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Amy Erdman Farrell, "Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA" (UNC Press, 2025)
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Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell about her book titled Intrepid the Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2025. This book takes us deep into the history of the Girl Scout in the US and this is obviously a pretty impactful organization for women and girls who have been involved in it for decades now. And in the book we get to go all the way back to the beginning, through some pretty key decades and debates that obviously intersect with a lot of things happening in American history and politics as well. And Honestly, pretty much going all the way up to kind of where Girl Scouts are now. So there's a whole bunch of things that are covered in the book that we get to talk about. So. Amy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Very pleased to. Can you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Certainly. So I teach at Dickinson College, which is a small liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And my background is actually in American Studies and women's gender and sexuality studies, though I was really trained by historians, and my earlier books focused on Ms. Magazine, the first feminist commercial magazine in the United States. And then I switched. I moved. I transformed into thinking about body politics, and I wrote a history of fat stigma called Fat Shame. And when I finished that book, I was looking for something compelling to turn my attention to. And at Dickinson, we're really encouraged to do that as well. My colleagues have my back when it comes to that. And I was a Girl Scout myself. I grew up in the 1970s in elementary school, junior high and high school in northeastern Ohio. And I knew how important the organization had been to myself. And I was very curious to see what to really connect my own personal history with that larger history. What was this institution actually up to? I knew that there actually had been very little written about the Girl Scouts. Excuse me, there had been so much written about the Boy Scouts, but the Girl Scouts there were just a few scholars who had really touched on the Girl Scouts. And most of what had come out really was written by the Girl Scouts. So it was really kind of material championing the organization. So I started the project with just a set, really an open ended set of questions about what was how did this organization work within the project of the United States?
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's a very helpful background to the project and always interesting to kind of know what the big picture question is that starts off a research task like this. But of course, in investigating those big questions, we often end up with sort of smaller questions within it that direct the scope. Because obviously, taking on a history of any organization, especially one this big, is a big ask. So what sorts of other questions did you develop within this interest that have shaped the book?
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Yeah, that's a really good point. Because, in fact, because there had been so little really written about the organization, I often wished that I had a kind of definitive institutional history that I could rely on, and that really wasn't there, but that wasn't my interest in writing the book, I was, I was interested. These are still big questions, but I was interested in the ways that this organization navigated race and racial politics and I was interested in the ways that it navigated feminism. So when we think of the 20th century and the big movements of civil rights and feminist activism, we what, what stake did this organization have in those movements? How did it participate in those movements? How did it stop those movements? So when I approached the archives, the Girl Scouts of the usa at the time, their main archives was in New York City. It is mostly moved off site now. But I literally went with just very open ended questions, like I was interested in anything that would be connected to race and diversity, and those are big top. But I would just look for boxes that seem somehow connected to that or to issues of feminism. As I developed the project, I started to zero in on different areas where I was really thinking about that. Obviously the history, and it really was at, at the center of the struggle of the Girl Scouts in terms of race was the color line connected to African American girls, African American participation. But I was interested in, there was so much material on American Indian girls. There was almost nothing on girls in Japanese American incarceration camps. But through other scholars work, I was really able to pick up that Girl Scouts were in those camps and I wanted to see what was going on there. So I really followed that thread of thinking through a kind of reckoning, if you will, of what this organization had been doing in terms of race and feminism.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, and I think a whole bunch of the things you just mentioned there, obviously they come out in the book and I think we'll probably touch on at least some of them in our conversation. But in order to have that conversation about kind of the various things that the Girl Scouts do and don't do, do we need to have a better understanding, I think, of how, when and why they started, and very much I think in this case going beyond the sort of stories that are usually told by the organization itself. It turns out, you know, having this more analytical, historical lens that you bring to it gives us maybe a different answer to this question.
