Book Review: The Camp Fire Girls: Gender, Race, and American Girlhood, 1910–1980 by Helgren, Jennifer

Abstract

According to Jennifer Helgren’s newest book, Camp Fire Girls—an extracurricular weekly girls’ group similar in many ways to the Girl Guides—tried to instill the values of beauty and usefulness into twentieth-century American girls. Helgren shows that the question of how these girls responded to such teachings is much more complicated. The Camp Fire Girls: Gender, Race, and American Girlhood, 1910–1980 demonstrates that girls in the organization found a “space to develop their own identities,” identities that at times were “consistent” with its general principles, but at other times directly challenged Camp Fire’s “vision of twentieth-century American girlhood” (6). Through her examination of Camp Fire, Helgren shows how studying an extracurricular girls’ organization not only informs us about girls’ experiences in the program, but also uncovers the ways that the girls themselves actively shaped and redefined a broader American girlhood. The Camp Fire Girls traces the evolution of Camp Fire as an organization from its earliest informal years in the 1910s, to its explosion as America’s largest girls’ organization, and then to its eventual fading in the 1970s and 80s. Through a chronological and thematic approach, Helgren argues that Camp Fire was both empowering and exclusionary. Camp Fire assumed and esteemed girls’ future roles in the family and home, while simultaneously providing space to explore “civic” and “outdoor” life in ways that were otherwise closed to them (14). This understanding of the complicated dichotomy of essential feminism informs Helgren’s analysis and helps her to situate the organization within the earliest years of the women’s movement. The sheer numbers of children Camp Fire reached makes the subject worthy of study. But Helgren goes further by weaving the evolution of American society in the twentieth century through her work, making the book a masterful and widely applicable contribution to historiography. This is not just a study of the history of girlhood (although more such studies are needed); it describes nearly an entire century through the lens of one organization, showing the dramatic ebbs and flows of American society and culture in the twentieth century. The second chapter of the book examines how Camp Fire used romanticized and condescending notions of Indigeneity and “Gypsy” culture as the foundation for girls’ connection to nature. Until well after World War II, Camp Fire girls were required to don European versions of Indigenous regalia when participating in any special ceremony. These ceremonies, most often centered around a campfire, were used to connect girls to their “primitive emotions” and thus help them to better respect and understand nature and the “great mystery” of life (60–61). Camp Fire organizers believed this inclusion of Indigenous customs and apparel would show respect and an appreciation for Indigenous cultures, while simultaneously reducing any differences of race, class, or religion between girls. However, Helgren argues that the appropriation of Indigenous culture simply “magnified racial hierarchies” and excluded genuine Indigenous culture by situating it firmly in the past (56). Book Review