As a little girl, I always enjoyed watching the Miss America Pageant: the gowns, the bathing suits, the (sometimes dubious) talent, the (sometimes ridiculous) questions, and – of course – Bert Parks warbling “There she is, Miss America. There she is, your ideal.”
I never quite bought into Miss America being my ideal. After all, it was rare when a young woman from New England made it into the finalists. Or even won Miss Congeniality. (Okay, no New Englander was ever going to win that one.)
Even though I was no longer watching pageants by this point, we did have Carol Ann Kennedy, Miss Massachusetts of 1966, who made it into the Top Ten. Not only was she from Worcester, she was from my parish. I didn’t know her. She was older. She was a pub. (I.e., someone who went to public school.) She didn’t live in my immediate ‘hood. But there was a small connection (other than one time I saw her flying by in a white convertible, heading somewhere wearing her sash and tiara).
When I was in fifth grade, my class’ act in the school Christmas Pageant was singing “Christmas in Killarney” while the short, cute girls in the class – I was neither – did an Irish step dance. The girls were handpicked by Sister Saint Wilhelmina, and as she was my arch-enemy, I wouldn’t have gotten picked even if I had been short and cute.
Anyway, Sister Saint Wilhelmina taught Carol Ann Kennedy in her catechism class, which Catholic pubs had to attend until they were confirmed. And it was Carol Ann Kennedy – the future Miss Massachusetts, the future Top Ten Miss America candidate – who instructed the short cute girls in Irish step dance.
As I said, by the time Carol Ann Kennedy had her star turn, I had pretty much figured out why New England girls were generally shunned in national pageants. We just weren’t geared up to produce pageant winners. We didn’t have the infrastructure or the interest to groom girls from toddler-hood ‘til their early twenties so that they could go on to win.
There she is, Miss America.
There she is, your ideal
The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty can come true in Atlantic City.
For she may turn out to be the Queen of femininity.
The Rose of Tralee International Festival, which for 60 years now has crowned a Rose of Tralee also has a theme song, the sappy eponymous “Rose of Tralee.”
I’ll spare you the full lyrics, but the crooner tells us that it wasn’t just Mary, the rose of Tralee’s, beauty that won his heart. It ‘twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning.”
And, in this spirit, the Rose of Tralee is chosen. But:
It’s not a beauty pageant. Also, it’s not a competition.
Then things get complicated. Because to the uninitiated, the event, held this year in late August, sure looks like a beauty pageant, which is, by definition, competitive. The festival begins with 32 roses, as the women are called, and ends after six hours of live television spread across two nights, with close to 700,000 viewers in 61 countries. (Source: NY Times)
The 32 roses are interviewed on stage. They wear gowns. They have talent. Some go the conventional route, but this year, the Rose of Meath (a County in Ireland) deadlifted “220 pounds on a barbell while wearing a red, full-length gown.”
Alright!
The festival was originally established – and continues to run – to encourage tourism to Tralee, a not much of anything town in County Kerry. (I’ve been through but not to.)
And it pretty much works. The town’s population of 24,000 doubles during the festival.
The roses themselves come from all over: counties in Ireland, cities and states in the US (including – no surprise here, Boston, New York, and Chicago), and farther afield (Australia, Abu Dhabi). You just have to have some Irish ancestral connection to take part. (And be between 18 and 29 and single.)
Part of what makes this event so quintessentially Irish is the premium everyone here places on humility, which includes, among its many forms, a disdain for show offs and brazen ambition. This may be one of the few international competitions where an essential quality is a seemingly authentic indifference to victory.
My kind of pageant!
The contest is also wagered on quite extensively.
“Oh, they’ll bet on two flies walking up a wall around here,” said the woman behind the counter at the local Ladbrokes, a London-based betting chain, the day before the first broadcast. “The grannies come by and put a fiver on their favorite rose.”
There are odds posted for each of the roses. The oddsmakers had Limerick’s Sinead Flanagan as the second most likely to win. But she won it all. Sinead is a pretty traditional choice: a homegrown, all Irish colleen. Last year’s winner was African-Irish, with a father from Zambia.
Maybe next year I’ll tune in. As for Miss America, nah. Even if they no longer tout the winner as the “Queen of Femininity.” (And I used to wonder why women from New England never won…
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A pink pink slip rose to my sister Kathleen – a rose of Worcester – for pointing this story my way.
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