100. Best Little Boys in the World: It's Time to Grow Up

Snarky Opener (0:00)

So, I graduated with a master's degree, bought two houses, published a few books, and launched a podcast to overcompensate for my sexuality. But unlike Shawn Mendes, you don't see me running around with a good boy tattoo on my forearm.

Episode Introduction (0:33)

Hello my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless, and today I am a non-jaded gay because I am just fully feeling the springtime weather now. I bought a couple window boxes for my house to just get some, you know, flowers and pretty foliage outside. So, I'm very excited for those to arrive and to test my handiwork to drill them into the brick front of my house. So, we'll see how that goes.

The Best Little Boy in the World (0:59)

But anyway, I'm also very excited because today is our 100th episode, which is absolutely surreal to me. And I know we just celebrated the two-year anniversary.

So, with this being the 100th episode, I wanted to tie it back to the very first episode, where we talked about gay trauma and The Velvet Rage and how the shame of growing up gay can manifest differently in adulthood. Like, you know, perfectionism, which we also talked about.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to dedicate our 100th episode to talking about The Best Little Boy in the World archetype. And this is something newer to me that I never really heard about until the past year. So, I thought it would be appropriate to cover it today. And we'll get into it.

Winner of A Jaded Gay Giveaway (1:39)  

But before we get into the episode, I know you've all been waiting for this. It is time to announce the winner of the A Jaded Gay's Two-Year Anniversary Giveaway.

And I'm very excited to announce that the winner is Clark Felix. So, Clark, congratulations. You will be receiving two signed copies of my book, A Jaded Gay t-shirt, trucker hat, and wine tumbler, and you'll get to choose a future podcast episode. So, congratulations. Check your Insta DMs, I've messaged you to coordinate all that.

And thank you everyone for entering the giveaway and for supporting the podcast. I greatly appreciate all of you.

So, with that being said, moving back into the episode, let's play our tarot card.

Tarot (2:23)  

So, the card for this episode is the Four of Wands in reverse. Wands as you know is a Minor Arcana suit tied to the element of fire. It's action-oriented and representative of passion, creativity, and sometimes sexuality. In numerology, four is tied to structure, stability, and our foundation.

And when we draw this card in reverse, it's calling us to return to the joy in the present moment. Now with this card being in reverse of stability, it may indicate that there is a lot of transition in our lives, like with careers or relationships.

And so, we may be worried about the future. Or it could be indicating that we are hesitant to celebrate our successes, or that we're too focused on achieving the next thing to celebrate what we have already achieved.

So whichever one this kind of represents for us, while it's good to have our goals, we need to remember to celebrate the now. So, it's kind of a callback to the present.

Andrew Tobias’ Memoir (3:15)

And with that in mind, let's get into the episode. So, in 1973, author Andrew Tobias' memoir, The Best Little Boy in the World was published under the pen name John Reid. And Tobias was actually an already established finance writer at the time before he decided to tell his account of growing up gay.

And it ended up being republished in May 1993, using his actual name, Andrew Tobias. But it was dubbed the classic account of growing up gay in America. And here's a brief statement about it by the New York Times:

"The best little boy in the world never had wet dreams or masturbated. He always topped his class, honored Mom and Dad, deferred to elders, and excelled in sports. The best little boy in the world was the model IBM exec. The best little boy in the world was a closet case who quote-unquote never read anything about homosexuality."

Impacts on Self-Worth (4:07)

And the themes in this book are similar to what Dr. Alan Downs wrote about in The Velvet Rage.

So basically, gay men try to overcompensate in certain aspects of their lives to deflect negative attention away from their sexuality. And specifically, the Best Little Boy in the World archetype focuses on overcompensating in careers or other areas that reward success.

So, this archetype gained more attention in March 2013, when a study titled The Social Development of Contingent Self Worth in Sexual Minority Young Men: An Empirical Investigation of the "Best Little Boy in the World" Hypothesis was published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.

In it, Drs. John Pachankis and Mark Hatzenbuehler explained that social-environmental influences on self-worth are strongest during childhood and adolescence. During this time, individuals will learn to maximize their self-worth by attaining success in domains such as work, academics, relationships, athletic skill, and appearance, depending on specific expectations communicated through their social environment.

