A recently published study by John Pachankis and Mark Hatzenbuehler has substantiated what’s called the “Best Little Girl in the World” hypothesis, first put forward in 1973 in a book by Andrew Tobias, then writing under a pseudonym. It’s the idea that young, closeted women deflect attention from their sexuality by investing in recognized markers of success: good grades, athletic achievement, elite employment and so on. Overcompensating in competitive arenas affords these women a sense of self-worth that their concealment diminishes.
…Deriving self-worth from achievement-related domains, like Ivy League admissions, is a common strategy among closeted women seeking to maintain self-esteem while hiding their stigma. The strategy is an effort to compensate for romantic isolation and countless suppressed enthusiasms. And it requires time-consuming study and practice, which conveniently provide an excuse for not dating.
Best of all, it distracts: “What love life? Look at my report card!”
…But the study does show that the longer a young woman conceals her sexual orientation, the more heavily she invests in external measures of success, potentially leading to undue stress and social isolation
Another of the study’s findings is that girls who grow up in more stigmatizing environments are more likely to seek self-worth through competition. I spent my first 18 years in a rural, religious town in North Carolina, a state that recently passed a constitutional amendment barring same-sex unions by a wide margin. Now here I am, a metal detector scanning for golden prizes. That’s no coincidence, the research suggests.
au where john runs a “cooking for cheap” blog, and he does all the finances to show how much the grocery list will cost and how to make food stretch, and doing the nutritional breakdowns in easy to understand ways so if you eat this for breakfast, you should choose that for dinner so that you get the essential nutrients and vitamins, and he takes pictures on his mobile and his food is basic and sometimes it isn’t exactly even good but it works
sherlock runs a “gourmet at home” blog, and he talks a lot about the chemistry and uses kitchen utensils no one even owns and ingredients no one can ever find because they’re interesting, and he recommends full menus with wine pairings and takes pictures on some fancy camera in a gourmet kitchen that molly works at baking bread at like 4 am and she lets him cook there as long as he cleans up after himself
and john finds his blog and is like, this is so??? unreasonable??? has anyone ever even cooked your food??? aside from a michelin starred restaurant??? is that the trick, you work at a michelin starred restaurant??? and sherlock is just like, so what if i just like cooking, what’s wrong with that? here, let me show you, and he invites john to dinner because he can’t resist the opportunity to show off except he needs his gourmet kitchen so he serves john deconstructed beef wellington at 430 in the morning but john loves it and he says, all right, now it’s my turn, and they use sherlock’s flat because all john’s got is a cookplate and a microwave and sherlock’s at least got a full oven, and john cooks for him and it’s simple and cheap and the wine doesn’t quite go with the lemon chicken but john’s so beautiful in his kitchen, and they laugh and joke and john demands that he chop veg and asks if his landlady would like a bit of the blueberry peach crumble he did for dessert, and sherlock wants him so badly it hurts already but he can’t bring himself to make the move and so it turns into this back and forth, trading meals, breakfasts in sherlock’s borrowed gourmet place and dinners in sherlock’s flat, and john goes home at the end of the night until one night sherlock doesn’t show for dinner at his place because he was at a crime scene and john was so worried about him because he wasn’t answering his phone and he shows up with blood on his face from catching the suspect and john who has been waiting on his stoop stands and pulls him forward and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, and they miss dinner that night but john does a nice full english in sherlock’s flat the next morning, wearing sherlock’s robe, and after that it’s just this mix of gourmet and cheap and extravagant and simple and 221b always smells amazing, the two of them cooking together side-by-side.
take time to figure it out 