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way that you, you articulate that, Miranda, because I, I think sometimes readers who aren't necessarily scholars reading this book, and in fact my book, I really worked hard to make it accessible to non scholars, but deeply meaningful, hopefully to scholars as well. But those who are not scholars are sometimes surprised because I actually approach it primarily as what is the myth about the founding of the Girl Scouts? So the myth is that there is a woman by the name of Julia Gordon Lowe. And of course, this myth is based in fact as well. She learned of girl guiding from Robert Baden Powell in the UK and she brings that back to the United States. And it's really kind of a story of a formidable woman who on her own has this vision for girls and brings it back to the United States. So much of early parts of the book go into really analyzing that myth because it really works as a kind of founding father, founding mother myth, similar to myths of George Washington, for instance, in the United States. It works as a kind of story that bridges the divide between north and south, because her mother was Northern, wealthy woman from the north, her father was a slaveholder in the south, and she was born in Savannah, Georgia. So it becomes a kind of story of. Of. Of how the United States could combine despite these great differences over enslavement and. And over race. The reality is that's true that she started. That she started the Girl Scouts, but the reality is there were lots of different girls groups in the United States at the time. So this is 1912. That it was. Two things I want to point out. One is to remind us that she does bring this back with this kind of imperial mission. So she brings the idea of girl guiding back, but she's very much. She's very much an advocate for the Imperial project. But she. Instead of it being Great Britain that she's interested in, she's interested in the United States and a kind of friendly rivalry of how we can establish this organization and its tentacles throughout the world. But also there's lots of other girl. Girl groups in the United States at the time, even other girl groups that are called. That are called Girl Scouts. And she. She is. What she does have is an amazing ability to connect especially people who are in an elite world, financially and socially. And so she kind of bulldozes all those other groups and gets people who. Then the reality is Girl Scouting in the United States is created by so many different women who get themselves involved in this movement. But if we hear the popular story of it, we're only going to hear about Juliet Gordon Lowe's. The other thing that's interesting is many people in the United States are very confused about this because it is confusing in the United States, The Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the USA have always been two completely separate organizations. The Boy Scouts found themselves much more enamored and worked with an organization called Campfire, which had a focus that was much more domestic and Hearth oriented and seemed to be more appropriately feminine to the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts actually sued the Girl Scouts and particularly went after Julia Gordon Lowe and then after the organization in general after she died for using the word Scout because it was seen as making boys out to be sissies if girls were actually using that term and. And encouraging girls to ape boys. So I think in terms of the bigger story, Girl Scouts really relies on that myth of Julia Gordon Lowe. And the reality is that it's both an organization that is not as exceptional as it might seem as in there it was the progressive movement. There are lots of organizations being started and encouraged, focused on girls, but it's also more deeply embedded in projects of imperialism and really even roots, family roots of enslavement that don't get discussed at all.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I think this theme of what does and doesn't get discussed is a really interesting one to pursue, not just in the story of the particular founding, but kind of even in the early years as the movement develops. Because one thing you discuss in the book is that there's very much this idea of the intrepid girlhood that is talked about and constructed a lot in this time period, but these questions of feminism and race are not discussed, not just in the founding myth, but even as we go forward a bit. So can you tell us more about the. What is talked about and what isn't?
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, thank you for really highlighting. Because that concept of intrepid girl, I know it's in the title, but it might seem like it's just a catchy term, but it actually gets to the kind of crucial element of how. How ideas of girlhood are being constructed within the organization. Juliet Gordon Lowe and then all of these. The women who were really founding Girl Scouting were interested in girls having a bigger voice and a bigger stage, but they were not necessarily interested in suffrage. Necessarily, for instance, or they certainly weren't interested in a completely wide open tent welcoming everyone. So intrepid is really this kind of perspective that girls can be courageous and girls can be daring, but never to go too far. So you don't actually want to use the word feminism that actually is challenging an entire kind of social, cultural and economic system. It's sort of like making more space. Space, but within. But within a system that is not being fundamentally challenged. And also that intrepid girl is generally, especially originally is really defined as white. And the organization doesn't like to acknowledge that at all today. But the reality was that this kind of openness was really more was really something that was open to white girls. And in fact, there have been other scholars who have talked about, for instance, the idea of the tomboy, that that's available to girls who are really coded as very feminine to start with. But if you are coded as not feminine to start with, and that's especially true for girls of color who are not really recognized as having the space and rights of girlhood and of that femininity, that intrepidness is not really necessarily open to you.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
So does that mean that African American girls couldn't be Girl Scouts at all? Or they could be, but they weren't really represented in the discourse that was being constructed.
