashion Over Fifty

Originally, I was not going to post this article because I thought there would be plenty more issues to critique. However, today I picked up the new November Bazaar and they have not even included fashion for women in their 60's and 70's. How many wealthy people do you know in their 20's, 30's and 40's? Why aren't they marketing to the people who can afford the clothes? It makes me SO mad that our culture is so DAMN youth oriented. So, now I will post the past unpublished articles to prove a point that it saddens me to make.


This is the August 2013 issue of Bazaar and their suggestions for women in their 60's and 70's. First, the dress by Bottega Veneta is so unflattering, even on this six foot gorgeous model. Whoever chose this was subconsciously thinking of their great grandmother. The Preen dress is so busy, one would have to be very thin to get away with it. So I guess if you are gonna get old, you better be skinny.  Do you think they could have put a little more effort into finding a more flattering photo of Diane Von Furstenberg? She is so much more attractive than this, I would be upset if I were her. Finally, that shoe is crazy.  It must be at least five inches high.  With age, at least comes wisdom. No one that age is stupid enough to wear this shoe, and it isn't even that attractive


The outfit for the 70 year old woman isn't horrible.  The shirt is a little too see through and the pants are too baggy, but the monochromatic white is becoming on almost any age, and very classic. I cant tell what that white 'flowy' thing is in back, but that is totally inappropriate and MUST go.  I don't think I even have to comment on the Gladiator platforms.  A hip replacement waiting to happen. The Alexander Wang shirt recommended is way too bulky. Too many layers for an older woman unless she started out very tall.

If you scroll down past this fiasco of a page, you can see something I found out of a catalog that took me five minutes to find.  This Celine outfit is beautiful, classic and so appropriate for any age.  If I can find this so quickly, what are the editors at Bazaar really doing?  Maybe it's because nobody over 50 even works there!!!    

August 2013, BAZAAR

August 2013, BAZAAR

Almost 52 year-old Grabner from Chicago has Landmark job of Co-curating the 2014 Whitney Bienniel

Michelle Grabner Is a Renaissance Woman

After decades spent crafting the art world’s most diverse career, the Oak Park artist gets a national stage.

Michelle Grabner has built perhaps the most encyclopedic résumé in art. When asked for the 60-second version, she has one ready: “I’m an artist who has side jobs.”

Right now all anyone wants to talk about is one job in particular: cocurating the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Not the two ad hoc galleries, the Suburban (in her Oak Park backyard) and Poor Farm (near her vacation home in rural Wisconsin), that she started with her husband, the artist and professor Brad Killam. Not the coveted invite to teach painting at Yale, her tenured professorship at the School of the Art Institute, or her criticism for Artforum. And not her paintings, which will be on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in a survey exhibition that opens November 1. “She has busted her ass for 20 years,” says her gallerist, Shane Campbell.

No, people want to talk about her appointment to the Whitney Biennial because it was a divergent year. For starters, three non-Whitney curators were selected: Anthony Elms, of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; Stuart Comer, formerly of the Tate Modern; and Grabner, who lives and paints in the Chicago suburbs, a place that is as foreign to the New York art world as Mars. Grabner, 51, is the first artist-curator of the event; as such, she rejects the traditional idea that she tap the Next Art Star. “I’m more interested in people who take on the freedoms of being off center,” she says. “I’m also thinking about teachers—the academy—and the old cliché that  those who teach don’t. It is spot-on but also not. I want to look for people who influence the talent.”

That notion is clearly personal. A 17-year vet of the SAIC, Grabner presides over a diaspora of young painters. And she has deftly used the Suburban, her 15-year-old gallery in a former garden shed, to stitch together an international network of artists who show their work, stay for grilled bratwurst, and crash at her house. “She’s crafted a life outside of the center that has, in time, brought the center to her,” says David Norr, chief curator at MOCA Cleveland.

“I’ve tried to keep my experiments in the bigger art world as close to my domestic situation as possible,” Grabner explains, sipping a virgin Bloody Mary on the sunlit patio of Will’s Northwoods Inn in Lake View (no booze since she soon has to pick up her eight-year-old, the youngest of three). The native of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, says that she sometimes steals away to this taxidermy-stuffed bar to root for her beloved Packers with other dyed-in-the-green-wool fans. And the laborious craft techniques, such as silverpoint, that undergird her intricately patterned paintings—many she learned as a graduate student at Northwestern.

But she doesn’t feel any obligation to colonize her Biennial floor for the Midwest. After the Whitney announcement, she recalls, “a couple of people who are curators in Chicago claimed that now Chicago can be nicely represented. My response was—excuse my French—fuck them. Why don’t they let that influence their own curatorial decisions? I didn’t go into this thinking regionally.

