Overview

As modern versions of the settler nation took root in twentieth-century Canada, beauty emerged as a business. But beauty pageants were more than just frivolous spectacles. Queen of the Maple Leaf deftly uncovers how colonial power operated within the pageant circuit. Patrizia Gentile examines the interplay between local or community-based pageants and provincial or national ones. Contests such as Miss War Worker and Miss Civil Service often functioned as stepping stones to larger competitions. At all levels, pageants exemplified codes of femininity, class, sexuality, and race that shaped the narratives of the settler nation. A union-organized pageant such as Queen of the Dressmakers, for example, might uplift working-class women, but immigrant women need not apply. Queen of the Maple Leaf demonstrates how these contests connected female bodies to respectable, wholesome, middle-class femininity, locating their longevity squarely within their capacity to reassert the white heteropatriarchy at the heart of settler societies.

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9780774864138

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Reviews

Patrizia Gentile has written the most comprehensive critical study of Canadian beauty contests that exists. The material on workplace beauty contests and the involvement of unions is especially interesting and original.--Maxine Craig, author of Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race In this analytically nimble and compellingly argued book, Patrizia Gentile makes a powerful argument for understanding beauty contests as reflective of and contributing to the shaping of white settler society. This is a timely and exciting contribution to Canadian history and cultural studies.--Jane Nicholas, author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, the Body, and Commodities in the 1920s Patrizia Gentile has written the most comprehensive critical study of Canadian beauty contests that exists. The material on workplace beauty contests and the involvement of unions is especially interesting and original. --Maxine Craig, author of Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race In this analytically nimble and compellingly argued book, Patrizia Gentile makes a powerful argument for understanding beauty contests as reflective of and contributing to the shaping of white settler society. This is a timely and exciting contribution to Canadian history and cultural studies. --Jane Nicholas, author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, the Body, and Commodities in the 1920s Queen of the Maple Leaf investigates how power reproduces itself within the seemingly mundane, ordinary, or even 'fluffy' cultural practices. The beauty pageant can no longer be considered harmless fun. --Suzanne Lenon, University of Lethbridge Queen of the Maple Leaf investigates how power reproduces itself within the seemingly mundane, ordinary, or even 'fluffy' cultural practices. The beauty pageant can no longer be considered harmless fun. --Suzanne Lenon, University of Lethbridge

Patrizia Gentile has written the most comprehensive critical study of Canadian beauty contests that exists. The material on workplace beauty contests and the involvement of unions is especially interesting and original.--Maxine Craig, author of Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race Queen of the Maple Leaf investigates how power reproduces itself within the seemingly mundane, ordinary, or even 'fluffy' cultural practices. The beauty pageant can no longer be considered harmless fun. --Suzanne Lenon, University of Lethbridge Queen of the Maple Leaf investigates how power reproduces itself within the seemingly mundane, ordinary, or even 'fluffy' cultural practices. The beauty pageant can no longer be considered harmless fun. --Suzanne Lenon, University of Lethbridge In this analytically nimble and compellingly argued book, Patrizia Gentile makes a powerful argument for understanding beauty contests as reflective of and contributing to the shaping of white settler society. This is a timely and exciting contribution to Canadian history and cultural studies. --Jane Nicholas, author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, the Body, and Commodities in the 1920s Patrizia Gentile has written the most comprehensive critical study of Canadian beauty contests that exists. The material on workplace beauty contests and the involvement of unions is especially interesting and original. --Maxine Craig, author of Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race In this analytically nimble and compellingly argued book, Patrizia Gentile makes a powerful argument for understanding beauty contests as reflective of and contributing to the shaping of white settler society. This is a timely and exciting contribution to Canadian history and cultural studies.--Jane Nicholas, author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, the Body, and Commodities in the 1920s

[Queen of the Maple Leaf] is a seminal contribution to better understanding how histories of women’s bodies make for legitimate historiography of settler colonialism, truth regimes and power dynamics within Canada. -- Isabelle Leblanc * Canadian Journal of History * [Queen of the Maple Leaf ] will be of interest to all who study nation making in Canada as a process involving intersecting categories of subject positions. -- Kate Korycki, Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies, Western Univerity * University of Toronto Quarterly * Gentile’s compelling argument and sharp analysis of a diverse set of sources provide a rich examination of oft-trivialized beauty pageants. While Gentile hardly celebrates these events, she does allow room to consider women’s (uneven) agency. -- Laila Haidarali * Journal of the History of Sexuality *

Author Information

Patrizia Gentile is an associate professor in the Human Rights and Social Justice program and the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University. She is co-author with Gary Kinsman of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation; co-editor with Jane Nicholas of Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History; and co-editor with Gary Kinsman and L. Pauline Rankin of We Still Demand! Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles.

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