Dear Hollywood: Please Make a Movie About Camilla Parker Bowles’ Badass All-Female Bodyguards
(Instagram/ClarenceHouse)
Camilla Parker Bowles, aka the Duchess of Cornwall, is in the United Arab Emirates this week with Prince Charles on a royal visit, partly to champion humanitarian aid, women’s rights, religious freedom, and support for domestic violence victims. As part of the official visit, the UAE assigned security for their royal highnesses, and Camilla’s team of female bodyguards is so cool the Internet can’t stop talking about them.
A photo of Parker Bowles with her new security team was posted to the Clarence House Instagram feed, and it immediately started going viral, because everybody wants to know the story of the five women wearing hijab and abayas who are guarding the Duchess.
Parker Bowles’ security team was made up entirely of women, and it’s the first time a member of the British royal family has ever had an all-female security team. When Camilla heard she was going to have an all-female bodyguard team, she was reportedly delighted, and she had good reason to be, because the people protecting her were some of the most badass women in the world.
All five of the women are members of the UAE’s presidential guard, and they were chosen for this assignment because of their skills with martial arts and both armed and unarmed combat. (The Daily Mail reports that the bodyguards are all carrying weapons in the above photo, the arms just can’t be seen because they’re hidden in the clothes.)
In the photo above, from left to right, the bodyguards are Lieutenant Shaima al Kaabi, Second Warrant Officer Basima al Kaabi, Corporal Hannan al Hatawi (whom you can’t actually see in the photo because she’s standing behind the duchess), First Corporal Nisreen al Hamawi, and Salama al Remeithi, who is a protocol officer from the court of the Crown Prince.
As if they weren’t badass enough already, three of them–Shaima, Nisreen, and Hannan–climbed Mt. Everest earlier this year.
Nothing bad actually happened to Camilla while she was touring the UAE, but if someone wanted to write a movie about a team of five mountain-climbing martial arts heroes who band together to go save Helen Mirren from evil, I would be the first person in line, and I would buy the big popcorn.