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
A little bit of both of those things, certainly within the discourse of these early decades, they were not being represented at all. The reality was, when Girl Scouts first started, sometimes people just started troops, so anyone could just go and start a troop. But when the organization, by the 1920s, really started to be more organized and have a process for how you could actually join the Girl Scouts, that's where the information about limiting African American membership, that we can start tracing that within the archive. There were a couple of policies that did that, and if you'll allow me, I'll talk about those too, Because I think we can then see how deeply racist systems can be in place, but cannot be necessarily acknowledged at the same time. So one of those was called the lone troop rule. So when Girl Scouts started, if a woman wanted to start a troop for girls in her community, say a young woman wanted to, she would write to the national headquarters and say, I want to do that. And if she were white, they would say, please just go forward, and that's wonderful. And she would start a loan troop.
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Marshall Poe
And.
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
And then when there were a number of loan troops in an area that would start to form what would be called a council or a larger group of Girl Scouts, there was actually a regulation within the Blue Book, which was their book of regulations, that said that loan troops were only of the white race. And that was an attempt to ensure that. That there was a real limit on African American membership. And that also anyone who. It meant that any black troops that got started were already going to be within white councils who would be able to determine whether or not they could actually become members. And that was the second rule, which was always a policy of deference to local rule. So what that would mean is, here's might be our national policy that Girl Scouts are open to everyone, but we defer to local rules. So it's sort of like our national Policy is it's open to everyone, but if you don't like to do that in your area, that's fine. So, I mean, it's not really a national policy, then. It's saying this is sort of. So they could rely on that national policy to look like there wasn't discrimination happening. But the reality was that in any locality, if that council or a troop wanted to discriminate, they could do that. What this meant on the ground for African American women especially, who wanted to start Girl Scouting for their own girls. And I'm often asked why would they want to? And I think there's a number of reasons for that. One is it was really connected to a kind of idea of Americanness and national identity. Sort of one of the benefits of citizenship, if you will. It was also a space where girls could be girls. And so I do think for a lot of African American women, when I looked at their materials, they really wanted a space where girls within their own community could actually have the benefits of being children and learning different things and learning different skills and having opportunities. So some of those women, excuse me, actually just started troops, even though they weren't allowed to do that. And what they had to get around then, though, was how they would find the paraphernalia that you need to actually have a Girl Scout troop. So the badges, the uniforms, the handbooks. And so many of those were actually sold in department stores or they would be sold by the council, actually. So if you weren't allowed in that department store because you were African American or you weren't allowed to be starting that troop, and the council would say no, they had to come up with other creative ways to get that material. And so they would often partner with another organization who would buy this stuff for them, maybe a local Red Cross chapter who was more amenable to this. Or they would actually send someone to a different city where they were able to buy. Buy the materials. And so the other thing I would say is that's interesting is there's so many photographs in the archive that show mixed groups or will show African American membership. And almost always when I was able to dig into that story, it's more complicated. Thus the title of complicated. It is not. It gets shown as evidence of inclusivity. But the reality is there's almost always a story there about some struggle or some that that wasn't quite the truth. For instance, like when the Julia Gordon Lowe Home birthplace, when there was an opening ceremony for it. One of the big pictures that we often see has white troops and black troops together. But the reality was they weren't allowed to go in there together. There was no place for African Americans to actually sleep in the area in terms of hotels. They closed the sleeping quarters so that there wasn't mixed troops actually sleeping in the house together. So I just mean that the evidence to me is also, is an interesting kind of thing, how the evidence gets pulled out to demonstrate certain kinds of things. But actually there's a different story there.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Right, and this goes back to what we were saying kind of earlier around the benefit of having this analytical, historical mindset looking at this, that you're not just kind of repeating myths that are already out there. You're going, well, actually, hang on a second, you know, what is and isn't there in the archive and why? So that's definitely helpful to understand the ways in which African American girls were and were not sort of allowed to be part of all of this. The other group I'd love to pick up you mentioned a little bit earlier is Native American Girls, because maybe it's just me, but I was sort of not particularly surprised to read the section that it was more complicated than it sounds to deal with these issues of racial segregation when it comes to African Americans. Given obviously the history of what happens in the US at this point in all sorts of societies. I wasn't really expecting the Girl Scouts to have much to do with Native American affairs. And yet they do have things involved with it and in fact, like pretty heavily involved. So why and how were the Girl Scouts as an organization involved, not even with just like individual groups, but like the actual sort of imperial policies of Native American affairs?
