Brownie points, or “credit earned for good behavior or useful effort,” was probably popularized by a fanciful 1951 Los Angeles Times column about how husbands supposedly score points on an invisible domestic scorecard by doing household chores. The brownie in this case refers to the small, fairy-like creature from folklore that supposedly performs such tasks unseen, and the more helpful husbands are, the more brownie points they supposedly earn. Earlier uses of the term can be found in connection with the Brownie girl group. It does not come from brown-nosing although the mental association may have been made later. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Folklore and Household-Chores Popularization of Brownie Points”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Well, greetings from the land of ten thousand lakes, Martha.
This is Cindy from Minneapolis.
What’s on your mind, Cindy?
I was asked to help edit a soon to be book.
Oh Oh and came across brownie points.
I understand that to mean the some kind of advantage.
Yeah.
Cindy the way that you’re describing this makes it sound like it’s not an expression that you use and you learn from somebody else and that’s why you’re confused?
No, I’ve heard it before, but I wanted to know its origins.
One of our linguistic colleagues at Word Histories.net, he he turned up this really interesting article in the Los Angeles Times from nineteen fifty one.
And this article by Marvin Miles is titled Brownie Points A New Measure of a Husband.
And he lays out this concept that husbands get points for doing all the husbandly things like going home on time and helping with the housework and remembering anniversaries and appointments and stuff and stuff like that.
The stuff they’re supposed to do.
And we’re talking about the nineteen fifties here for heaven’s sake.
It’s not extra.
Right.
It’s not a bonus dude.
It’s an obligation.
It’s what you signed on for.
You y you don’t get a pat on the back for fulfilling your obligations.
On one hand, the sense is a dude should be doing this stuff in his household, right?
He should be a full member of the family and fully participate.
But on the other hand, this Marvin Miles guy writes this up as if it’s an impossible goal.
That a a husband can’t get ahead with with this brownie point system, at best he can keep even.
And it’s because, as he calls it, of pixie mathematics.
And by pixies he’s referring to these mythological kind of fairy like characters that get up to mischief and are sometimes invisible and and Brownie is another character just like that.
So he talks about genie geometry or elfin calculations.
So really what he’s basically saying is it’s unfair to judge the husbands on this invisible scoring system.
The invisible being a notion that that’s what these pixies and and brownies are.
These again, these little female fairy like characters from from mythology.
So in any case, he goes on and on about this and after a while you just want to kind of reach through the the time machine back to nineteen fifty one and smack Marvin Miles upside the head, frankly.
But the if there’s even an illustration.
It shows a pixie with a a clock kind of hanging over this dispirited married man, kind of judging him for what he didn’t didn’t do.
So again, so this article which was syndicated, and that means published in other newspapers, may have been, if not the source of Brownie Points, the popularization point for Brownie Points.
Because he he has this very colorful kind of argumentative and very debatable opinion on what a fellow should do around the house.
Very.
Very and then it got conflated with Brownies the the l young girl scouts and they’re earning their badges?
Yeah, he does mention Brownies in the in the piece, but it’s ’cause he’s kind of just like lumping in all of these mythological characters who are who were invisible and up to mischief.
Leprechauns, pixies, brownies, kind of all together.
He mentions them all.
And so that’s that’s where the brownie so the brownie does come just like the brownie girl group, which are a subset of the Girl Scouts in the US and the Girl Guides in the UK, they get their name from that brownie, that little feminine character who was believed to get up to good deeds in when humans weren’t around, perhaps at night or when they weren’t paying attention, like solving problems, cleaning things up, doing doing odd jobs, that sort of thing.
Okay.
Now it’s coming back to me.
It’s been a long time since my question is how do I get some of these brownies to do all this stuff around the house?
I try to be a good house husband.
I don’t know where I’d stand on this this score sheet that Marvin Miles has laid out.
Well thanks for the information and Yeah, we’ll link to that article if we can find a linkable source for it in the in the LA Times.
Yeah, and good luck with the editing.
That’s exciting.
Yeah.
Being asked to edit somebody’s book is like a kind of real badge of honor.
Not a brownie badge, but a girl scout badge.
Girl scout badge.
Yeah, the book editing badge.
Cindy, thanks for calling.
Take care, Cindy.
Bye..
Welcome Thanks.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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