Low descended from pioneer stock in part and had outdoor interests. More than that, however, she had met and been influenced by Lord Baden Powell. We've already dealt with Powell in various posts about the Boy Scouts, so we'll forget that here, but it's interesting to note that at the very first, while the Boy Scouts were devoted to the manly, Christian, upbringing of boys, they didn't actually at first exclude girls It's just that their activities were not thought of as terribly feminine and camping, as a female pursuit, was not common. Still, there was enough interest on the part of girls (and presumably their parents) that a 1909 Boy Scout publication complained a bit on social restrictions imposed on girls and it made at least camping difficult for them, when it noted; "If a girl is not allowed to run, or even hurry, to swim, ride a bike, or
raise her arms above her head, how can she become a Scout?"
In spite of this girls did register with the very early British Boy Scouts at first, making our earlier comments regarding the all male Boy Scouts slightly, although only slightly, suspect. This came to an end in 1909 however when British newspaper commentary scandalized it. Lord Baden Powell therefore asked his sister, Agnes Baden-Powell, to form the companion organization for girls, which was formed as the Girl Guides.* The focus of the organization can, in some ways, be illustrated by an early book by the Baden Powells regarding them.
The Handbook for Girl Guides with its obvious British Empire focus. The uniform the Guide is depicted as wearing was in fact the one they wore and which some American Girl Scouts wore for a long time.
Well there I guess you have the organizations early days. And to some extent, depending upon where you are, all of these organizations are still around. There aren't Girl Guides in the US, but there are elsewhere. And the Camp Fire Girls are still around.
What you've perhaps also noticed is that the clothing designated for these organizations was. . well odd.
Girl Scouts building a fire while camping in 1912. Quite obviously, whatever the official uniform was, these girls were dressed up in a fashion resembling Indians, and had their hair braided for the same reason.
Indeed, in looking at photos of early Girl Scouts what becomes clear is that whatever the uniform was supposed to be, more often than not somebody decided to have no uniform at all (understandable) or to dress them up like Indians, which fit into a certain cultural thing going on at the time, but which is strange.
Very early Girl Scouts before their uniforms had really become fully standardized, learning to shoot.
Officially, at the very first, English Girl Guides wore a uniform that was militaristic in nature and based on the Boy Scouts, but with a skirt. The depicting on the book inserted above gives a really good illustration of that. The campaign hat yielded nearly immediately, however, to a different pattern, but it was still there. It always featured a skirt of some sort, however.
Early Girl Scout learning archery in the standard early uniform but wearing a Montana Peak type campaign hat.
Now, we already, as noted above, have a long post on
women and trousers. I'm not going to go back and redo all that here, but I'll note just from the onset that it isn't true that women didn't wear trouser at all up until some point in the mid 20th Century. That's baloney. But it is the case that in most cultures they didn't until starting in the late 19th Century. I went into that there.
Girl Scouts working in a garden, probably during World War One. Most of these girls have the early pattern campaign hat. Gardening was emphasized in American society during the Great War and both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts actively took it up.
Trousers are obviously better for camping, and I'd argue that they're better for everything, so it is odd to us to today to see camping girls wearing skirts. Indeed, in a modern context, it'd be completely absurd. But it wasn't so much the case at the time, and if you view the photographs we've put of women in service and quasi service during World War One, you'll find the exact some thing. Indeed, what you'll also find is that this is the point in time, the early 20th Century and late 19th Century, when trousers started coming in for women. Indeed, the Great War played a role in that, but due to factory work, not due to wartime field service. So again, you'd think that Girl Scout uniforms wouldn't have been so darned impractical looking. . . to our eyes.
A Washington D. C. Girl Scout troop gardening during World War One. One of these Scouts has departed from the uniform and is wearing a campaign hat.
More than a little of that was just cultural, and indeed all of these female youth organizations are a bit of an oddity for that reason as women and camping just wasn't a thing, and for real reasons. Without going into it in huge detail, camping fits into a male role that's on the hunting/fighting/fighting sliding scale that's embedded deep in the male genetic code and which Lord Baden Powell was trying to foster in a Christian sense. This is not to say, rather obviously, that women don't like to camp. Anyhow, as the article on women in trousers explores, women didn't usually wear trousers that much until this point in time, and it came on kind of slowly.
Girl Scouts selling war bonds with Alice (Roosevelt) Longworth, 1917. All the women's clothing in this photograph was set to be rapidly obsolete.