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Yeah, it is. And in fact, within. So I worked with so many different kinds of archives and different site visits, et cetera, with my project, which we can talk about too. But within the national archive of the Girl Scouts of the usa, the materials on. There are a lot of materials on Native American girls because really starting by the late 20s, into the 30s, and then going on past that as well, but starting then, there is a very tight relationship between Girl Scouts of the USA and the whole system of residential boarding schools for Native Americans. And Girl Scouts really jockeyed for position with a lot of other organizations that would go into those boarding schools. And in many of the schools, and most of them, I think girls or the students had to have different things that they would participate in. And Girl Scouting was one of the things that they wasn't something that they could participate in. And it is, I would say often when I was reading the material, I would say it's a rather convoluted story because certainly it is part of the project of. There's so many different layers of it. On the white person level of it. It's a fascinating story because Girl Scouting actually provided. We think of it as a volunteer organization. And then girls are participating as they're volunteering to participate, but there's also a whole professional staff. And so there's a whole professional staff of women, White women who become what are called field agents who drive around all through. All through the west, huge distances to go visit these boarding schools and to institute Girl Scouting in these schools. And these are women who talk about intrepid women. They are professional, they're on their own, they don't need to marry. They're out doing these really what they perceive as very daring kind of lives. It's very similar to stories of missionary women. How these missionary women could be both have levels of independence, but they're doing it. And these women in the boarding schools were. They were gaining this level of independence, but through really the kind of program of cultural annihilation happening within the boarding schools. One of the questions I asked was why girls themselves might have been interested, like, would have chosen this over other things they might have done within the schools. And one of the things that was interesting to me was the extent to which they could often use Girl Scouting as a way to actually take part in their own practices, cultural practices that were being eradicated within these schools. They could speak their own language and then earn a translator badge. So the extent to which speaking their own language would either be frowned upon or explicitly and horrifically punished. There would be a moment where they could actually be speaking their language to earn a badge, or they could be doing artwork, whether it would be under craft, you know, Earning craft badges or actually being able to do nature walks, et cetera. And in fact, sometimes it was Native American women who would actually lead those troops then. And I think it became a space for that to be happening. But Girl Scouting itself, in terms of its ideology, was articulating a really kind of complicated perspective on this, that the Native American girls should understand these things. Then whether it's speaking their own language or understanding nature or being able to do their arts and crafts, they should understand that as Girl Scouting, not as actually being Crow or not as being Navajo, that those are Girl Scout kind of things and would tell stories of Pocahontas or Sacajawea as some of the first Girl Scouts in the United States. And that they often had to actually reject their own community sometimes in order to be the wonderful Girl Scouts that we know them to be. So it's a very. It's a story that Girl Scouts tells about itself as being a kind of friendly arm of outreach to these schools, but is certainly part and parcel of the whole process of cultural genocide, which is also obviously linked to land. The. The elimination of. Of land claims for Native American tribes as well.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's a really interesting entangled history there. Thank you for giving us a sense of how convoluted it is. Another aspect of Girl Scouts involvement in things that I wasn't expecting was involvement not just in US Imperial efforts inside the US but abroad, involvements with foreign policy. How was the organization involved there?