But as we know, growing up gay, you quickly learned that what comes to you naturally isn't considered desirable by society, which can impact your self-worth. Here's a paragraph from the study:

"The opportunities to maximize one's self-worth are not evenly distributed across populations. Indeed, stigmatized individuals encounter restricted opportunities for fulfilling mainstream society's expectations for esteemed and valued behavior, one of the relatively implicit yet powerful ways in which social forces conspire to maintain social inequalities. In turn, these constraints have important consequences for the development of self-worth for members of stigmatized groups."

Self-Worth Contingencies (5:53)

So, with that in mind, researchers explored the social development of contingent self-worth among young sexual minority men. And they define contingent self-worth as the beliefs that individuals hold about what they need to do and who they need to be to have value as a person.

And that strong self-worth contingencies, especially when based on hard-to-attain standards, can have particularly negative consequences on interpersonal functioning and health. The researchers went on to reference Tobias's memoir, and empirically test the Best Little Boy in the World hypothesis while uniting it with research on contingencies of self-worth.

So, to test this, the study surveyed 192 sexual minority and heterosexual men under the age of 29, who were enrolled as full-time students at large public and private universities, who were asked to identify if they were:

·       Gay

·       Heterosexual

·       Bisexual, but mostly gay

·       Bisexual, equally gay and heterosexual

·       Bisexual, but mostly heterosexual

·       Queer

·       Uncertain

·       Or don't know for sure

The participants were then asked a variety of individual-level measures, such as demographics and contingencies of self-worth. The contingencies of self-worth consisted of seven domains, which were: 

·       Academic competence

·       Appearance

·       Competition

·       Virtue

·       God's love

·       Family support

·       And others' approval

They also measured participants' length of sexual orientation concealment by asking the following questions:

·       How old in years, were you when you first became aware that you were attracted to people of the same sex, even though you might not have labeled those feelings?

·       And two, how old in years were you when you first told someone for any reason that you were not heterosexual?

Researchers then subtracted participants' answers to the former question from the latter. They also looked at state-level measures such as policies affecting sexual minority individuals and attitudes towards sexual minority individuals and daily measures such as social isolation and other behavioral outcomes predicted by contingent self-worth theory.

On average, participants said they became aware of their sexual attraction to members of the same sex at age 11 and first disclosed their sexual orientation to another person at age 16 and a half, which means participants concealed their sexual orientation over a mean of almost five and a half years across adolescence.

Achievement Related Domains (8:16)

And when researchers compared contingent self-worth domains between sexual minority and heterosexual men, they found that sexual minority men reported self-worth that was significantly more contingent on academic competence, appearance, and competition. And these three domains were known as the achievement-related domains.

The length of concealment also significantly predicted all three of these achievement-related self-worth contingencies. And the more that students staked their self-worth on academic competence, the more time they spent alone.

And I'm going to read the researchers' conclusion:

"Consistent with the Best Little Boy in the World hypothesis, young sexual minority men were more heavily invested in achievement-related domains than heterosexual men, possibly a learned strategy to deflect attention from their concealed stigma and assure validation if it is discovered and devalued. The fact that length of sexual orientation concealment predicted all three achievement-oriented self-worth contingencies for sexual minority men also supports our social development lens for viewing the ways that hiding an important aspect of oneself can powerfully shape the sources of young stigmatized individual self-worth. Also, consistent with the Best Little Boy in the World hypothesis, objectively measured social stigma in the geographic locale of sexual minority participants' adolescence predicted basing self-worth on competition with others."

Deflecting Attention from Sexuality (9:40)

And a 2013 Queerty article summarized the study's findings saying:

"Young closeted men deflect attention from their sexuality by overcompensating in measured marks of success, such as academics, sports, appearance or employment. Though concealing their sexuality spurs their ambition, it often results in negative health consequences and social isolation, leading to a life of accolades and general stick-in-the-muddedness."

Example: Adam D. Chandler (10:06)

And if you're like me, you might feel targeted by that study. But here's a couple other examples.

In May 2013, Adam D. Chandler, a lawyer for the federal government, published an op-ed piece in The New York Times titled The Best Little Boy in the World—That's Me. In it, he wrote that, upon reading the study we just discussed, he identified with it completely.

Chandler explains that he recognized he was different from the other boys early on and concealed his sexual identity by throwing himself into his studies. He craved perfect scores in middle school and high school, and in college, he wrecked the curve for straight classmates. He also petitioned the Dean to overload his course schedule and sought the presidencies of student groups he had only just joined. 

Chandler writes:

"I built a wall of casebooks, hunkered down, and ignored the growing hole in my social development."

