Slab-built clay torso, Retro, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals

Today on NBC did a series of interviews on boomer women (I think it was August 2 or 3) and how Madison Avenue is finally getting the message:  Boomer Women are a huge demographic and they have money to spend.  Better than perfume or phermones, that money is what is bringing those of us of a certain age into the limelight of attention.

Carol Orsborn and Mary Brown of Imago Creative beat NBC to that story by several days in my email inbox with Marketers Proclaim "The Age of the Baby Boomer Woman."  (8/1/06)

"With Baby Boomer women spending well over a trillion dollars a year on goods and services, the days of women 40+ (ahem, Boomer would be 45+….please, let us have our demographic! The Boom ended in 1961), being ignored by marketers in favor of younger (usually male) consumers are numbered.

"Evidence is mounting of a marketing revolution that is literally turning the demographic desirability charts upside down.  In fact, for many advertising and media professionals, fall of 2006 is shaping up to be no less than the kick-off to "The Age of the Baby Boomer Woman.”

"…’When you talk about marketing to Baby Boomers, you’re usually in effect actually talking about marketing to Baby Boomer women,’ say Brown and Orsborn.  Marketers in a broad range of industries have become increasingly aware of the fact that women influence over 80 percent of consumer decisions, including such stereotypical domains as automotive, electronics and home improvement."

Not to mention all of us who are single and happily making all of our own decisions thank you very much.

I can only hope I will start seeing fashions, on women who look like me, in magazines so I can figure out how I will look in them instead of trying to translate the look to me from some clotheshanger model.

NBC also had an interesting definition of older women dating younger men (and since I’ve been married for 21 years  to a 13.5 yearer young man, I find this funny):  call them tadpoles, and the rules are 1/2 your own age +7 years (I was 35, he was 21….I missed that by 3 years too young), and that his mom is older than you (luckily his mom had him in her 40s so I was younger than her).  My godson, Linda’s son, is approximately 6 years younger than my husband.  So I’m glad I waited until I was older to have my kids!

Thought for the day:   "The essence of the Power of Context is that the same thing is true for certain kinds of environments – that in ways that we don’t necessarily appreciate, our inner states are the reslt of our outer circumstances."  Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

(see my August 4 blog on myspace for a take on that quote)