I’m starting to see a trend here….this just(sort of) in from the LONDON TIMES…
Camilla looks set to triumph in middle age.
There is something even more startling than this, however. The duchess is
going to define many areas of modern life in 2006, according to the
futurologists. She is an exemplar for finding fulfilment later in life, one of
this year’s key lifestyle themes.
Thanks to Bridget Jones and Sex and the City, the predication till recently
held that by 2010 western cities would be overrun with miserable spinsters.
Wrong.
“What we’re actually going to see more of,” said Salzman, who has crunched
the numbers, “is a lot of women who were stuck in bad marriages, or who stayed
single in their thirties and forties, starting to de-emphasise their careers and
get married in their fifties.
“I honestly believe that we’ll soon start seeing communities of older
newlyweds being built because love over 50 doesn’t feel stigmatised any more.
Camilla makes it look wonderful.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1965146,00.html
With thanks to “http://www.andrewsullivan.com”
All Top Stories 
Yes, but that’s because you’re English. Americans have no such biases re the royals; in fact, we wish we had them. And who are Clare Short and Dawn French????
Actually, I think the presence of a large, cheerful, and violently purple-and-red clad contingent of the Red Hat ladies in the New Year’s Day parade was more likely to get the 50+ women thinking ‘hey, why am I still living my life to please others?’ and break loose. And not feel bloody GUILTY about doing so!
“Marian Salzman — J Walter Thompson’s advertising superstar who popularised the term metrosexual — called from America and a startling thought fell straight from her lips: “Camilla is going to be the next great lifestyle icon.” “
Ah, so it’s basically an American idea?
Quite honestly, as a divorced 50+ Englishwoman, I wouldn’t give Camilla a second thought. She’s totally irrelevant to my lifestyle and social circle. She’s a ROYAL… as in, on another planet, completely separate, glass-walled into a tiny world of privileged, effortlessly skinny, unthinkingly wealthy, carefree aristos.
Irrelevant.
Now someone like Clare Short or Dawn French, someone who actually does their own shopping and worries about their pensions and the latest burblings from the Treasury, THEY are relevant to me as ‘icons’.