Skip to main content

What's Up With Girl Scouts?


I had the pleasure of taking a 9-year-old girl on her first rock climbing outing last weekend at the Hocking State Forest Rock Climbing and Rappelling Area. Then I had the – well, I wouldn’t say pleasure – of seeing her Junior Girl Scout Badge Book.

Flipping through the guide, I truly couldn’t believe some of what I saw. Did you know that young Girl Scouts can earn a badge for Looking Your Best? I am not making this up. The actual sew-on badge features a hairbrush, a comb and a mirror. Then here’s the badge big oil somehow managed to get into the Girl Scout curriculum: Oil Up. The badge is an oil derrick and it only goes downhill from there. (In fairness, the guide has a photo of a bear with spilled crude oil on her fur. She is definitely not looking her best.)

It’s not all bad, of course. There are plenty of standard badges – Swimming, Adventure Sports, Finding Your Way (compass skills) and Being My Best. There are even some progressive elements in the Girl Scout Badge Book – the Car Care badge is pretty cool and the photos feature racially diverse groups of Girl Scouts. My favorite badge? Stress Less – it’s got an image of a hammock on it!

Local Girl Scout councils have as much variation as the badge book. I’ve met Girl Scouts in the field while they were on camping, caving and rock climbing trips. On the other end, my local Girl Scout council one year had a – prepare yourself – mall lock-in. Instead of camping, they had the girls spend the night in the mall. (Those mothers must still have post traumatic stress disorder from the experience.)

What’s the take-home message from all of this? It’s simple: get involved. If you’re an outdoor adventurer, share your skills with young people, especially girls who sometimes don’t have the same access to these skills as boys. You can become a troop leader but you don’t even have to go that far. You can just take a girl out in the woods and teach her – and her friends, her sisters, her brothers – the skills that make outdoor adventure safe and fun.
Labels:

Comments

Training, training vanzari said…
I actually don't understand why boy scouts are separate from girl scouts....in theory they should learn the same things..
I was reading your article and i start to wonder if we are really in the 21st century..
September 22, 2009 at 8:36 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spark Birds - and Other Sparks

I was trolling through some of the regional outdoor blogs I post on getoutzine.com and came upon this one, from Bird Watcher's Digest: Spark Bird . It's a great concept: what bird sparked your interest in your lifelong pursuit of bird watching ? I knew my answer immediately. When I lived in Colorado, I spent many an afternoon cycling on the roads where the high plains meet the Rocky Mountains. I wasn't a birder at all. Nor was I much interested in the world around me except to play in it. But there was this beautiful - beautiful! - bird song that demanded I listen. Now I am demanding, or at least requesting, that you listen . Every time I jerked my helmeted head around to see where this song was coming from, a bird with a yellow breast with a big black V was sitting there on the fence. Could spotting it get any easier than that? I borrowed a friend's Peterson's Guide to Western birds and there it was - the Western meadowlark. Now I am only a backyard birder, but the...
10 comments
Read more

Gear a Year Later

The problem with gear reviews is that, with a brand new piece of gear, you can’t apply perhaps the most important test: the test of time. I’d like to re-review a selection of products from the last couple of years to report how they’ve fared: The Good MBT anti-shoe . After a year, this shoe looks practically new and still provides a supportive, comfortable stride for my (often aching) back. Worth the $250 you’ll have to kick down if you’re willing to take care of these shoes. Sierra Designs Spark 15 sleeping bag . I had sworn off Sierra Designs after purchasing a raincoat from the company that was neither waterproof nor breathable – in fact, it was the first thing to get soaked and the last thing to dry out – which I found out the hard way, hiking the Colorado Trail. But the Spark was the only 800-fill down bag I could find at the time of purchase, so I went for it. Turns out Sierra Designs knows what they’re doing with sleeping bags. This bag is so warm I’ve dubbed it The Furnace. ...
9 comments
Read more

What's in a Name?

Note: Material this entry refers to might offend. One of the small pleasures of rock climbing is coming across that perfect climb name – one that cleverly describes the route (Totally Clips, Handsome and Well Hung) or the experience you can expect to have on the climb (Just Say Yo to Jugs, Not on the First Date, Mid-Height Crisis) or just has a fun reference (Where’s the Beef and Where’s the Bolt, Jimi Cliff, etc.) One of the not-so-small displeasures is coming across the far too many misogynistic names of climbs. So what to do? I’ve begun renaming these climbs – I just cross out the old name in my book and my friends and I come up with a new name – and I invite you to join me. And be sure to tell other climbers, guidebook authors, publishers and especially the dudes who names these climbs that it’s not funny to name a climb that attempts to degrade half of the world’s population (although the name really reflects on the person who named it that). Funny is funny, even when it’s s...
4 comments
Read more