We buy too much stuff we just don't need. We're trying to look cute for next weekend when we ought to be thinking about the next decade.
From the beginning, Madam C. J. Walker's message was as much about hair and beauty as it was about empowering other women. She knew that confidence and self-assurance are key ingredients to success, and that true beauty comes from within.
There is a core of people who know and love Madam C.J. Walker, but there's a much larger audience who don't really know about her. I think 'Self Made' will give people a window into her life.
As much as any woman of the twentieth century, Madam Walker paved the way for the profound social changes that altered women's place in American society.
Women's handbags are incredibly heavy. You rarely get to pick one up and, when you do, you wonder why anyone carries so much stuff around all day.
Twenty is a tough age because it slips past in the middle of so much else - university, gap year, leaving home, getting jobs.
Money has to be an explosion of excitement and opportunity, yet we already secretly know that it doesn't do what it promises. Nothing has ever given us as much pleasure as our pocket money when we were 12, or our first wage at the end of that first exhausting week, paid in folded cash.
So much of life is not about whether you're good or bad, or right or wrong, or can afford or not afford - it's just about timing.
When Americans come to London they usually say how much they love the history, the tradition, the splendid tumpty-tum of things whose very repetition has become their point.
Some people care too much. I think it's called love.