One thing that I didn't address there (as I'm not an expert on the topic and it didn't occur to me), however, and I'm not going to really address here either particularly in this context, is that women's undergarments and related stuff evolved a lot in this period of time as well and in a fashion that allowed women to wear pants every day. Enough said about that, but that's an aspect of this that is simply forgotten entirely. Female clothing featured fairly long skirts for a long time not because it was keeping women down, but because of various concerns that relate to biology and decency. Enough said on that.
Camping Girl Scouts, 1919.
But women's clothing was evolving in this period with lightening speed. Oddly, Girl Scout uniforms really didn't. It's weird.
Girl Scout in full uniform with outdoor gear in the 1920s. Here too this Scout has retained the M1911 type campaign hat.
Thankfully they did get over the Indian maiden thing, which was really silly. The first official uniform looked a lot like that of the English Girl Guides, and featured a homemade dark blue blouse and skirt with
sateen ties, felt campaign hats, and long black stockings. Ties were had entered women's clothing at the time and were pretty popular, although I'll note that they are one horrific item of male clothing that women were able to dump and not be afflicted with. It's interesting to note that the uniform was homemade, which shows right from the onset how the focus of the organization was different and at that time domestic.
Girl Scout leaders wore a different, not homemade, uniform of dark khaki, serge, or twill with a tailored shirt and a silk tie in a four-in-hand knot. Their uniform included a trefoil pin worn just below the knot of the tie which signified
the Girl Scouts Promise: "To serve God and your country, to help people
at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout law"^^^ which showed the focus of the organization and which leaned heavily on the focus of the Boy Scouts.
Girl Scouts marching in a Memorial Day parade, 1944.
Changing more rapidly than the Boy Scouts, but always with a seeming domestic focus, in the economically stretched 1930s the Girl Scouts introduced a very simple one piece cotton dress in light green. This introduced their distinctive color and also reflected a very real fashion change in female clothing. Simple dresses were now pretty common whereas in the 1910s and 1920s they were a bit more complicated and included more fabric. They also introduced the green beret which they've kept ever since. A Girl Scout of the 1930s would be pretty recognizable as a Girl Scout now, in fact, as the common mental preception of them was fixed at about that time. This changed again in the 1940s and a yellow tie was added, with the introduction of uniform that was a bit more elaborate and which I suspect was due to the poverty of the Great Depression being introduced. Also at this time a seperate unfiorm was created for hte junior organization, the Brownies, but I'm going to omit that discussion as, juast as with the Cub Scouts, I find it too dull.
Girl Scouts learning to knit, 1942.
Still the interesting thing here is that during the 1930s women's trouser really were coming in and very common. A lot of that is due to the introuction of much more practical undergarments I'm not going to discuss, but by the 1930s women were frequently wearing work and dress trousers. It's really strange that an organizaton that theoretically had an outdoor focus didn't go to them, or even have an official issue of them, but that tells you a lot. At the same point in time in which the Boy Scouts were abandoning their World War One Army type unform in favor of a World War Two type Army uniofrm, the Girl Scouts were sticking with dresses. The focus remained domestic.
Girl Scouts setting table, 1931.
And so it was in the 1950s and 60s as well. In the 50s a loose big green one piece dress was introduced and a version of it stuck through the 60s. The big green sash for merit badges came in. The beret stuck around. In the 70s, 80s and 90s this all remained true and versions of the earlier uniforms were around always with a green skirt of some sort and a sash. But by that time, as with the Boy Scouts, the practice had evolved to let girls wear just one item and that meant that they could wear something more practical. It wasn't until the 2000s, however, that there were official trousers.
Girl Scouts picking up trash in the Potomac, 1970s. I think this is likely a pretty good example of how Girl Scouts really dressed when outdoors, at least since the 1950s.
So, in posting all of this, as weird as it may sound, I realized that, well. . . I don't really know what the Girl Scouts are about. I don't know what they've ever been about.
I do know what the Boy Scouts are about because, . . . well maybe because I'm a guy and I was in the Boy Scouts for about 3.5 seconds and I'm otherwise just much more familiar with them. The Boy Scouts, even though I was never one of them for any appreciable amount of time, seem sort of an obvious organization to me, in context. As a mirror image of the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts strike me that way too, but they obviously actually aren't a mirror image of the Boy Scouts.
They did, sort of, start off that way. And the early photos of them I posted above really show that. But what about their texts?
