Oh, gag me

[naomikritzer]

So I'm looking at the website for my health club, trying to make sense of their schedule of kid classes and not finding what I'm looking for, and I click through to look at their summer camps. (Yes, I realize it's a bit late in the year to be registering my kid for summer camp, but this website is confusing enough I wasn't convinced I wouldn't find what I was looking for in that section.)

One of there summer camp sessions is called "Boys Will be Boys." The description:

Boys Will Be Boys / Ages 6-12
Participants will enjoy a week of camp with other boys their age. We will play active sporting games and competitions. Participants will receive a daily snack and a T-shirt; however they need to bring a sack lunch with beverage each day.

I am momentarily taken aback that I don't see a "Girls Will Be Girls" session, and then realize (duh) it's all in alphabetical order, and scroll down. Here's what I find:

Girls Just Want to Have Fun Camp / Ages 6-12
Experience the meaning of girl power! Have fun all week long in activities that may include scrapbooking, swimming, self-defense, nail and hair styling and rock climbing. Each day will also cover a special topic like healthy eating or positive role models. Camp may feature special guests or a field trip. Participants will receive a daily snack and a T-shirt; however they need to bring a sack lunch with beverage each day.

Surely I'm not the only one out there who has a problem with boys getting "active sporting games" and girls getting "nail and hair styling" and "scrapbooking"? Yes, it does appear that the girls get active stuff as well (self-defense, rock climbing) but WTF? My kid came home from summer camp (Y camp, not LifeTime Fitness camp) so filthy I could barely see her freckles. As she damn well should. She's six years old; the last message she needs to get from a camp counselor is that she should be worrying about her nails.

This pretty much sums up my frustration with the Girl Scouts, for that matter. Boy Scouts get hiking and camping and backpacking merit badges. Girl Scouts do have camping badges -- but they also have merit badges for skin care and makeup application, and the sad fact is that it's a lot more work for the adult leadership to take them hiking and camping. (And from what I can tell, this has only gotten worse; parent volunteers are now supposed to go to mandatory training sessions before they can go along on camping trips. There's a logic to this, and as a parent I appreciate that they don't want to let Creepy McCreeperson tag along on my daughter's hypothetical camping trips, but dang, it's going to make it hard to round up enough parents to actually go camping ever.)

Comments

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing a Girl Scout schedule at some point in the past few years and being flabbergasted that it had things like "Pajama Party Sleepover! We'll do hair and nails and watch movies and talk about shopping!" or something similar.

Harrumph, in my day, we camped. And, um, sold a metric ton of bad-for-you cookies. I know that these days, it's a lot more difficult to take them camping, what with the restrictions. But even so... *sigh*

We'll just take Meg camping ourselves, I guess.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

It's worse than you think. The Girl Scouts have a *shopping* badge.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

That's really pretty horrific. Me, I'd sign up tLD for the Boys Will Be Boys class just out of spite.

[winterswitchery.livejournal.com]

That's nuts, I don't remember shopping badges and makeup when I was in the GS. I think the closest we got was like needlework and dancing.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Scrapbooking? Nail and hair styling? ::upchucks::

Sorry, if I'm going to send my kid to day camp, it won't be for the manicures.

[maevele.livejournal.com]

jesus fucking presley. A shopping badge. girl camping=manicures. wtbloodyscreamngf?

I'm just gonna take my kids to the fucking rainbow gathering for camping. might be dirty smelly hippies, but at least there will be no manicures.

[jiawen]

Haven't Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts pretty much always been about enforcing gender norms? It's pretty galling that a health club is doing the same things, though. (And it's galling that the Scouts do it, but that seems like it was already established.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Can girls join the Boy Scouts in the US? Scouts Canada has been letting the girls play with the boys for quite a while -- though, astonishingly enough, there have not been boys breaking down the doors to join the Girl Guides. (I think the Guides started to go downhill back in the 1980s when, amidst great hoopla, they launched new uniforms designed by Alfred Sung). I hadn't really planned on signing the kiddo up for either, but quite honestly I think if she asked my advice on the matter I'd probably steer her toward the Scouts ... or, at least, away from the Sparks, a new (within the last decade) pre-Brownie stage of the Guides whose uniform is a pink sweatshirt that says "I promise to share and be a friend".

[rowan-redbeard.livejournal.com]

Hardly. The Boys Scouts in the US make it pretty clear that you have to be a heterosexual male to be welcome in their midst. Christian also helps.

