Searching for 'Miss Civil Service' and 'Mr. Civil Service': Gender anxiety, beauty contests and fruit machines in the Canadian Civil Service, 1950-1973

摘要

Between 1950 and 1973, the Recreational Association (RA) organized the "Night of Stars" where 'Miss Civil Service' was crowned. Meanwhile, the Security Panel, a intergovernmental committee established to investigate possible espionage activities and maintain national security in Canada, established in conjunction with the RCMP, a surveillance net in the civil service aimed at 'detecting' and interrogating homosexuals. This thesis argues that although the anti-homosexual security campaigns (1959-1969) and the civil service beauty contests were organized and 'managed' by two distinct governmental institutions, placed in the context of the gender anxieties of the Cold War Ottawa period, these two seemingly unrelated events in the history of the federal civil service serve to illustrate how notions of 'proper' gender and sexual codes were defined, defended and maintained.;The civil service beauty contests and the ideals of beauty, femininity and female (hetero)sexuality that it perpetuated, legitimized the segregation of female government workers in the lower levels of the job hierarchy. Yet, the "Miss Civil Service" title was hotly contested not only for the obvious reason of being perceived as the 'ideal government girl' but also for the material advantages that it brought. The antigay/lesbian security regime and the detection 'machine' that was created by prominent local psychologists, on the other hand, were attempts to purge from the civil service ranks government workers who did not conform to traditional gender and sexual codes on the premise that they posed a threat to national security. This thesis explores these two methods of constructing gender and sexuality in historical context.