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Yeah, so the Girl Scouts were from. From the late 1920s. So Girl Scouts started in the United States in 1912 and a few years earlier in. In the UK as Girl Guiding. But by the 1920s, there. There are different organizations that are started, but then in 1928, the World association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. So it's an international organization. It still exists. Great Britain and the United States have really the biggest claims within there. And there are different sites, different places throughout the world where there are centers for the World association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts to meet. So in terms of my research, I visited the first one, which is AR Chalet in Adelboden Spring, Switzerland, that was actually funded by a wealthy Bostonite, Helen Storrow, who was close friends with Julia Gordon Lowe. And she used her money to literally, when she was there with an architect, they planted the American flag there. So even though it's a sense of kind of international friendship, but it's international friendship as long as the UK and Great Britain, I mean, the UK and the United States are firmly in first place, I think that WAGs, as it's called now, would. Would argue differently now about. About how it positions itself. But that was certainly the case in its. I would argue it still is the case, certainly when we see that it's, you know, it's. It's in English, even though it welcomes people from all over the world. It's poor point was this kind of imperialism sort of the friendly arm, as Jennifer Hellgren has talked about it in the work of Girl Scouting in terms of its international force, the friendly arm of US Imperialism. So there were those. And then throughout the world really, Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting competed to set up troops throughout the world. That became really complicated as different colonies and territories gained independence, because many of them then would not really want to have anything to do with Girl Guiding or Girl Scouting anymore. But there was this kind of friendly competition between the two countries to establish those organizations there. It went hand in hand, really in the United States with the establishment of military bases throughout the world. And almost anywhere that you would find a military base that especially any ones that had families that were there, there would be Girl Scouting. And that Girl Scouting then would have. Would be in kind of separate, kind of segregation as well, where generally there would be the Girl Scouting troop that would be for American girls who were there, but then they would also start Girl Scout troops for whatever the local girl community was as well, and usually do some kind of events together, maybe shows that they would put on together or service things that they would put on together so that it would, you know, the, the presumption there then is that this is all a friendly kind of establishment of US Power throughout the world. And Girl Scouts are really right in the center of that and still are. I mean, any, any bases now today, it's very likely that you're going to find a Girl Scout troop.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
So this was really interesting to me because that once you kind of explain those connections, I was like, okay, that makes a lot of sense that these things would see. Be seen as being very linked and kind of stable partners for if that makes sense. And yet you also talk about that there were some suspicions in the sort of early decades of the Cold War that despite these links. Right. Showing up on US Military bases abroad, I don't know how much more patriotic you can get that the Girl Scouts might be somehow subversive.
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Yeah, it is one of those moments where it's sort of like, however conservative you are, it's maybe not conservative enough because Girl Scouting has always had language in it about sisterhood, about being A friend to other Scouts. And in fact, if we look back within the United States, that's the language that girls and women of color use to make claims for participation within the Girl Scouts. And white women who are fighting that battle too, because there certainly were white women who were doing that. But the same is going internationally. So WAGS is very much in favor of and connects with the United Nations. So even today, wag, so that's the acronym for the World association of Girl Guides. And Girl Scouts still has a kind of status within the United nations as an organization that would. Would show up at different kinds of moments within. Within the United nations. And when the United nations are really being challenged in the United States during the Red Scare as a kind of communist ploy. Any kind of conversation that the United. That U.S. girl Scouts within its handbook or within troops or the badge work that it did, that was really being challenged as a kind of communist ploy. And that went hand in hand with critiques of any kind of discussion or materials that were being propagated within the United States about civil rights or about. I mean, within Girl Scouting in the United States about civil rights or about race relations, even children's books that might have that theme. That was all seen as part of a kind of communist threat. And so Girl Scouts actually did revise its handbook. They always said it was just about kind of printing errors and some issues about clarity. But considering that what was revised was anything about the United nations about kind of international friendship and anything about challenging prejudice, those defenses seem pretty slim to me. They were really about acquiescing to forces within the United States that were arguing that in today's language, that the organization was too woke in their language. That really was a kind of communist threat.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's intriguing, given the links with all the other things you've told us. But as you said, sometimes there's no way to kind of be as, I don't know, upstanding as some people want you to be, I suppose.
