Oh, the illustrious career I had as a Girl Guide. Sixer of the Pixies at Brownies and seconder of the Forget-Me-Nots at Guides proper, which I left after getting baa-ed at too loudly by a sheep during a rather pedestrian Hiking badge ramble. One of life’s less agile children, I remember my Hostess badge more fondly, for which I had to make a cup of tea and serve some custard creams. Woggles, bobble hats, training to be a 50s housewife at 10: indeed, these were different times.
In 2016, Girlguiding badges are a much more progressive prospect. This week, the Think Resilient badge was launched, created by Peer Educators from the Guide’s Senior Section, developed in connection with the mental health charity Young Minds. Peer Educators worked with girls between the ages of seven and 25 to give them understanding the importance of mental health. This initiative follows similarly forward-thinking badges in recent years: Free Being Me (body confidence); Breaking Barriers (gender equality in international development); Be the Change (campaigning); and Girls Matter: Hear Our Voice (democracy). For which my anxious adolescent self has only one, now loud, word: hooray.
Developments in Guiding have been legion in recent decades. Itchy, starchy uniforms have long given way to polo shirts and hooded tops. Girls can now be Scouts too, although, remarkably, this only became compulsory for all Scout groups in 2007.
Better news comes in the slightly eccentric badges that exist in the Girlguiding roster. I wish I had been offered the Stargazer badge as a Brownie: finding out facts about constellations and planets would have skyrocketed my bid to become Wales’s first female astronaut (is there still time?). I feel sorry for all the Brown Owls being ambushed by fleets of pubescent girls desperate to get their hands on lassos, cigar boxes and spinning plates to get their Circus Skills honours. I’m also surprised to see that the Hostess badge for Brownies still exists, but Outdoor Cook takes its docile beginnings to more thrilling, fiery places. Get your haybox, go the guidelines, “and know how to treat scalds and burns”. Whoomph.
Nevertheless, it’s somewhat heartening to discover the most popular badges today are still the long-timers. First Aid is still snapped up by the hordes, as is Agility – no, I didn’t get that one. The younger me would have been much more at home with another newcomer, the Chocolate badge. “Set up a tasting session for your patrol,” go the instructions online. Patrol, schmatrol. That sound you can hear is the stitching of a thousand Wispa-stained badges running up a neatly starched arm.