Well, let's see what Load Baden Powell had to say in their 1919 manual:
"How did Scouting come to be used by girls?" That is what
I have been asked. Well, it was this way. In the beginning
I had used Scouting—that is, wood craft, handiness, and cheery
helpfulness—as a means for training young soldiers when
they first joined the army, to help them become handy, capable
men and able to hold their own with anyone instead of being
mere drilled machines.
You have read about the Wars in your country against
the Red Indians, of the gallantry of your soldiers against
the cunning of the Red Man, and what is more, of the pluck
of your women on those dangerous frontiers.
Well, we have had much the same sort of thing in South
Africa. Over and over again I have seen there the wonderful
bravery and resourcefulness of the women when the tribes of
Zulu or Matabeles have been out on the war path against the
white settlers.
In the Boer war a number of women volunteered to help
my forces as nurses or otherwise; they were full of pluck
and energy, but unfortunately they had never been trained
to do anything, and so with all the good-will in the world they
were of no use. I could not help feeling how splendid it
would be if one could only train them in peace time in the
same way one trained the young soldiers—that is, through
Scoutcraft.
I afterwards took to training boys in that way, but I had
not been long at it before the girls came along, and offered
to do the very thing I had hoped for, they wanted to take up
Scouting also.
They did not merely want to be imitators of the boys;
they wanted a line of their own.
So I gave them a smart blue uniform and the names of
"Guides" and my sister wrote an outline of the scheme. The
name Guide appealed to the British girls because the pick of
our frontier forces in India is the Corps of Guides. The term
cavalry or infantry hardly describes it since it is composed
of all-round handy men ready to take on any job in the
campaigning line and do it well.
Then too, a woman who can be a good and helpful comrade
to her brother or husband or son along the path of life is
really a guide to him.
The name Guide therefore just describes the members of
our sisterhood who besides being handy and ready for any
kind of duty are also a jolly happy family and likely to be
good, cheery comrades to their mankind.
The coming of the Great War gave the Girl Guides their
opportunity, and they quickly showed the value of their
training by undertaking a variety of duties which made them
valuable to their country in her time of need.
My wife, Lady Baden-Powell, was elected by the members
to be the Chief Guide, and under her the movement has gone
ahead at an amazing pace, spreading to most foreign countries.
It is thanks to Mrs. Juliette Low, of Savannah, that the
movement was successfully started in America, and though
the name Girl Scouts has there been used it is all part of the
same sisterhood, working to the same ends and living up to
the same Laws and Promise.
If all the branches continue to work together and become
better acquainted with each other as they continue to become
bigger it will mean not only a grand step for the sisterhood,
but what is more important it will be a real help toward
making the new League of Nations a living force.
How can that be? In this way:
If the women of the different nations are to a large extent
members of the same society and therefore in close touch and
sympathy with each other, although belonging to different
countries, they will make the League a real bond not merely
between the Governments, but between the Peoples themselves
and they will see to it that it means Peace and that we have
no more of War.
Not quite the same as the Boy Scouts, and indeed, sort of set focused against it in a way.
Well, the old post on their original merit badges shows a subtle difference. Consider:
At least as of 1919, their manual had a focus on domestic things, but it also had one on woodcraft. That seems to me to sort of define it. It was a mirror image of the Boy Scouts, without the implied martial air, and with a focus on domestic life that reflected social views regarding a woman's role in the world. It wasn't sexist in that fashion, and indeed in some ways the concept of women outdoorsmen doing such things as hunting and fishing, etc., was fairly radical.
Over time, I think, it continued to have that focus and I think it still does today. Maybe its because I know less about it, but it seems to me that it's managed to stay truer to itself somehow. Which may be why when the Boy Scouts recently opened their doors to girls, the Girl Scouts sort of laughed under their breath and replied that they were the organization for girls. They always were.
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^^Okay, I realize that this was a different time, but having girls dress this way for an outdoor activity is and was darned near criminal. Particularly for girls in a boat. This is crazy.
*The sort of strange Englishness of the early Scouts, male and female, is epitomized by the Baden Powell family. We've dealt with Lord Baden Powell before, but it's interesting to note in this context that he did not marry until he was 55 years old, to a woman who was 23. There's been widespread speculation about his being a homosexual, but it seems largely unwarranted and the marriage genuine. Nonetheless a marriage that late in life to somebody so much younger is a bit unusual. They had three children.
Agnes Baden Powell had been engaged early in life but never married.
