The Thorn In The Rose of Tralee - Women's Rights, Abortion, Class?

As an Irish citizen, born and bred in the Emerald Isles, it has become a right of passage to watch the Rose of Tralee for two nights in August, every single summer.
We've all been there. Running to get to the telly for half past nine, with your PJ's and some chocolate with all the girls in the house.
As children we idolise these women, we ogle the dresses, we watch how the jewellery gleams in the light and try to retain how they did their makeup so we can copy them later on. The mothers say how lovely the girls are for their volunteer work in Africa and how they have lovely singing voices.



But let's dissect this for a moment, shall we?
All of these women are basically the same. They all have, or are in the middle of, degrees. They either play sports or have gone abroad to do charity work. And they probably work in one of the following fields : Science, medicine, TV, law or teaching.

Not to mention it must cost an arm and a leg to get into the competition. I mean, you've got to buy so many outfits, plus pay for flights to Ireland, etc etc. Not to mention the fact that lots of these women have degrees at undergraduate level and above. If they can afford to do everything they do, then they must be middle class, or borrowing a lot of money. And even though one of the rules states that you must have Irish blood, they are all white. And I don't buy that as an excuse when talking about how all contestants are white. I mean, Phil Lynott wasn't white AND he was Irish!  So why can't we have a nice woman from India or Pakistan? Can we have a woman with both Irish and Chinese heritage, please?

So let's just imagine another form of Rose of Tralee, just for one second.

Imagine a pageant (because let's face it, it's what it is), where not all contestants have degrees. Where some of them grew up on benefits, or in single-parent families, or on council estates. Imagine a woman who has just worked in retail all her life, but has overcome other life problems. For a festival celebrating women, let's discuss women's issues! We can't just look at them for their appearance! They should be talking about ending the tampon tax and continuing the work of that lovely 2016 Australian Rose who spoke of Repealing the 8th Amendment on Ireland's abortion laws.

I want to see women who have overcome alcoholism, or a woman who works in construction, or the classic hairdresser. I want to see a female undertaker! I want to see a woman with dyslexia or some form of learning difficulty and hear about how she has been succeeding in life and what she had to do to overcome her life barriers. I want to see women of colour, who can give us a new perspective at the Rose of Tralee. I want to see women who have overcome REAL adversity. Women who are missing limbs, or who have birth marks, women who have been in accidents or have had life changing things happen to them.

Apart from the controversy and debate around the Rose who mentioned abortion rights, I did manage to see a subtle shift to diverse Roses. These Roses had tattoos and facial piercings, one was a heavy set girl, and another had lost a tonne of weight. It was lovely to see a woman look so proud of herself after winning a battle that so many men and women deal with every day! This needs to continue, but it also needs to progress to allowing working class women join. The androgynous women, women with short hair, or unnaturally dyed coloured hair, they exist too you know!

The Rose of Tralee was once a competition only held for local women, farmer women, working class women.

And over 50 years later, this is what we have done. We have commercialised and gentrified it to bring it onto the international platform, and in the process began to put other women in the dark and become selective in those we want to place in front of our cameras, while all the time claiming that it is a festival which 'celebrates women'. I understand that we need women who can respectfully represent our country, but we also need to show the world that Ireland is trying to become a much more modern nation.
Events that celebrate women should be allowed to discuss women's issues like abortion, maternity leave, single mothers, sexism and the glass ceiling. Ireland prides itself on being modern, but it isn't really. We're still stuck in the 1960's. We have new fancy glass buildings in Dublin, but we aren't modern. And I fear that it may prevent many emigrants from ever returning to a country that gives a corpse more rights than a woman for nine months of her life. After all, permission needs to be gotten before harvesting organs, yet a pregnant woman can be denied an abortion just because one doctor says no. This actually endangers women. It will increase numbers of women getting secret abortions, which puts the woman's health at risk because let's face it, not all women can afford to go to England for an abortion.

So please RTE, tone it down on the skinny, white, unmarried (you're not allowed to be married, I checked the entry criteria), educated, well to do, perfect, intelligent, degree holding, long and natural hair coloured, volunteering abroad women please. And give the rest of them a go?

If you want to celebrate a woman, you have to allow her to talk about her real life victories that we all face, and in doing so, we must also allow them to discuss their problems and we should start with the biggest one this year, and talk about the debate around the 8th Amendment.

Let's inspire all women!