From Achievement to Happiness: Girl Scouting In Middle Tennessee, 1910s-1960s

From Achievement to Happiness: GiW Scouting In Middle Tennessee, 1910s-1960s Elisabeth Israels Perry Girl Scouting, a recreational and framing program for young girls, was founded in the United States in 1912. Its popularity rose steadüy. By 1963,2,835,633 girls were Girl Scouts—one out of every seven girls between the ages of seven and seventeen; 720,250 adults were also in the program, serving as troop leaders, board members, or administrators.1 The size of this membership—a total of over three and a half million people in 1963 alone—indicates that over the course of the twentieth century Girl Scouting has interpreted, transmitted, even shaped sodet/s ideals of womanhood for a significant proportion of the American population. Despite Girl Scouting's popularity, few historians of women have analyzed its influence on partidpants.2 In 1990, when Girl Scout offidals from the program in Middle Tennessee asked for my help in preparing an historical exhibit for their new headquarters, I resisted the topic. Since I assodated the program's annual cookie sale, patriotic exercises, wearing of uniforms and badges, and emphasis on female propriety with an uncritical conformity to prevailing norms for women, I did not see the topic as opening new scholarly territory. Despite my reluctance, the offidals persuaded me to accept the assignment; it was not long before my view of Girl Scouting's influence underwent revision. I approached the project through both Middle Tennessee and national materials. Although the original Girl Scout program had, in fart, conformed to many of the gender norms that prevaüed before the resurgence of American feminism in the 1960s, in some ways it had also broken new ground. The first Girl Scout handbook blended late Victorian values and norms with those assodated with the turn-of-the-century "new woman."3 Thus, at the same time as it inspired girls to be modest and chaste, the program also trained them to "achieve" along lines usually reserved for boys. Using an incentive system of badges, pins, and ranks, it helped girls become self-reHant, informed about the world, and capable of surviving chaUenges and emergendes. Further, although it stressed the overriding importance of women's perfecting of domestic skills in the private realm, it also encouraged women to express their talents and abilities in pubHc. In the early 1930s, however, reflecting the larger culture's drift away from the ideals and rhetoric of the first woman's movement,4 national Girl Scout administrators changed the focus of the program. From emphasizing "achievement," they shifted the program's focus toward "happiness." © 1993 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 5 No. 2 (Fall) 76 Journal of Women's History Fall Although achievement remained a goal, teaching girls what to do to be happy took priority over showing them how to reach high levels of proficiency and become self-reHant. Moreover, the program's early thematic emphasis on the pubHc expression of women's talents disappeared. The resulting program, which remained in place for many decades, offered participants more activities that were "fun" but demanded less of them in terms of concrete accomplishment. My dose study of local Middle Tennessee materials revealed, however , that despite the revisions of the 1930s not aU opportunities to "achieve" through Girl Scouting had vanished. Local materials highHghted two key ways in which such opportunities persisted. First, the personahties of individual troop leaders turned out to be a significant variable in local implementation and experience of the program. Given considerable independence to define their own activities, the individuals who led troops—their ambitions, depth of commitment, and conception of program goals—profoundly influenced the appHcation of Girl Scout prindples. Documents from Middle Tennessee show that highly motivated leaders, women for whom Girl Scouting was not just an opportunity for casual volunteer work with girls but a "philosophy of life," achieved results surprisingly in keeping with the program's original intent. Second, as a female-run organization, Girl Scouting offered local women opportunities for leadership rarely available to them in other agendes. Single women benefitted most from these opportunities, but married women as weU found important roles to play in the organization. Minority women, in particular...