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
And just the other thing that I. You know, for me, what was interesting is coming to that point in the book where I'm tracing the extent to which Girl Scouting was part of imperialist projects and cultural genocide of Native Americans and really had these systems of discrimination in place. It did have what I called seeds of subversion. Like, I didn't find any evidence that there were communist cells within the Girl Scouts, but there were people who really cared about fighting what at the time would have been called fighting prejudice. Do you know? Or about creating a world where we would Actually turn to ways to figure out our conflicts instead of another world war. And those. Those were the seeds of subversion within this organization. And those were really then like, massively recognized and challenged by people on the far right in the United states in the 1950s, starting really in the 40s. But by the 1950s, definitely.
- [39:04]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, this is definitely an interesting period in the Girl Scouts history. But of course, the book doesn't stop there. Right. There's so many more things that happen later. So if we move to the 1970s, how and why is the organization changing at this point?
- [39:18]
Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Right. Well, by the 1970s, so that lone troop rule is gone and the local rule is not gone. That idea of local rule is not gone. But there's a lot of pressure coming at the organization about that policy. And especially once we really have the implementation of school policies after Brown versus Board of Education in 1954, once that really starts to have an effect within school Systems in the 1960s. And Girl Scouts is feeling that as well, because so many troops are actually organized within schools. And so there is a lot of pressure both from. Without the organization saying, we really cannot tolerate the levels of disavowed discrimination, you know, so that it'd be discrimination that would be happening, but then it would be excused or accepted, explained away somehow and from, you know, from within the organization, people who were. And this is people of color and white women as well, who really said, we won't tolerate this within the organization anymore. So we have our first African American president of the Girl Scouts, Gloria Scott. And she takes. Excuse me, I'm just coughing here a little bit. She takes office in the 1970s. And then we also have. And what's interesting about her is that she says she was a Girl Scout herself. And she says, I disagree that Girl Scouts shouldn't be political. And so she was saying then that Girl Scouts. It's not that Girl Scouts shouldn't be a nonprofit organization and can't be partisan, they can't actually endorse any candidates, but that Girl Scouting is political because it's actually saying there should be rights for girls, there should be a space for girls, and that it should be a democratic, inclusive organization. So in that way, it's political because it should be making claims that all girls, so white girls and all girls of color should have a space within Girl Scouting. And she starts a whole series of conferences that are actually by and for African American girls, Native American girls. So it really opens up in the 1970s. Now that's part of where I bring my own story into that, because that's when I was a Girl Scout in a white troop in Ohio and in Northern Ohio. I had no idea any of that was happening. And I don't think it was just that I was a kid and out of it, like I think. And that's where I really get into the concepts of dangerous innocence, how we're actively taught not to see or know or know things. But the reality, as I went back as an adult, as a scholar to go look, is this. There's a lot of pressure and a lot of opening up. Betty Friedan even becomes a member of the board. That doesn't work out so well. She doesn't really get the Girl Scouts. And after one term, she is asked not to renew her participation in the Girl Scouts. And after that time, we have Frances Hesselbein, who comes in as the CEO, is probably the biggest figure there. And she really turns the Girl Scouts into more of a corporate structure. And that was probably one of the most interesting interviews I had in writing this book. I interviewed her. She was already in her hundreds. She was 103 years old, I think, if I remember correctly, when I interviewed her, I interviewed her and her office in New York City, where she still came a few times a week. And we had a wonderful conversation. But I asked her at one point, how did you deal with this? You know, there was a heightened feminist, you know, second wave feminism in the 1970s and 80s. Like, how did Girl Scouts adapt to that or make use of that or respond to that or participate in that? And she just nodded. Her. Had sugar, had just really, really actively no. And I was like, what? Like, did you not hear what I was saying? And then I realized she was saying, we don't we. She said. I said, you never use that term. And she's. She's just said, no, she didn't even want to talk about that term, you know, so it was as if there was a moment when Girl Scouts tried to claim this space of, yes, we are an organization that's going to actively claim for rights. But that got locked back down pretty quickly. And it was just a girls organization again, a friendly, powerful organization for girls that also had a big business behind it with the cookie sales, but that it was certainly not going to be getting involved actively in feminism or actively and really explicitly articulating anything about systemic racism or discrimination. It would simply show pictures of all different girls, disabilities, race, et cetera, show this inclusivity, but not actually make any claims about it so that it could hide quickly if it needed to that.
