An all girls camp with female staff and female campers. Some may be inclined to think of it as a breeding ground for the type of stories that make headlines today. I found the opposite to be true, upon interviewing many women over the past few years, although many admitted to their own discovery of their sexuality or to innocent girl crushes.
Although the twenties hearalded a type of sexual revolution, the sixties marked an era that headlined such words as free love, gay rights, feminism, hippies, the pill and women’s movements. A large majority of the women who shared their stories were from the 60’s to 70’s.
M.J. began camping in 1933 and continued for eight years, aware that many of her counselors were indeed gay, “but I never had a problem with that, and just did not get mixed up with it.”
Certainly, girls like M.I., J.L. and G.J. were not the only ones who had girl crushes. It was the late forties and early fifties. Some were tomboys, but others shared sweet stories of having camp crushes on their instructors and counselors.
“There was a counselor I admired and I think that is why I wanted to be a C.I.T., so I could come back and hang out with her on the weekends when the kids were gone between sessions. I hated to leave her and I embarrassed to tell you, because you are the first person I have ever told, that I guess I had a girl crush on her. I was attracted to her. I hated for camp to end. I remember crying before my Mom would ever get to camp every year because I never wanted it to end.”
The highlight of the summer for M.I., who shared a crush on the same instructor as many who found her to be “cute, funny and darling” was to become the instructor for the day. It meant she was able to sleep in her bed in the lodge.
“During rest period, her shoes were by the bed and I tried them on and they were too small,” she laughed. ”That day I walked around with her list attached to her clipboard and it was a big deal. It took years to come off that high. I’m sure I didn’t sleep that night. I even got to go out and stand beside her when she blew “Taps” that night.”
J.F. recalled one of her friends at camp getting very close to her in the forties. “Something in my brain just said to steer clear of her, even though she never approached me. She was just way too friendly.”
Alternately, J.L. was enamoured of a girl’s personality and talents, despite it not being of a sexual nature, but found when she became a counselor in the late fifties, she was on the receiving end of crushes from her little charges.
“One of the summers I was there, one of the counselors hit on me,” said a camper who had been at Maqua from the late fifties to the early sixties. “I had no idea. She was cold and said she wanted to sleep in the same sleeping bag. Years later I figured it out. I was not traumatized and I had no idea of sexuality. I fell asleep.”
This same woman realized while she was at camp that her director slept in the same room as another counselor and that they were “going together”. That awareness was brought to her attention by other campers and counselors, and in her innocence she recalled being horrified and troubled at the time, but then never thought of it again. Later she added more of her feelings in an email.
“There was quite a lot (lesbians) among the staff during my later years there (early to mid sixties), although at the time I did not recognize it. (That seems very funny to me now that I am 62 and not 12.) A staff person hit on my when I was either a senior camper or a camp aide (13?14?) and I TOTALLY did not understand. Really—zero notion of what was happening. Yet, conversely, there was some serious intolerance of the more “butchy” counselors. Looking back, of course the mighty counselors look like children to me. Of course, I am curious—as a lesbian myself—if other lesbians think that their orientation was at all nurtured at Maqua. I think that for me I saw only a closeness among women or a mostly female community, so that even if I did not recognize it much, my own lesbianism (which I did not at all suspect in myself as a 12 or 13- year old) is connected to my camp experience.”
What were your experiences of camping with all girls that may have awakened your sexuality?