OPINION: The Rose of Tralee isn't outdated - its critics are just anti-feminist

As autumn draws nigh, the schools are reopening, the evenings are shorter, and the curtain has been drawn on another Rose of Tralee festival. Now in its seventh decade, the Rose of Tralee has long been woven into the fabric of Irish culture and has well earned its place as a stalwart of Irish tradition.

It generates up to €20 million for the Irish economy annually, holds its place in RTÉ's top 10 most watched programmes every year, receives thousands of applications from women all over the world to take part, and on top of it all, an average of 200,000 people make the journey to Kerry each year to attend the festival in person.

The Rose of Tralee is a thriving entity which oozes social, economic, and cultural value, not to mention the sheer enjoyment it brings. Yet, every single year without fail, the same stale, overused, unoriginal question is pulled out of the hat by media outlets all over Ireland: “Is the Rose of Tralee outdated?”

As a young woman from West Limerick, whose summers consisted of loading up into a mobile home in Ballyheige and only coming home for camogie training and matches, the Rose of Tralee was the crown jewel of our Kerry summers.

As a little girl, the Roses were nothing short of real life princesses to me. Their manner, their dresses, their Sash's, it was as if someone had reached into a Disney film and brought the characters out onto the streets of Tralee. As a teenager, I looked up to them fiercely. They were everything I wanted to be when I grew up, educated, articulate, kind, generous, and great craic. Now, as an adult, they are the type of women I’d like the little ones in my life to be exposed to. Strong women who put themselves out there, who carry a sense of sisterhood with them, who raise the people around them instead of knocking them down, pillars of their community who are actively trying to make a difference.

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My argument is, and always will be, that unless you have attended the festival in person , even for as little as an hour, then you don’t have enough information to conclude that it is outdated. To observe the festival is to understand that the Rose of Tralee is a beacon of light, hope, and joy for all who experience it. The families who so proudly tell anyone who will listen, “My daughter’s a Rose.” The little girls running around the town with scrapbooks of the Roses’ profiles, searching for autographs from their heroes. The business owners whose enterprises thrive during the week of festivities. And everyone else in between.

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The Rose of Tralee has always held up a mirror to where we are as a society at any given moment. This year, for example, we saw the Toronto Rose discuss how she regulates her autism symptoms. The Limerick Rose spoke about the workshops she runs to help women take control of their finances and their personal lives. And let’s not forget the overall winner, 20-year-old Katelyn Cummins, an apprentice electrician from Laois, a career that would have been unthinkable for a woman even a few years ago, never mind one showcased proudly on national TV.

As a journalist and someone who genuinely enjoys the festival, it quite irks me that, year in and year out, the media can’t come up with a different question beyond “Is the festival outdated?” or “Is there a place for it in 2025?” In my opinion, the only thing outdated are those questions. I cannot understand why the same line is recycled time after time, especially when the media are handed new material every single year. The Rose of Tralee completely resets annually with a brand new set of contestants. The festival itself evolves continuously, with new adjustments, rule changes to make it more inclusive, new hosts, new venues, new judges, and more.

To say the Rose of Tralee is outdated is to insult every single person who takes part, every person who returns to bask in the magic of the festival, every child who looks up at the Roses, and every household who treasures the annual tradition of sitting down in front of the telly to watch the show.

The festival has often been described as anti-feminist or degrading to women. But I would argue that the real anti-feminism at play here is from the begrudgers who want to see the Rose of Tralee scrapped. Because by doing that, you are eliminating a future woman’s choice to take part. And surely, removing the option of "choice" from woman's decision has to be the most anti- feminist action of all.

So as far as I'm concerned, I hope the festival prospers for another 70 years and continues to showcase the epitome of what it means to be a modern Irish women.