And he claims that this Best Little Boy in the World strategy is an effort to compensate for romantic isolation and countless oppressed enthusiasms.

Example: Pete Buttigieg (11:04)

And there's another example of this, but let's try to keep politics aside on this one. It can be seen in Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential run.

A 2019 Slate article notes that there was some criticism from the LGBTQ+ community regarding Buttigieg's relationship to his own sexual identity, claiming he quote unquote wasn't gay enough.

The Slate article states that critics who felt his self-presentation was off-putting lacked an important bit of context, and that is the Best Little Boy in the World archetype. Here's a quote:

"For all the talk of diversity, LGBTQ equality, and representation of gays in the media, many Americans still have limited exposure to gay men. Many know of comical gay men like Jack from Will & Grace or videos of Billy Eichner's street antics. They know of attention-grabbing gay men like Liberace and Billy Porter. They know of the hot gay men like Wentworth Miller and Gus Kenworthy. They also know the American sweethearts like Adam Rippon and Anderson Cooper. A subspecies they aren't as familiar with, however, are the Type A politically driven never take their eyes off the ball gays. A group of which Pete Buttigieg is an extreme example."

The author goes on to say that when they saw people criticizing Buttigieg for his stoicism, his carefully tended resume, and for being quote-unquote a script, a blandly pasteurized politician, they saw those critics essentially attacking other gay men they knew who fit that Best Little Boy in the World archetype. 

And these critics didn't recognize that his persona reflected the consequences of living in the closet for so long. Buttigieg also grew up in the Midwest, which traditionally has been a less accepting area that doesn't have as visible of LGBTQ+ representation. In fact, Buttigieg once said that growing up where he did made him think that he had to choose between being an elected politician or an out-gay person.

The author of the Slate article goes on to say that while Buttigieg's model of gayness might not be widely familiar, his default of being the Best Little Boy on the debate stage was legitimately queer. And I thought this paragraph was pretty powerful:

"Buttigieg is the natural end result of a very familiar queer pattern that groomed him for this moment. His religious devotion to mastering the perfect pedigree, his refusal to be single, his denial of any type of popular gay aesthetic, which is itself another kind of gay aesthetic, make him legible to me. His academic nerdiness, combined with his uber-masculine military service is not a genuflection to heteronormativity as some have claimed, but a familiar gay identity curated among upwardly mobile white gay men, who have often turned to politics in one form or another."

Again, many within the LGBTQ+ community have their opinions of him based off of his policies and politics. But I thought this was an interesting example of how the Best Little Boy in the World archetype is portrayed and received.

Pros & Cons of Being the Best Little Boy (13:58)

Now, with this archetype being defined, there is obviously a lot to unpack. Some say it's neither good or bad, it just is. And that it possesses both good and bad attributes.

For example, it's great to be successful and achieve things, but at what cost if you're basing your self-worth off of your accomplishments in an effort to compensate for your sexuality? And so, people have their different opinions about this.

But at its core, the Best Little Boy in the World archetype illustrates that young gay men display impressive resilience in the face of challenges inherent to managing a stigmatizing personal secret in isolation from an early age.

And in 2019, blogger Queer Joe published a post listing out his own personal pros and cons of being the Best Little Boy in the World.

So, for the pros, he listed:

·       My parents accepted a successful appearing child

·       In my case, it helped a lot with coming out to my mom

·       Social graces gave me confidence in relations with friends and social groups

·       Ability to immediately establish rapport with clients or potential new friends or romances

·       Easily recognizing similar men

·       Having the benefit of financial and social class status that success brings

And for the cons: 

·       Behaviors push me to search for satisfaction and achievements and outside appearances

·       Pressures of high performance and associated fears and anxieties had to be well hidden or disguised

·       Required being a social chameleon hyper-aware of my environment and ultra-adaptive to it

·       Pushed me into excelling in areas that cause self-loathing, such as religion and peer groups who didn't have my wellbeing in mind

·       Trying to put a square peg in a round hole, especially in areas where I wasn't at all proficient like sports. And lastly, having an underlying fear of scarcity about availability of romantic sexual partners pushed me to accept men who were quote-unquote good enough

So that sounds exhausting, and also relatable.

Living a Life Focused on Doing the Right Thing (15:51)

And according to Michael Dale Kimmel, a California licensed psychotherapist, and columnist of Life Beyond Therapy, this Best Little Boy in the World archetype is telling us that we're fundamentally flawed and we better hide it.

