Brownies pamper party AIBU?

[lovesmileandlaugh]

My 7 year old DD went to the end of year Brownies 'pamper party' last night. She HAD to go in pyjamas to enjoy the fun and came home plastered in make up, red lipstick, glitter, painted nails, curled hair.

I'm annoyed for a few reasons.

1. Brownies (to me) is about developing skills and promoting positive female role models. Not dressing up little girls like WAGS for fun. What ever happened to a good game of rounders on a sunny evening as a treat? I would have expected brownies to provide more of an antidote to the early sexualisation of children.

1. The red lipstick was used on all the girls. I wouldn't use a lipstick that had been used by 30 different people before me, surely this is basic hygiene? One of DD's friends has cold sores and my DD has eczema on her face around her mouth, so I am concerned about the infection risk. Also concerned about headlice as there is an outbreak and they were going head to head with combs.

1. The girls are not allowed make up/ nail varnish etc for school, so it all had to be taken off when they got home anyway.

I really want to complain about this but I can't decide if I'm being a bit unreasonable!

I wouldn't complain but I find this sort of thing a bit disappointing, too.

I'm a brownie leader.
The programme is based around what the girls ask for - so if you've had a pamper party its most likely because a sizeable proportion of the girls wanted it.

Whether you are BU depends on what else the Programme offers. If they had a pamper party today, but last week were shelter building and building their own fire to cook outdoors then I'd say YABU and it's all about trying a mixture of things.

If this is typical of the activities this unit provides, I'd be disappointed - and would look for another unit if it were my DD (our cub unit only has 1 girl in, so a no-no for DD who prefers to play with girls). Units to vary. I turned down one cub unit as they seemed to do mostly fairly quite sedentary activiites - no use for my DS who needs to run about and burn off steam.

I'm a Brownie and Guide leader, and we have pamper parties probably once a year, along with other activities like night hikes, canoeing, wall climbing, campfires, first aid, wide games, camping, cooking, crafts, community service, and sports. The pamper party your daughter has does not sound like one we might do, we would normally have face masks made out of avocado and exfoliators made with oats, or once we had pedicures by beauty therapy students but used clear varnish only.

What I'm getting at is a pamper party isn't that big a deal as part of a varied programme, and as a PP mentioned we are girl led, which means we find out what the girls would like to do and then do that!

If you don't like the activities, rather than complain, as this will demoralise the guiders who are volunteers, why not offer to run a few evenings yourself or even become part of the leadership team?

PS - if Leaders really are shouting at the girls to 'shut their bloody gobs', and stood smoking outside in front of the girls, and they are not doing any badges, or anything else - then you should complain to the District Commissioner because that is NOTgood enough, and you are not getting the service you are paying for.

I'd urge you to complain, even if you decide to withdraw your daughter, because that needs to be put right for the other girls.

Unfortunately, Brownie units (as with Cubs, Scouts, Guides etc) are only as good as their (volunteer) Leaders, and the activities tend to be what the Leaders are good at, or enjoy. I'm a DC, and am aware that there are some units which are much better than others, and feel so sorry when I hear stories like yours, where Leaders are not providing a great experience for the girls.

In an ideal world, you'd have a team of Leaders with complementary skills, but there's such a shortage (for Guiding anyway) you can't chose who leads a unit - you just take what you can get.

Totally agree about DD needing her own space, but you don't need to volunteer on a permanent basis - Leaders would be grateful if you'd just volunteer for the occasional evening (even as a one off). Or you could volunteer to, say, provide a regular (weekly/termly) newsletter to parents so that they always know what's going on - and could then volulnteer to help with activities they have an interest in.

Just saying - we desparately need more Leaders in Guiding (either in or out of uniform/regular or occasional volunteers)

"If your a girl who doesn't like ANY of the activities provided by the Brownie Leaders, then she is in the wrong Brownie unit. If she likes some but not all the activities, then you either chose for her to stay, and learn that you don't get everything your own way in life, or you take her away and enrol her in a different activity, where things will go 100% your way."

I don't think I've made any suggestion about things going 100% my way. I don't think I have even mentioned whether my DD enjoyed this or not! I was just interested to know whether I would be unreasonable to raise my concerns.

YANBU. I left guides after about a year, having loved brownies and really looked forward to guides, shortly after they did some stupid fashion show thing.

It just served to emphasise difference, between 11 yo children and 14 yo teenagers, between fashionable, confidant, well off 'in-crowd' girls vs girls uninterested in fashion, unconfident about their appearance or unable to afford trendy clothes and, as someone who liked guides precisely because of its structure, practical activities, learning opportunities and provision of a community separate and distinct from the school one, it just brought in all the worst of school division, triviality and cliqueyness. I concluded that the guider was an idiot, uninterested in doing the things I thought guiding was about.

So, yes, some girls like that stuff. It does not follow that imposing it on all of them is a good idea.

