"A Colourful Crowning Ceremony": Images of Class, Gender, and Beauty in World War II-Era Canadian Communism

This article discusses beauty contests held by the Communist Party in Canadian British Columbia during World War II. It argues that the contests symbolized the Communist Party's viewpoint on the role of women in leftist movements and in society in general, but women and men in the party held contrasting ideas about what the pageants meant to the party. The men used women's bodies in pageants in order to promote and raise money for the party, while women did not view the pageants as related to beauty at all. Thorn concludes that leftist men and women had different ideas about what constituted beauty, and that these pageants can have radical goals. [JSTOR]