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Through the early 20th century, America saw the rise of the new “modern” woman. Not only did they gain the right to vote, but they were more widely accepted into higher education and jobs outside the home, they wore clothes that were less feminine and modest, and expanded their voice in the literary sphere. Additionally, the production of cars, movies, and shopping centers led teenagers on more adventures outside of their parents’ view. Naturally, these changes in the world, like any, raised fears, especially from middle-class parents. So, youth organizations were formed as a method of control and protection of the youth. One example is that of summer camps, a way for children to reconnect with nature, create relationships with one another, and develop leadership skills. Summer camps for girls were a haven for parents to send their girls to restore a homemaking mindset and grow into patriotic pioneering women. Yet, the opportunity fell short for most lower-class and racially diverse families.
Protection and the “Pioneer Woman”
Summer camp was a controlled setting where media, activities, and attitudes could be monitored. While it was true that “being outside the walls of the home, the domestic domain of women and girls, became more acceptable,” women were still meant to return to the home at the end of the day (Thiel-Stern, 2014, pp. 61). Middle- and upper-class parents feared the world of consumerism and independence that was being pushed on their young girls and many summer camps advertised a return to natural connection, a return to the “pioneer woman.” As Susan Miller defines it in her thesis on girls’ camps, “the pioneer woman was courageous, self-reliant and patriotic, and inextricably linked to the natural world” (Miller, 2001, pp. 151). Some of the strategies to engage young children in these ideas were through dressing up as characters such as “Pagan goddesses and Indian maidens” since these were seen as “roles that embodied romantic, premodern femininity” (Paris, 2001, pp. 61). The phrase “premodern femininity” emphasizes the belief that young girls should be diverged from the emerging political and cultural perceptions of gender and femininity. Additionally, Camp Fire Girl’s, one of the most well-known girl’s camps of the time capitalized on “American Indian imagery” as symbols that connected young girls “to an imagined timeless feminine past of women tending the family and hearth fire” (Helgren, 2022, pp. 2). While there was still a level of modernity to this type of women, she swam and hiked, learned to be bold and a leader, and could be in a male-free environment, it was posed as a less threatening compromise. Parents could be assured their young girls were safe from worldly ideas, instead learning how to be resilient under the ideal of the American, caretaking, family, woman. As Camp Fire Girl’s maintained, they were “reenvision[ing] traditional domesticity for an age of consumerism, industrial production, and expanding women’s rights” (Helgren, 2022, pp. 2). Summer camp stories expanded past the boundaries of cabins in the woods and could be found in a realistic fiction series’ that were based mainly in Camp Fire Girls. M. Paul Holsinger finds that many authors who took on telling the story of Fire Girls, “made sure to stress homemaking skills for their fictional heroines” (Holsinger, 1987, pp. 86). While the media of the time incorporating young women’s voices in a new way was a big step forward, their lives still centered on the home.
Exploring Identity in a Safe Space
Despite efforts to emphasize traditional, patriarchal values, girls still expanded boundaries of identity in new ways, they were after all, teenagers. Inevitably, “camp ‘pretend’ also enabled girls to take on bolder parts,” which involved cross dressing and identifying as men and boys “in order to play more adventurously” (Paris, 2001, pp. 61). This divergence from the norm implies that camp was a safe space where girls could act on their desires for greater independence and physical activity that was only allotted to boys at the time. At camp, girls did not have to suppress “masculine” traits the way they did in general society or in the home. There was also the question of sexuality and though segregation by sex seemed natural at the time, child studies began to find “adolescence as a time of heterosexual development and to acknowledge girls’ budding sexual desire, many camping proponents came to question the appropriateness of single-sex environments” (Paris, 2001, pp. 61). While they were able to manipulate some facets of childhood and exposure to the outside world, in a space without parents, girls were able to find unique aspects of themselves and their personalities. Camps that had trips into the true wilderness additionally provided girls the ability to discover “a complexity of genuine emotions that took the place of the self-doubt and petty vanities that plagued girls back in ‘civilization’” (Miller, 1991, pp. 207). In the hearts of the woods, girls growing up in the continuously expanding suburban and urban spaces found a new peace, solitude, and piece of themselves.
New Roles and Community for Women
Another important piece to summer camp was the aspect of leadership and role models. Adolescence is a time of learning from observation and understanding one’s own potential through viewing the older individuals surrounding oneself. For many girls in the early 20th century, the older women in their lives were their mothers and occasionally teachers, offering only a limited view of their potential careers and abilities. However, opportunities were developing, and their time became considered “one of the first generations of competitive female athletes,” women went to the Olympics, and their games and events were featured in media (Thiel-Stern, 2014, pp. 68). As women fought hard to be seen and represented in all fields, new, untraditional avenues became available to the young girls who looked up to them. At camps, their counselors and directors were strong women and to upper-class “daughters of ministers, doctors, or businessmen,” the role of camp director “offered attainable glamour” (Miranda, 1991, pp. 58). The market of career options was growing into positions that went beyond just care giving and teaching and dove into the administrative and directorial fields, where women were only just beginning to dip their toes into. The variety of ages at summer camp gave girls markers to achieve and a coming-of-age experience to strive for through watching those just a couple of years older than themselves. They admired those older than them and aspired to reach the milestones that lay ahead because “to be a senior or counselor was to exist on another plane altogether” (Paris, 2001, pp. 65). Not only did they represent what one’s future could look like, but they served as an older sister like figure that could provide confidence and privacy in conversations surrounding more taboo topics such as menstruation or romantic feelings.
Minority Opportunities
The preservation of the pioneer woman and middle-class childhood at camps was further compounded by fears and discomfort surrounding growing immigrant populations. Miller describes this movement and phenomenon as “native white Americans recalling a mythic national heritage rooted in Jeffersonian yeoman farmers and fearless wilderness scout” (Miller, 2001, 157). Despite immigrant populations being made up of a range of cultures and ethnicities, Camp Fire Girls programming looked at immigrant children as white and “trained them and their families to adopt the white, middle-class gender system” (Helgren, 2022, pp. 2). Summer camp for non-white children was just another form of assimilation into an idealized image that could be seen at varying levels in the playground movement and Indian boarding schools as well. When it came to young girls of color, they “had far fewer camping opportunities than did white children of any ethnic group” (Paris, 2001, pp. 58). When integration did begin around the 1940s, African American Scouts “attended day camps with white girls, but almost none attended integrated overnight camps, communal spaces of greater intimacy” (Paris, 2001, pp. 59). As with most civil rights advancements, the integration of girl’s camps was a slow process that required baby steps in order to overcome the discrimination that plagued the country. In terms of socio-economic status, many summer camps were expensive and elite but some programs such as Life Camps or even the Girl Scouts were aimed at middle- and lower-class citizens. Yet, it’s important to note that despite this “the leaders remained women from elite family backgrounds” (Miranda, 1991, pp. 49). It would be hard for directors and leaders to cultivate a space of understanding and growth for children with whom they had no idea how to empathize with and relate to.
Conclusion
Summer camps, homes away from homes, have a complex place in American society and are still developing in their purpose and equality of opportunity today. However, their beginnings offer great insight into how childhood, especially that of young women, and the values of a blooming American society were forming. The desire to return to “what once was” strengthened each day technology and consumerism advanced, resulting in the powerful drive toward youth organizations and the protections they may provide.