Queen of the Maple Leaf

Queen of the Maple Leaf reveals the role of beauty pageants in entrenching settler femininity and white heteropatriarchy at the heart of twentieth-century Canada.

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.

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.

Kate Korycki, Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies, Western Univerity:
[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.

Isabelle Leblanc:
[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.

Jane Nicholas, author of The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, the Body, and Commodities in the 1920s:

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.

Suzanne Lenon, Associate Professor, Women & Gender Studies, 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.

Maxine Craig, author of Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race:

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.