He claims that this is the message most of us grew up with from our family and society. And now in adulthood, we may struggle with workaholism, perfectionism, rigidity, and alcohol, sex, and drugs. Kimmel goes on to say that this concept is also seen in Freud's definition of a super ego-driven life, meaning we're living a life focused on being very careful to do the right thing and worrying that someone will judge you as less than perfect.

And it makes sense considering many of us grew up knowing that our authentic selves were deemed quote-unquote undesirable by society. And so, we worked hard to bury our authentic selves way down and feared what might happen if our peers discovered our identity. Like how many of us have tried to fit into an ultra-heterosexist world?

I mean, I have a very specific memory in high school gym class, which is already triggering enough. But in front of a group of people, my one friend joked that I listened to Christina Aguilera. And I was mortified, not just because I'm team Britney over Christina, but because I knew Christina Aguilera wasn't who the straight guys listened to and I was afraid people would perceive me as being gay.

And so, I pushed back and said that I only listened to Green Day or the All American Rejects, or some band like that, because yeah, I do like their music. But I knew those were more quote-unquote appropriate artists for straight men to listen to, and I wanted to fit in with them.

But anyway, while some of us may grow out of this Best Little Boy in the World archetype, others continue struggling with it in adulthood and continually feel that we aren't good enough that we don't do things right, or that we're fundamentally flawed and there's nothing we can do about it.

Freud’s Theory of Id, Ego, and Superego (17:37)

Kimmel goes on to explain a little bit more about how Freud's ego and id appear in the realm of the Best Little Boy in the World archetype.

So, the id is the part of us that wants to be free and spontaneous, and to stop being so careful and perfect, which terrifies Best Little Boys in the World.

Our superego is the ethical component of the personality and its criticisms, prohibitions, and inhibitions form a person's conscience, while its positive aspirations and ideals represent one's idealized self-image. 

Meanwhile, the ego is the part of us that is always seeking balance and balancing our extremes to prevent us from being too rigid and repressed and too wild and out of control. So, it's kind of the balance between the extremes of the id and the superego.

Now a strong ego can handle a lot of stimulation without getting overwhelmed. Basically, it's like the ideal parent by protecting us from too much risk that can be dangerous, while still encouraging us to find opportunities to grow.

However, for many of us, our ego can be pretty weak. And living in a heterosexist society, we may lean into the superego-driven life wanting to do everything right.

Hiding a Part of Our Identity (18:43)

Luke R. Allen, a licensed psychologist specializing in LGBTQ+ issues and treating anxiety states that while it might have felt incredibly useful, hiding a part of our identity and attempting to compensate in other ways, it's actually problematic, since it makes us feel like we must always be the best and always excel. 

This Best Little Boy in the World archetype also is connected to people pleasing. And it's a formula for failure and frustration because we can't be perfect all the time. And we will all inevitably fail at something in some point of life.

Be Kind to Your Inner Best Little Boy (19:15)

So, what can we do about this? Well, I'm sure you know the answer, say it with me: go to therapy.

An LGBTQ+ affirming therapist can help individuals develop coping strategies for dealing with rejection sensitivity and identify additional areas of self-worth and develop acceptance of their sexual orientation. 

Also, those tips in our episodes on boundaries, perfectionism, and people-pleasing can really help with this. I've linked them in the episode description, so maybe give them another listen as a refresher. But we should also work on overcoming our internalized homophobia and working on being a little kinder to ourselves.

Easier said than done, believe me, I know. But the Gay Therapy Center published a list of 30 ways to combat internalized homophobia. And these are a few of them as they relate to being kinder to ourselves:

·       Find friends in the community who you identify with and understand it may take a while to make those friends

·       Try detaching from your thoughts to assess if you're being illogical and self-critical

·       If you have judgmental/non-affirming family members, learn to love them from afar, so you're not constantly exposing yourself to their criticism

·       And work with an LGBTQ-affirming therapist or life coach

Additionally, a Psychology Today article listed these methods as ways we can be kinder to ourselves:

·       Look in the mirror and say I love you

·       Speak to yourself in a kind tone like you would to a friend

·       If you make a mistake, don't beat yourself up

·       Look at your current life and routine and see what you've been doing to care for yourself

·       Ask yourself what you need

·       And be kind to yourself and practice acts of self-compassion

And going back to Michael Dale Kimmel's sage advice, remember that although most of us were raised to be the Best Little Boys in the World, we don't need to continue to be this way.