- [45:14]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Is definitely an ambivalent at best, I suppose position to be in at that point. Given as you said, kind of everything else that was happening in wider society. What about where the organization is at in the 21st century? Is that sort of positioning still what's going on?
- [45:32]
Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
It's a very interesting time. One of the great ironies of this history is that for decades the Boy Scouts of America sued, as I mentioned earlier, sued the Girl Scouts for using the word Scout. But then starting in 2017, the Boy Scouts started admitting girls. This was not a kind of working with Girl Scouts for a friendly merger, an attempt to actually create a co educational girl group. It was, I would actually call it more of a kind of a hostile takeover or just an attempt to certainly no interest in actually talking to Girl Scouts. This was really about the fact that Boy Scouts of America were hemorrhaging membership. In the aftermath of all of the information and lawsuits coming out about rampant sexual assault within the Boy Scouts that hadn't been paid attention to the lawsuits. So there's money leaving the Boy Scouts and there's members leaving the Boy Scouts. People who didn't feel comfortable having their, you know, their boys be part of this organization. So they though start to accept girls and are now called Scouting America. And in fact, well, that's a different story of they're now under fire in the United States. Secretary Hegseth has said that they are basically that they're not a meritocracy anymore because they accept girls. But Girl Scouts have maintained a claim that they are an organization that is really focused on girls, that they will also accept girls who are on a gender spectrum or children who are on a gender spectrum, or trans girls, but that they are explicitly focused on being a girl's organization. But they're still not going to really claim a kind of political space and they're still relying on a kind of local rule in terms of trans girls or non binary children. So that if there would be, there would be councils throughout the United States who are very explicit in saying if you are uncomfortable with your child going to your girl, going to Girl Scouts because there will be the presence of trans girls and non binary girls, then this is not an organization for you. But if a council doesn't make that statement and says, you know, this is just not going to work to accept this transgender girl, the national organization will accept that, will accept that policy. So it's really not a complete policy of full acceptance. They also, interestingly, at least as of my writing right at this moment, or speaking to you right at this moment, Miranda, they are not interested in talking about this book. They are not interested in a kind of. I would say a reckoning of this history. And in fact, some. This is what I've heard have actually said that I've attempted to do a kind of smear job on the Girl Scouts, which was, of course, absolutely not my goal. I don't think as scholars, we're out to smear ever, you know, but it's actually to look. To see what this history was.
- [49:18]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah. Telling analytical history and smear campaigns are, in my mind, at least, very different things.
- [49:23]
Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Right, exactly. Exactly. And especially because I. I was interested in encouraging readers and. And. And modeling it myself, like to look. To look deeply in our own histories and the bigger things that we are part of, you know, so I'm very clear there that Girl Scouts. I literally started with saying Girl Scouts saved my life. Do you know, I mean, Girl Scouts were very important to me. I was a bullied kid. And Girl Scouts really kind of came in, in a moment where it completely changed the trajectory of my life in a very positive way. But so it's so far from being a smear campaign, but I think it's part of. To me, it's not surprising it would actually take a different route. It would be different than the history has demonstrated for it to actually. For the organization to really want to actively look at this history. That doesn't mean that individual Girl Scouts or individual troops aren't interested, because there's always such a big difference between what's happening sometimes on a local level and what's happening on a more institutional level.
