Justine McCarthy: It’s time for RTÉ to pull the plug on the Rose of Tralee

When you know you’re on the losing side of a disagreement, dream up a distraction. That seems to be RTÉ’s ploy as it prepares to foist one of the most antiquated staples of the annual schedule upon its long-suffering audience.

Second only to this summer’s weather forecast, the Rose of Tralee contest has to be the most depressing thing on television. This year’s deluge of fetching young “ladies” is coming to our screens again next week.

According to the pre-publicity, the latest lovely girls contest will roll out its first married woman contestant. How thoroughly Modern Millie of it, in this third decade of the 21st century. It seems like only the other day that the first woman to have given birth joined the line-up.

The next thing will be a woman wearing slacks. Before we know it, there’ll be women capable of removing their own shoes. Just don’t hold your breath for a contestant with menopausal flushes or, worse, one who is a man.

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Another novelty this year is the introduction of a co-host alongside the hardy annual Dáithí Ó Sé. Kathryn Thomas will be the first woman who is not a Rose to grace the competition stage in the pageant’s 64-year history. In the promo for the two-night yawn-a-thon, the Operation Transformation presenter is groomed all femme fatale-style in a slinky black dress with hair slicker than Uma Thurman’s in Kill Bill.

A whack on the head with a heavy instrument couldn’t hammer home the message any harder that the Rose organisers are giving edgy, modern woman a tokenistic outing in an attempt to extend the longevity of the televised event.

Not even Queen Meadhbh driving her ex’s prize bull through the Dome could conceal the fact that the Rose of Tralee is sexist, antediluvian and way past its sell-by date. The kindest thing RTÉ could do is to pull the plug on it and put it and us out of our misery.

The excuse that it’s not a beauty contest but a personality contest is as transparent as Donald Trump’s lies. The measure by which the contestants are judged is that they must be as “lovely and fair” as the creature celebrated in the song. Have you ever seen an unattractive-looking Rose winner? Don’t men have personalities too? And where’s the eye-candy for us women in the audience?

The organisers even round up 32 darling little girls, called Rose Buds, to partner the contestants. What does that tell little girls about their role in life? What does it tell little boys?

The contest is a spectacle, and women of a certain youthfulness – under 30 according to the rules – and standard of good looks form its centrepiece. There could hardly be a clearer definition of objectification.

Undoubtedly, the contest does have its charm. What’s not to like about young people expressing their love for their parents, their grandparents, their countries, their counties, their roots, their pets and Uncle Tom Cobley and all?

Sometimes, a contestant will sing something evocative with the voice of a nightingale and another will dance like Jean Butler, but in her debs dress, like it was 1994. The escorts will give their Rose companions boxes of chocolates. Emigrant mammies and daddies will dab the tears of pride on their cheeks. Tourism Ireland and the merchants of Tralee will weep with pleasure at all those euro-spending visitors from the diaspora descending on the Kingdom from Arizona, Ottawa, Texas, Melbourne and Toronto.

The Rose contest is part of a psychology that persists in the modern Ireland that likes to applaud itself for its progressiveness. It springs from a stubborn unconscious bias that, no matter how far we move forward and no matter how many women might become the chief justice or the leader of the Opposition or the secretary general of the Department of Justice, the woman of the species is still the fairer sex.

This bias has a field day every summer with “ladies” days at such events as the Galway Races and the Dublin Horse Show. Tired of looking at the horses? Take a gander at the lovely ladies in their hats and heels so high they have to soak their feet in ice to wear them, bless their little hearts.

The word “ladies” is full of judgment. The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines “lady” as a “woman (used as a polite or old-fashioned reference); a woman of superior social position, especially one of noble birth; a courteous, decorous or genteel woman”. “Gentleman” is a “polite or formal” word for man; of “good social position, especially one of wealth and leisure”.

With their enormous wealth and leisure, surely male soccer stars qualify as “gentlemen” but nobody would dare describe their sport as “gentlemen’s football”. Why then does the GAA insist on calling the women’s Gaelic game “ladies’ football”? It’s as if the word “woman” gets stuck in some men’s throats, just as the word “girls” used to until they finally accepted that calling women fit for jury service and to vote “the girls” was plain silly. So now they call them “the ladies”.

Women who complain about these things are accused of nitpicking and being killjoys or not much to look at themselves; the latter being the biggest, fattest mortal sin a woman can commit. As Auberon Waugh said: “Women who complain of sexual harassment are, more often than not, revoltingly ugly.” And as Winston Churchill reminded the woman who reproved him for being drunk, she was ugly but tomorrow he would be sober.

Who can blame the young Rose contestants for wanting to take part in a competition that will boost their confidence and create happy memories? Some of them might even make lasting friendships. It is not the Roses who are at fault; it is the concept. RTÉ knows it, as it did when it eventually scrapped the Housewife of the Year awards from the schedule.

Pull the plug on the Roses, Montrose. If you can’t manage to disentangle it from the bottle trap, I know a plumber who says she’s free next week.