“The annual Rose of Tralee brings with it a slew of disdainful articles, all predictable and totally missing the point! ”
Well, there you have it. A comment in response to today’s Journal.ie’s opinion piece on that most divisive of pageants: The Rose of Tralee. Joining Lorraine Courtney in the condemnation corner is Louise O’Neill in The Examiner. Both allude to the anachronistic nature of the event: the casual objectification of women (albeit without the bikini round); the ethnically homogenous participants; and the less-than-subtle assumptions on sexuality with the safeguarding of an exclusively male line-up of chaperones. Because, in the case of the latter, where would the ladies be without one? Getting sick sideways out the tour-bus window no doubt. If only.
Like any cultural phenomenon, the spectacle shouldn’t be spared a periodic good kicking to see how it stands up. Courtney is concerned with the perceived dumbing down of personalities through the banal interview that forces participants to temper their individuality via self-censorship and insipid responses. O’Neill, meanwhile, despairs that regardless of the purported elevation of brains above beauty to ensure a more respectable affair, it is the sparkly dresses and winning smiles that little girls looking on remember. The impact of the resulting absorption of such messages on female success should not be underestimated.
Like any article written on women by women, neither writer is spared the reciprocated on-line kicking. The substantive points both make are frequently overlooked by readers more concerned with pointing out their apparent uptightness and compulsion to peddle a pro-feminist message. Imagine that. The particularly enlightened commentators cite several points missed: the choice women have to participate (or not), the ‘harmlessness’ of the revenue-generating bit of fun local communities depend on, and not least the professional and educational status of the wimmin. What’s all the whinging for?
“Some of the most accomplished women have taken part in the Rose of the Tralee and last years winner is a medical student and as a cancer survivor will I believe, go on to be a fine doctor.” (sic)
Indeed. And this is perhaps what makes it a uniquely Irish Festival of Respectability: the degree and the big job. The ultimate status symbols. That most beloved of combos after low-esteem and big ego. Which to this reluctant spectator, is what has helped contributed to the event’s durability.
Louise O’Neill asks when the last time a woman of colour entered? While this is a fair question, so dominated has identity politics become by issues of gender and sexuality that the most glaring issue of inequality that encompasses many women irrespective of ethnicity appears to go unchallenged: that of class. When is the last time a woman without the mandatory third level education and impenetrable job title entered?
“Of course no mention that the majority of these women are all ready successful in there lives much more successful then the women that complain and want to stop them from doing this.”
Another Journal commentator roundly telling the critics off.
There is just one thorny problem with that analysis however: people are born with conventional beauty (or pay for it), but it is privilege that awards them ‘brains’. In the common Irish sense. The Rose of Tralee sense. The status and respectability sense. The national middle-class definition of success sense.
The centrality of women’s education in combating global inequality and access to the labour market is a given. Ambition and determination are not to be sniffed at either. But they are not the preserve of the formally educated who have benefitted from the opportunity to have their ‘brains’ nurtured. A degree and companion ‘profession’ isn’t a pre-requisite for contributing to keeping society successfully on its axis, nor an accurate measure of ‘intelligence’; and the meaning of ‘success’ goes beyond what’s reflected back at us from our job titles and pay-cheques.
When I watch the conga of lovely girls sashaying on to the stage, it is not exposure to identikit glamour and bad jokes I fear most for my own girl. It is the stark class divisions and national obsession with defining success according to a system of inequality that leaves the bitterest after-taste. The narrow definition of success. The one-track route to worthiness. Will the unconscious absorption of the message on ‘success’ stalk her throughout her life? In choosing to go to college or not. In adjusting aspirations and priorities if children enter the fray (if she wants them, and lucky to have them). If they don’t, will she be shunted into that limiting corner where her worth must proved by workplace success? Will jettisoning the big job and opportunities result in itchy feelings of failure? Will having the benefit of a formal education (if lucky to receive it) for life and knowledge be sufficient?
Modern mainstream musings on women are freighted with these anxieties, and written mostly by ‘successful’ women. Valid though they be, they have, in the main, become an issue of entitlement for the already entitled. With scant attention given to equality of access to education, and the merits of it remaining the chief determinant for just about every ‘respectable’ job going. And we don’t need to re-open any discussion here on the lack of respect afforded to predominantly female areas of work.
Even if it were to leave out ‘beauty’, The Rose of Tralee would still be left with the worrying problem of ‘brains’. So why bother with either?
You’ve No degree? What kind of degree is that? Begorrah
Lorraine Courtney’s article: http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/rose-of-tralee-outdated-lorraine-courtney-2935105-Aug2016/
Louise O’Neill’s article: http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/columnists/louise-oneill/to-be-a-rose-was-to-have-made-it-in-life-416879.html
department of speculation 
And by a quirk of serendipity, as I read your post, Meg Ryan was enacting That scene on the TV. There is nothing which perpetuates the divides – any divide – more than the dismissive, “Acht, it’s just a bit of fun”.
I must lighten up. I must lighten up. I must *craving flashback* light up.
Nope, I’m always intrigued by our Cultural differences. Some have pageants some have Eskimo lollies. We have men who wear skirts ;-D
Yiz lot have always been ahead of the curve. The way you have your own particular judicial system. Your own language. A beacon of sectarianism. It’s as though you’re willfully trying to keep people out, and I’m all for that. Especially from the confines of my bathroom.