It's time for those Best Little Boys in the World to grow up and give ourselves the freedom to be the best version of ourselves, rather than having to be someone else's idea of quote-unquote the best.

Episode Closing (21:10)

And I'd like to close it out with this quote:

"Here's the bottom line. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not flawed. You are a human being on a journey through a very complex world, and you are doing the best you can. You are the perfect version of you, unique and wonderful. Be open to these truths, and begin to leave your old rigidity and perfectionism behind."

And connecting it back to the tarot, Four of Wands in reverse. This is a call to action to bring ourselves back into the present moment. Again, a lot of us have dealt with perfectionism and people-pleasing and all these other things to be the Best Little Boy in the World.

So, we may be constantly focused on achieving the next best thing, so that way, we can continue to earn validation from others to overcompensate for our sexuality. But in doing so, we're one losing sight of who we are and what we want to be, and two not acknowledging all that we've accomplished and all that we've overcome.

And I think too, separate from sexuality, but just going on Instagram, it's a highlight reel of everyone's life. You see people buying houses, going on vacations, getting promotions, getting married, this and that. But it is just that, the highlight reel.

And so, when we're exposing ourselves to that all the time, it's easy to feel like we're not stacking up. And that's something that I struggle with in my own life.

I mean, I'm almost 31 years old, and I have not had the career trajectory, I thought I would have had when I first entered the workforce. I'm still struggling to figure out you know, where, what I want to be, where I want to be when I grow up. And it's easy to kind of focus on what I'm lacking in my career instead of being aware of the other things I've achieved, leading up to this and being proud of those things.

And that's something I have to, you know, be intentional to remind myself of and to celebrate. And I think that's something, you know, we should all do. And again, it doesn't have to be these huge accomplishments like buying a house or getting married or getting our dream job. It can just be little things like, I did this today and it was an act of kindness for myself and I'm glad that I did that.

Or, you know, I had some negative self-talk today and I recognized that and caught myself on it and adjusted my language. Or, you know, I've been having a really tough time, but I made it through the day. And I'm proud of myself for that.

There's a lot of accomplishments that happen through our day-to-day lives that we may write off as being little, but there's nothing little about them. We need to celebrate every success. Because no matter how little you may think it is, every little success that we do is building up to something bigger and better. And we should take pride in all that we do because we've gone through a lot.

You know, I mean, as people in general, we've gone through a lot, but especially for gay men and members of the LGBTQ+ community, we've gone through some shit. And you know what? We're still here and we're still fighting.

We're raising our voices to injustice, we're taking action, and we're working to be the best healthiest versions of ourselves. And not for anybody else, but for our own selves, because we know we deserve that and that we deserve to be happy and treated equal and respected.

So, to all the fellow Best Little Boys in the World out there, I see you. I've struggled with it myself. And I think let's all use this opportunity to recognize that we are worthy of happiness and love without having to be the best at everything we do.

Connect with A Jaded Gay (24:12)

So, thank you all for listening. And with this being the last episode of April, I just want to close out the month by saying thank you all for supporting the podcast over the past two years.

Thank you for listening to the past 100 episodes, such a huge milestone for all of us. I cannot believe how the podcast has grown, starting off, you know, in December 2021 when I was just kind of figuring out, oh, what do I want to do? Blah blah blah. To now kind of having this and having, for me, such a big year where we were we've had so many guests on and just being really excited to kind of grow it and continue even further.

So, cheers to two years and here's to so many years more. I'm looking forward to continuing the discussion with all of you. So again, thank you very much.

And as I close it out, please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Greatly appreciate that. You can also send me any feedback or questions rob@ajadedgay.com. I love getting emails from you all so please feel free to send those through.

You can also connect with a podcast on Instagram, TikTok, SoundCloud, and YouTube @ajadedgaypod. You can follow me personally Rob Loveless on Instagram @rob_loveless. You could check out the website for more information on episodes, guests, resources, links to merchandise and social, all that fun stuff ajadedgay.com.

Also, if you're feeling generous, you can support the podcast on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. Or if you're afraid of commitment, that's okay. You can do a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee, both of those are @ajadedgaypod.

And remember, every day is all we have, so you got to make your own happiness.

Mmm-bye.

Outtake (26:11)

In which social forces. In which social...social security.