I suppose it all depends on how you define "related."
I was a Brownie, until I jumped over a papier-mâché toadstool to become a Girl Guide of Canada. From the Brownie Handbook, I learned that the Commonwealth countries were the brightest jewels in the Queen's crown.
(My dad hated [hated!] all of that pro-Brit-empire stuff that seemed to define the Brownie and Girl Guide experience, but on this point he was overruled by my mother, who just loved the cute uniforms).
Yeah, what one says. I got pressured out of girl scouts for being unwilling to sell cookies because I felt it was unethical that people overpayed because of the cute kids selling. It was only much later I realized people had been brainwashed and addicted to the cookies, which maybe would have convinced me to sell.
"Price gouging? No way! Oh, wait, it also involves brainwashing and addiction? In that case, hell yeah I'll sell them!"
"Mr. Gumble, this is a girl scout meeting."
"Is it, or is that you girls can't admit you have a problem?"
Good point! I just mean it was encouraging that they weren't explicitly giving in because I was the seller, but I'd have felt complicit in the rest. I just didn't realize how many layers of creepiness there were when I bailed at the top. And my parents would have pulled me out before the girl scouts got sexually progressive or anything.
Re: the Wiki page on Brownies. Some elderly women on my dad's side of the family have told me folklorish tales of their mothers and grandmothers leaving out pans of milk (not oats or porridge, just milk) for the little people. Those little people sound less cute than mischievous, and possibly even malevolent. The gift of milk was to placate them.
I guess they thought the faeries had crossed the Atlantic with the famine emigrants, or something like that.
I should perhaps note that I have a box of Thin Mints in the freezer, unopened, that I bought almost a year ago at a very weird event where both my agency and the Girl Scouts had tables. (Only about a dozen people showed up in the several hours I was there, but one of them was the lieutenant governor.) Anyway, shortly before I left I bought the cookies, but I still haven't eaten them. I guess that argues for the dominance of the manipulative/brainwashing side of the effort rather than the addiction side, but of course it's only one data point.
Faeries (sp?), brownies, elves and other such were never remotely cute outside the pages of late Victorian/early c20th children's literature.
If such existed IRL, the saucer of milk would be a damn good idea. So would the horse shoe over your door. If those failed, running away very fast would be favourite.
I loved being a Girl Scout--from Daisies through my second year of Juniors--but really hated selling the cookies.
I like the kind with peanut butter.
The Brownie uniform is awful now and not cute at all.
This thread seems dead enough now that it's a safe place to leave this important piece of news. The sheriff involved now claims he was misquoted, but I think it's obvious to any fair minded observer that he's just covering his ass.
The Brownie uniform is awful now and not cute at all.
Agreed. I suppose it is arguably more practical and gender-neutral now? but gone is the cuteness.
14: Well, it's not like there would be many minorities in Hardin County, which is just small towns and... oh, right... Fort Knox.