When you think about it, The Rose of Tralee festival really has no place in modern Ireland. A country that is self-consciously modern and feminist and in which newspaper columns lamenting the objectification of women are ten a penny nevertheless hosts, and remains surprisingly addicted to, what amounts to a lovely girls beauty pageant. It doesn’t really make sense, and one might have expected it to go on liberal Ireland’s bonfire of the heresies alongside mother and baby homes, the ban on condoms, and the marriage bar.
Nevertheless, it persists. And nevertheless, it retains a place in the hearts of people across the country.
Partly, I think, this is precisely because it is a lovely girls competition. Every human society ever constituted has recognised the particular allure and power of the young woman – a force so powerful and corrupting that in Islamic societies women are encouraged to cover themselves from head to foot lest the flash of a shapely ankle drive a man to madness. There is no force on earth that will prevent a decent section of society from sitting down to watch a parade of attractive young women. Partly too, I think, because women themselves are often eager participants in the judging – both official and unofficial – of such contests and make up a substantial part of the viewership.
Mainly, though, because we have learned to live with the Rose of Tralee by lying to ourselves about what it is.
There’s always a slight embarrassment in liberal Ireland about talking about the Rose of Tralee which necessitates lies to be told – and lies to be believed – about the nature of the festival. We will be told, for example, that it is in reality a celebration of the Irish diaspora and their achievements, in which case one wonders why fifty year old men who’ve made it big in business in Australia are excluded. We might be told in the alternative that it is a celebration of female achievement and progress, in which case one might wonder why so many of the participants seem to have the same broad body shape and share nicely symmetrical faces. Or we might be told that the whole thing is a feminist enterprise the core message of which is that beautiful women are more than merely beautiful, and that the festival allows us to meet and greet them as fully developed and rounded people with talents and skills – to which one might ask why a Harvard Graduate in Mathematics is routinely expected to deliver a poem from the stage.
The truth, I fear, is that the Rose of Tralee is what it always was, and what there’s really no harm in: a stage on which the people of Tralee and their viewers put the deeper concerns of the world to one side and sigh wistfully at the lamentable fact that their sons can’t seem to bring home a girl like that one.
I write about this because one of the broad tenets of conservatism is the notion that human nature is broadly unchanging over time. We may have different attitudes and concerns today, and access to vastly more technology and comfort, but the nature of a human being in 2024 is broadly identical to the nature of a human being four or five thousand years ago. We value, on a fundamental level, the same things. We seek the same base qualities in our partners and mates. We share the same admiration for beauty and athletic prowess in others. We are prone to the same lusts for food, and wealth, and riches. The context has changed, but human nature has not.
The Rose of Tralee was established in an era when attitudes in Ireland were very different, and when the competition could be presented more honestly as what it was and still is: A celebration of female fecundity and romantic desirability. Our attitudes have changed, but the value we place on both of those things at a very base level has not. The thing that has changed is that we now feel the need to cloak that value in different clothes.
This is the very reason why some, out of a frantic recognition of the “problem”, have tried to change the nature and image of the festival over the years: There was immense joy – (in fact, it was relief) – a few years ago when we had the first ever lesbian winner, precisely because, I think, the fact that the winner clearly was not chosen on the basis of her sexual attractiveness or availability to men. There will be a similar outpouring of joy in the event that we ever get a transgender victor. The celebration won’t be about the victor, per se, but about the sense of relief some feel in having something to point to – ironically enough – that says that the victor isn’t just a lovely girl. She’s different. Square that circle, if you can.
All of this is, of course, why progressives can never quite settle: Human nature cannot be changed, and you simply cannot abolish the desire for lovely girls any more than you can abolish greed or envy or lust or wrath. It is why so many irreligious people nevertheless seek out church weddings, funerals, and first communions, and why so many atheists nevertheless describe themselves as spiritual and profess to feel a sense of wonder and awe when they look at a sunset or the stars, even though they are looking at little more than light waves emitted by balls of gas in a vacuum. There’s a desire to change human nature that fails precisely because human nature is transcendant – humans will always embrace some form of religion, fall victim to their vices, and find a reason to celebrate and look at lovely girls.
We shouldn’t pretend that the Rose of Tralee is something it’s not – but we will, because it makes us feel a bit less embarrassed about it.