It's a long time since I was a brown owl and I don't think a straight pamper party would have appealed to my girls.

However, they loved fancy dress, we did, Halloween, fairytales and Christmas over the years. Make up and nail varnish certainly got involved in those and for carnival float costumes.

I'm 45 and me, DSIS and our friends used to play with make up and dressing up clothes, quite often.

Girls have always played at being grown up and they have always cared what they looked like for parties and special occasions.

Our primary school didn't have uniform and we cared very much what we wore on school photo day.

What matters is not that small girls want to look nice sometimes, what matters is they don't become obsessed with their appearence and feel it's the whole sum of who they are.

Also please, please, please remember Guiders are volunteers and Brownie companies have almost no money after paying for their halls.

Coming up with something most of the girls will think of as fun, costs peanuts and is within the abilities of the equivalent of a mixed ability Y2-Y5 class classis far from easy.

well if you don't like it train as a brown owl yourself and do this volunteer work.

I imagine its one fun thing amongst loads of different activities so expect the girls enjoyed it as much as a game of rounders or camp fire evenings.

how can you complain about women who give up their spare time for your dd. you should be grateful.

I'm all for people, adult or child, politely saying why they don't want to take part in an activity or a group, and then leaving. But I do think it's useful to have some feedback as to why you made that choice.
If only so the leaders can consider if they want to act on it or not, rather than being unaware of what the problem was for the child.

It also matters if they are being taught that "looking nice" = putting on makeup.that's the aspect of it that would worry me. It's teaching a way of thinking that I wouldn't have thought to equate with brownies, having expected that it would teach them to be practical, adventurous, self-sufficient people who think that what you look like is much less important than what you can do.

Girls get enough pressure to make themselves look a certain version of "nice" without brownies normalising it as well.

YANBU. This would really disappoint me.

Oh OP, YABU! They need to know this stuff don'tcha know - how else are they going to know what action to take in future when their DPs are caught doing something dodgy? A girl's gotta know how to show the world she means bus

...iness. Next outing : 'spa day'.

Posted too soon :)

DD will be going to scouts I reckon...

Have you thought of looking into Beavers/Cubs instead? Or is there another Brownies group near you?

All this 'be grateful or do it yourself' stuff makes one point, the leaders are volunteers but misses another, they are leaders within a movement with a certain ethos and aims. It is perfectly legitimate to question whether an activity fits within these. It is also helpful to give constructive feedback, as no leader, volunteer or paid, is the finished article and cannot benefit from learning more. 'Be grateful or do it yourself' smacks of defensiveness and a closed-minded attitude to learning and improving.

so it can't just be a fun activity amongst lots if diverse fun activities then.

Jesus, am amazed any one bothers to give up their free time to work with kids these days

They become the butt of criticism from parents who couldn't be arsed to do the volunteering themselves but are the first to complain and posture.

I was grateful that adults did this for my 4 kids, brownies, cubs, dance groups gymnastics, footi and cricket., and wouldn't dream of nit picking like this.

YANBU. I'm really disappointed to hear this and some people's opinions on it.

YANBU!

This is a bug bear of mine too. At my dds brownies they had a mother daughter make up evening. I cringed throughout it.

Just because brownies is 'girl-led' doesn't mean a brownie leader has to do every activity requested.

YANBU. I bet none of the cubs groups locally are having "pamper parties". FFS.

'At my dds brownies they had a mother daughter make up evening.'

See, that's an opportunity I'd seize with both sets of unkempt claws.

sidoxia.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/gene-simmons.jpg

We are leaders within a movement with a certain ethos and aims - though much of that is open to interpretation.
Also, the training is not great, and everyone gets things wrong from time to time. We've done many evenings which haven't gone down well with our Brownies - and haven't repeated them. Activities the girls like ARE repeated every so often.

If this was a one off evening that OP didn't like - I'd say there was no big problem, and to give the Leaders a break. Maybe canvas opinion from other parents and give some constructive feedback about how the activity could have been better organised/not done at all.

However, there seems to be a much bigger issue with that particular Brownie unit, which should be reported so that the Leaders can be monitored and given some advice and training.

It sounds repellent.

But Brownies is not compulsory.

Part of the brownie programme is about the girls making choices. I hold a pow wow and the girls choose what they want to do. It's very likely that the majority of girls have voted in favour of this after someone has offered it as a suggestion.

My brownies asked to go to a certain art place. The art place gave me 3 options of jewellery making/soap making/ceramic painting. The girls unanimously voted ceramic painting. They had a ball.

Remember that guides are volunteers and we don't just do 90 minutes a week. I spend at least 10 hours on planning and organising things for my girls to have new experiences. I would be gutted to be told that it was a waste of time and not teaching them anything.

OP, maybe you could suggest a scary face painting competition for Halloween to balance it out.

I found painting my face as Frankenstein's monster (for Beavers Halloween party) heaps more fun than putting on lipstick.