- [50:40]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, definitely helpful to kind of have all of those things put together. And as you said, it's very clear in the book kind of what your childhood engagement was with the Girl Scouts, too. So if we take kind of all of this history and analysis and all the archives you went to and all the things you've told us here kind of all together. What do you most hope readers take away from the book?
- [51:01]
Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
I have a couple of things, but one of the titles I really worked with for a while was the title that became the title of my final chapter. A Dangerous Innocence is looking at the ways that these organizations can work to actively can have such an active role in processes of imperialism, in processes of discrimination, in processes of cultural genocide. But we are taught to look away, and that is a really active process and that that can happen simultaneously, even as. Even as we are learning extraordinary skills and competence and gaining opportunities. So that Is that is one of the big takeaways I would want. I would want readers to have. The second is one of the things I really noted in doing my research. And these are actually pretty. Even my sort of takeaways here is. And this had never happened with earlier research I had done people. Well, no, people laughed about fat too, but that was for different reasons. But people would start laughing when I said, I'm studying the Girl Scouts now, as if it's just almost embarrassing to be studying girls and to be studied. An organization that seems silly or slightly uncool or embarrassing. And I think we really need, as scholars and as thinkers to be paying attention to what the girls were doing and what the kids were doing and what the organizations were that raised, you know, whole generations of people and encourage them to see the world in certain ways and really had an outsized kind of footprint in various aspects of our. Of our historical development. So I would say those would be the two. The two kinds of those. Okay. And then I won a third one. Sorry, I'm a more than one takeaway. The third is connected to that dangerous innocence, but I think is allowing us to see the ways that discrimination and these systemic processes happened with an extraordinary level of disavowal at the same time. And that is a process, I think, for us to look deeply at. How that happens is really key for us thinking about how we got to where we are now. So I would say those three things.
- [54:14]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, those are some pretty good takeaways. And I'm always fascinated in kind of how do we get to the point where we're at now, especially, as you say, when it's organizations, institutions that are so impactful on so many people's kind of formative years. So definitely some history worth investigating there. And can I ask as a final question, what you might, if you've got an idea of what you might go investigate next. I mean, you started our conversation sort of outlining the curiosity that drove you to your previous projects, and now this one. Has something else sparked your interest now? Are we still focusing on this work or anything on your desk at the minute?
- [54:49]
Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
I'm completely focused on this work right now, and I think I'm going to be continuing work with other scholars who are doing girls studies, sort of pushing that more. But then I'm also toying with three other big projects that fit my habit of moving to something really new. But I have not really determined which direction I'm going. I'm very interested in the whole moment. That's actually a Similar moment to Julia Gordon Lowe's of the kind of collecting women, the women who are so formidable in starting museums all over the United States with their collections, but they are so deeply implicated within processes of colonialism and racism and not necessarily feminism. So it's that same kind of moment there that I'm really, I'm interested in, that I'm interested in really thinking completely different project, thinking about, rather than the kind of slow food movement, thinking about the whole movement now of slow fashion. And that would be a more contemporary project of considering really the extent to which our clothing industries is so tied to extraordinary problems of pollution and climate change and really oppression of workers around the world. And the people who are pushing this kind of program of mending and of slow fashion and really getting into thinking about the work that they are doing something again, that has been really dismissed in terms of sort of more general, more general scholarship. And third would be a really another personal project which is thinking about the processes of migraine and madness. So those are talk about three different projects. I'd love to hear from listeners if you have some thoughts on those three projects. So there we go. But I'm also still working on really thinking about girls studies too.
- [57:18]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, that all sounds amazing. So I can't wait to see what happens with all of those different areas. And of course, for listeners who want to know more about the work we've just been talking about, the book is titled Intrepid the Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2025. Amy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [57:39]
Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
It was wonderful to be here. Thanks very much.
- [57:57]
Marshall Poe
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Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
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Marshall Poe
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [58:16]
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