“I’m midcareer,” continues Grabner, who is also juggling three solo exhibitions—in San Francisco, Basel, and New York—planned for 2014. “I can have a real stinker of a show or curate the worst Whitney Biennial to be seen, and I will soldier on. I am not paralyzed by fear or trying to overanticipate what the audience wants. I get to do what I want. That’s a great thing.”

Where to see her next: The Whitney Biennial runs March 7 to May 25 in New York City. A survey exhibition of Grabner’s paintings opens at MOCA Cleveland on Nov. 1. And Grabner will preview 'Work From Home' at Expo Chicago on Friday, September 20.

"The Ultimate Fashionista"

                      THE ULTIMATE FASHIONISTA!!!

                    Ranked by Fortune Magazine as 12th Most Influential Woman

                                         in the United States 2013

                                 CAROL MEYROWITZ

                                  CEO of TJMAXX, etc.

• Title: CEO
• Company: TJX Companies
• Age: 59
• Last year's rank: 15

Meyrowitz has continued the $26-billion-in-revenue retailer's hot streak: five consecutive years of customer traffic gains, and 17 consecutive years of EPS growth. In September the company launched a new T.J. Maxx e-commerce site.

Gorgeous Celebrities Over 60 Are Proof Women Don't Necessarily Peak In Their Twenties

Miley Cyrus and her peers can wear all the crop tops and hot pants they want to make us appreciate their toned physique, but they too will come to learn that beauty doesn't necessarily mean less is more. The following 40 celebrities have all left their roaring twenties behind long ago and still manage to take our breath away, at over 60 years of age:

82 year-old Alice Munro, wins Nobel prize for her Short Stories. Only the 13th Woman to Win

Canadian author Alice Munro, 82, has won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature



Making the announcement, Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, called her a "master of the contemporary short story".

The 82-year-old, whose books include Dear Life and Dance of the Happy Shades, is only the 13th woman to win the prize since its inception in 1901.

"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win," Munro told Canadian media.

Presented by the Nobel Foundation, the award - which is presented to a living writer - is worth eight million kronor (£770,000).

Previous winners include literary giants such as Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway.

Mr Englund told The Associated Press that he had not been able to contact Munro ahead of the announcement so left a message on her answering machine, informing her of her win.

"She has taken an art form, the short story, which has tended to come a little bit in the shadow behind the novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection,'' he added.

Munro, who began writing in her teenage years, published her first story, The Dimensions of a Shadow, in 1950.

She had been studying English at the University of Western Ontario at the time.

Governor General's Award.

In 2009, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her entire body of work - but she downplayed her achievements.

"I think maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn't have any other talents," she once said in an interview with Book Lounge.

BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz said Munro had been "at the very top of her game since she started".

"Very few writers are her equal," he said, adding "she gets to the heart of what it is to be human".

"I thought she might not win because she's not overtly political; and of late the Nobel has tended to go to political writers."

The award "probably won't make a commercial difference" to the author, he added, but it "makes a huge difference to how her work will be viewed in historical terms".

"If she hadn't won it before she died, I think it would have been a terrible, terrible omission."

Often compared to Anton Chekhov, she is known for writing about the human spirit and a regular theme of her work is the dilemma faced by young girls growing up and coming to terms with living in a small town.

The Nobel academy praised her "finely tuned storytelling, which is characterised by clarity and psychological realism".

'Pipe dreams'

Munro, whose daughter woke her to tell her she had won the Nobel, said she was "terribly surprised" and "delighted".

Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), she said she always viewed her chances of winning as "one of those pipe dreams" that "might happen, but it probably wouldn't".

Will Gompertz on the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature Alice Munro

"It's the middle of the night here and I had forgotten about it all, of course," she added.

Since the 1960s, Munro has published more than a dozen collections of short stories, many of which take place in her native southwest Ontario.
Her writing has brought her several awards. She won The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the National Book Critics Circle prize for Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's prize.

Other notable books include Lives of Girls and Women, Who Do You Think You Are, The Progress of Love and Runaway.

In 1980, The Beggar Maid was shortlisted for the annual Booker Prize for Fiction and her stories frequently appear in publications such as the New Yorker and the Paris Review.

Retirement

Several of her stories have also been adapted for the screen, including The Bear Came Over the Mountain, which became Away from Her, starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent.

Munro revealed earlier this year that her latest book, Dear Life, published in 2012, would be her last.

"Perhaps, when you're my age, you don't wish to be alone as much as a writer has to be," she told Canada's National Post.

In 2009, Munro revealed she had been receiving treatment for cancer. She also had bypass surgery for a heart condition.

Notoriously publicity-shy, Munro shies away from public events.

According to American literary critic David Homel: "She is not a socialite. She is actually rarely seen in public, and does not go on book tours.

Munro will be presented with her latest award at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who established the prize.