To be certain, the Boy Scouts do have badges for things like basket making, but on the other hand, those badges are pretty well looked down on for being "girly". Or, at least, they were twenty years ago when I was earning them and last paying any attention, and I guess I don't hold out much hope that they've changed.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Ah. I see. :P

[notthatedburke.livejournal.com]

Eh, I don't think the craft badges were looked down on in my troop. It was pretty typical to earn one when we went to scout camp in the summer. I mean....maybe basket making. But there's just something about basket making that makes it the target for ridicule everywhere, not just in scouts. (I'm not defending that, just stating my observation).

[squigsoup.livejournal.com]

Girl Scouts has a merit badge for MAKEUP?

Screw that, I'm signing her up for Camp Fire. If they ever freakin' call me back.

[writingjen.livejournal.com]

Hey now, I just started a Brownie troop, and the reason I did was because it wasn't all camping all the time anymore. Camping is fine, but who wants to learn tie knots all day long? So I don't know about "big girl" badges, but there are no shopping or makeup badges for Brownies. There are some traditional "girly" crafty things (sewing). There are three that are straight up science, two for computers, and one for math. There are several outdoorsy ones, and several of these have eco-themes ("Earth is our Home" is one). There are a lot of cultural ones ("Listening to the Past," "Citizen Near and Far" and yes, "Her Story").

I'm much happier with this than the way it was when I was a nerdy kid in Girl Scouts. I liked camping fine, but we went camping with my family, so GS wasn't a big deal to me, and I didn't stay with it. I would have loved to have been able to get a badge for learning sign language or reading about history. I like the idea of my daughter (7) getting a badge for whatever she likes (dinosaurs -- she wants to be a paleontologist). If sometimes it's cooking and sewing, fair enough; sometimes it's building a kite and going on a nature hike. Maybe my troop will be full of "girly girls," but they're coming into Brownies that way, and if little nerds like my daughter and her friends can broaden the others' interests, so much the better. Better yet, maybe it'll turn out that some of the girly girls like art or science as well as Hannah Montana...

One big reason why I support the Girl Scouts welcome any religion or ethnicity, and girls (as my daughter will) are permitted to change the "Girl Scout Promise" to substitute another word for "God." Here in the Bible Belt, that's HUGE.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Sewing and cooking is good (in combination with other things). Those are useful life skills. Actually, I suppose shopping is a useful life skill, too: if the boxes you have to tick off to earn your shopping badge are things like "Can explain what the symbols on the nutrient chart mean and why we need to pay attention to them"; "Prepares a meal plan, a grocery budget, and a shopping list for your family for one week"; "Prepares and sticks to a budget for personal pocket money for one month"; "Visits at least 3 grocery stores and prepares a chart comparing the prices of at least 10 staple food items"; "Researches at least 1 major purchase for home or school (e.g., electronics, home furnishings, appliances, vehicles), presents a comparison of prices, consumer ratings, shipping costs, and features, and explains what factors must be considered in making a purchasing decision"; "Discusses the issue of consumer advertising and explains the difference between information presented by a neutral source (e.g., BBB) and information presented by the company that manufactures or sells the product" -- that would be a useful badge.

When I was in Brownies and Guides we had badges for camping-related stuff (camp skills, orienteering, skating, skiing, winter camping, snowshoeing, identifying flora, etc.) but also for sign language, art, music, cooking, sewing, history, various crafty things, sports, science, astronomy ... lots of stuff (it was a long time ago, and I don't exactly remember). Also, admittedly, flower arranging and hospitality. Somehow, though, the older we got the more girly everyone seemed to be, and the less I enjoyed it -- 13-year-olds don't need another place to be girly, y'know?

[naomikritzer]

"Prepares a meal plan, a grocery budget, and a shopping list for your family for one week";

That was in the homemaking merit badge. They called it something else, but that's basically what it was. You also had to do the laundry for two weeks. I earned that one! (And then did no more laundry until college, at which point I needed instructions again on warm vs. cold water wash and why I was supposed to sort the light and dark clothes.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Your memory of the 1980s is obviously less hazy than mine :P

I still remember the finger-spelling I learned for my Signalling badge in Brownies, though! Except I always mix up R and X.

[jimlawrence.livejournal.com]

Boy Scouts is coed in the older group -- in theory -- The scout troup my youngest joined had Venture Scouts for the 14 and over age group and when he hit 14 he moved up into that group (when I was that age they had Explorer Scouts for the older kids) -- I said "in theory" because they made a point that the Venture Scouts were open to girls as well as boys but in actual practice no girls belonged, at least not in his troop.