Fading Rose may regret messing with tradition
THE Rose of Tralee has signalled its determination to leap into the 21st century by allowing trans and married women to compete in the festival for the first time. Leaving aside questions about the appeal of an archaic lovely girl competition for the cutting-edge transgender community – which I wouldn’t have rated as significant but then, what do I know – it’s a bit of a mystery what endgame the organisers had in mind when they decided that identifying as female and being under 30 were the new criteria for parading around the Dome in August.
If the plan is to have the Rose genuinely reflect the changing times, then perhaps it would be best to scrap the jamboree altogether on the basis that the days of women being pitted against one another, rated for their accomplishments and demeanour by a panel of well-meaning judges and led like showponies through Tralee on the arms of male escorts, are thankfully over.
The lack of outcry about the festival’s absence over the last two summers, due to Covid, might be another argument supporting its fading relevance.
ON the other hand, the Rose brings business to The Kingdom, it keeps Tralee on the tourist map and keeps the diaspora connected to the homeland. It also offers a career opportunity for she – or should that, in a nod to diversity, be a ‘they’? – who wears the crown.
No disrespect to MEP Maria Walsh, the first openly lesbian Rose but it’s doubtful she would have landed her handsome gig in Brussels without the high-profile pageant. Not everyone leverages their victory to that extent, but there are several women going about their business today who have the Rose to thank for meeting their husband or changing their career.
The Rose also has a nostalgic appeal, which may resonate with conservative Irish America and swathes of middle Ireland who, in a fast-changing world, find the non-threatening figure of Dáithí Ó Sé in his monkey suit reassuring.
The contest is a byword for whimsy and weirdness. Neither talent show nor beauty contest, it occupies the same folksy space as Daniel O’Donnell and Marty Morrissey, national treasures that capture the quaintness of the Irish psyche, the idiosyncrasies of our race.
The problem, however, is that when the essence of a brand is based on the unchanging nature of Irishness across decades and oceans, then you modernise it at your peril.
It’s the reason why Britain’s royal family stopped Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from carrying out royal duties in LA; a woke celebrity couple would undermine an institution based on tradition and hereditary privilege.
There are other enterprises that get a new lease of life when they change with the times. Once the Eurovision song contest became inclusive it transformed from a dreary contest of washedup acts and one-hit wonders to a gloriously camp spectacle and celebration of kitsch.
THE Rose will enjoy extra publicity for its embracing diversity and possibly increase its reach among younger audiences. But after the novelty wears off and in the event of a trans woman winning, a storm of protest could ignite from outspoken feminists lamenting this latest incursion into women-only spaces or from aggrieved runners-up protesting that the contest was sewn up for publicity.
And if the trans contestants are overlooked, the Rose could be marred by charges of tokenism and jumping on a bandwagon for fashion’s sake.
There may be minefields ahead. Let’s hope they are not so explosive that they make Rose organisers regret casting off the uncomplicated past so readily.
➤➤ CATHAL CURTIS, whose wife Michelle died five years ago from cervical cancer, told a court that CervicalCheck asked her not to go public about her case, reassuring her she was the only person failed by the screening service. It appears that, as with clerical sex abuse, so it is with CervicalCheck; both engineered cover-ups to protect the institution. In CervicalCheck’s case, the cover-up is more abhorrent than the negligence that caused the scandal.
➤➤ LET’S hope Mick Wallace MEP is coming home for Christmas so that he can bone up on our Covid policy. The political maverick, who is both jabbed and boosted, accused us in an interview of ‘obsessing about the vaccination rates… tarring and feathering people who don’t want to get the vaccine.’ He must be the only Irishman alive unaware of our excellent vaccine takeup and the Taoiseach’s refusal to make it mandatory. Perhaps Mick should devote more time to Irish affairs, rather than worrying about Romania and Russia.