This dissertation examines how the Women’s Army Corps in its last two decades of existence mobilized postwar American gender norms to protect its existence and garner the approval of the American public. The WAC accomplished this by employing what I call the “WAC ideal.” The WAC ideal was a standard that recruits had to meet in order to enlist, but it was also a culture perpetuated by the Women’s Army Corps. According to the WAC ideal, the typical women within its ranks were white, heterosexual, and feminine. They behaved according to middle class social norms. They were the “girls next door” in the American postwar imagination. The Women’s Army Corps promoted this ideal to the American culture through pageants and recruitment literature. It indoctrinated its ideal through the curriculum design of its basic training. And yet, not all women who served in the Corps met the WAC ideal. African American women and queer women also served along their white counterparts. African American women utilized methods of protest, including mutiny, to have their voices heard about discriminatory practices in the WAC. Women who did not cleanly fit into the normative view of heterosexuality argued they deserved a place in the WAC, and when thwarted and dismissed, sued the Army. These two groups exposed the oppressiveness of the WAC ideal as well as took advantage of its vulnerabilities. The WAC ideal protected some of its soldiers while marginalizing others all in the efforts to hold onto its legitimacy in the American postwar military.