There's a lot of blah blah blah about "building your brand" these days, I know because I spout it myself to my students.

For kids who are within a few years of college graduation, this means: getting lots of internships, working hard on whatever you do and producing some really good work. I mean really good. Not just blogging about the Red Sox. Every ten year old now has a blog about the Red Sox.

Then.  Buy your domain name and put all that really good work into an online portfolio using Wordpress. Then: link that online portfolio to a really good LinkedIn page. Then keep going, doing super-good work, while you're building out your network. And so on and so on.

For older women, like us, it's a different story (although I still tell everyone to buy their domain names. For the price of a lunch you can own it for a year.)

For better or worse, our brand is "built"! And for a lot of us now, it's more about finding people we want to work with. Like people who get our jokes.

Which brings us to Bobbie Brown, whose makeup and skin potions  I really like, but who also has created a great public sensibility about who she is. Here's an interview she did with the Times recently.

Today I got an email link promoting her new ad campaign which uses real women. Young old, bushy eyebrows and none.

Brava!

                                                           ---BJ Roche