I’ve sent you a message
Replied
Thanks. Not here yet, the carrier pigeon must have crashed!
the yahoo.com account
Numpty me! WP keeps telling me that change is pending!
that’s on other computer! can’t remember the details could you send to allyonthefarm@yahoo.co.uk
Doin that right now (right now…you have set my soul on fiiiree (name that tune)).
Dare I step into the feck it I don’t mind the Rose of Tralee contest? I grew up enjoying it, our family gathered trying to outdo each other as we dug holes in every contestant and their choice of outfit. I now never watch it nor do my daughters, not out of protest but I just can’t sit for six hours (maybe it just feels like that) listening to them. BTW I don’t sit listening to six hours or more of eurovision either!
However I’ve never felt degraded by it or incensed by it on behalf of my gender. I probably should but I don’t.
I also don’t go out of my mind with rage if a man doesn’t open a door for me, or if he does!
Here is more food for thought. How liberated are we as women when our top influencers are, in the majority, ex models and make up/fashion bloggers?
This got my dander up way more than the Rose ever would.
http://www.goss.ie/top-100-irish-influencers/
Influencers. What a loada shite. Another glossy media constructed self-serving term. I love when your dander is up.
You step in with wherever the notion takes ya, tric. I don’t spend much time thinking about it either; and I’d probably regard Daithi as the biggest pain in the hole about the show, but I do curl a lip at the commentary in the context of it showing off “successful” women. Apart from it being patronising guff, the class dimension is always over-looked, and with it being one of my pet obsessions, I’m obliged to exploit any opportunity to go off on one about it wherever I can. Even if it means constructing a tenuous link to the affair. A nauseating, fairly ranty incoherent link. But hey, that’s the only party piece I’ve got. Along with a dodgy Godfather impersonation. 🙂
I am more than familiar with this ridiculous bias and it’s not exclusive to the Rose. As the mother of three children who have gone through the leaving cert I’ve watched more than half their friends apply for courses they have no interest in, driven by points and peer pressure, including parental pressure. There is no place in Ireland for a school leaver who doesn’t wish to go to college. It’s everywhere.
Don’t even get me started about the crazy ‘my son’s a doctor’ mentality of the parents of cork children.
Oh dear I think I need a lie down!
Lean In. Sorry! I mean, lie down. Hehe. Just read that link to a post on the Leaving Cert you posted. V good. And a new blogger to boot. Yay. A fresh voice. We need them. Homogeneity FM is beginning to bore the tits off me.
I haven’t seen any of this year’s R of T but I’d agree that Daithi is the biggest pain in the hole about the show: when I arrived in ROI and first saw him I thought he’d had an unfortunate head injury or similar – the man is seriously cretinous. But I know from some of my post-menopausal Lady Administrator acquaintances that he’s the mature Irish (non)thinking-woman’s crumpet, along with that irritating curly-haired gardener, which must be what keeps him on the telly I suppose.
Hehe. Daithi is half goat, half gombeen. Diarmuid Gavin the gardener. My favourite story about him (I only know one) was told to me by a former colleague, Nancy*, who, coincidentally, was a peri-menopausal lady administrator. She had a real thing for him so used to follow him around various garden events and nob exhibits. At one such gathering, there was an almighty commotion when he was whisked off the stage by security. He re-appeared minutes later to apologise for the inconvenience – it transpired his stalker was spotted in the front row despite having been issued with a barring order after threatening his wife. Strangely, it wasn’t my work-mate. He attracts an interesting set of hormones.
*Her real name. This is the internet after all.
Ha ha so true about the demographic – I hope it isn’t something that happens automatically when the hormones really start to go haywire; I’d be hugely disappointed in myself.
I think the beautifully written inside observations of the Sydney rose have put any argument I may have put forward for the Rose to bed. No thank you… I’m out.
I’m sure you’ve read it but for the ten’s of thousands of your followers who haven’t I think she deserves to be read as widely as possible! http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/inside-the-rose-of-tralee-it-s-like-a-kate-middleton-impersonation-competition-1.2769478
Indeed. I’ve kept a copy.for my own girl to read in years to come. But at least another 3000 reads guaranteed here. Give or take.2999. Her insider observations were one thing, but I take my hat off to her eloquent perspective from an emigrant’s daughter point of view, and recognition of what her own mother and grandmother could have become had they been afforded an education 🙂
I think that’s why the article was so good. It was much more than a whinge at the festival or a one dimensional observation. Super writing.
Aye. From a woman with a depth of character. I’d go on a swearing session with her any aul time.
Having lived a while in Oz I’d say she might have a few new ones for you.
Gimme a few for this: http://www.festivalofwomen.ie hehehe
This is 100 times worse than the rose! I need a hormone check. Am I a woman at all?
No lie,tric, I spotted this yesterday & thought of you. Here’s yer sistah…
I know I’m ridiculously late to this party, but I was punching the air when the Sydney Rose got that through the Irish Times. I wouldn’t have a problem with the ROT if it didn’t spend so much time trying to pretend that it wasn’t what it is and it was what it wasn’t. Brain surgeons and Mass indeed. Compulsory Mass! And two thumbs up to Tric on the social influencer list brouhaha. Someone give them a dictionary – for more reasons than one.
It was a brilliant move. Last word to the people’s punk princess.
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