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.
lmao on the edinburgh zoo site it says “there is a daily penguin parade at 14:15 but it may be cancelled last minute as it is a voulntary parade, we do not coax the penguins with food, and they may not want to go out” lmao anarchopenguinism
this is the cutest goddamn thing i’ve ever heard
I saw the penguin parade. It was a very slow parade, because the
pingüinos take their sweet time and aren’t very fast walkers to begin with.
can I volunteer to be a penguin
I feel like the world needs to know the context of the edinburgh zoo penguin parade, becausr I’ve been going there my entire life and I only found out about this the other year.
So a while back (I can’t remember exactly when but I think it was some time around the 40s/50s), a bunch of penguins escaped. A keeper left the gate open so a bunch of penguins just… followed them. And the people loved it. Look at these adorable birds outside their cage just following that guy around! So they get all the penguins back inside and realise that none of them really ran off, they just followed the keeper and went back inside and crowd thought it was amazing, so why not make it a regular thing? Get enough people there that if one of them goes to make a run for it (which at least one has in the past), they can’t get past the people, and let the ones who want outside have a little wander. So every day, they get a crowd, they open the gate, and whatever penguins want to get out can go, waddle about, squawk at people, and then hop back inside.
Also, one of those penguins is Brigadier Sir Nils Olaf III, Colonel-in-cheif of the Norwegian King’s Guard. This isn’t really related to the parade at all, I just love the fact that there’s a penguin in the Norwegian army
Reblogging with Brigadier Sir Nils Olaf III inspecting his troops.
listen all this stuff about lesbians being dumb…bottoms can’t drive…gays can’t do maths…I believe none of this. these are tumblr geek traits, and furthermore it is a known tumblr geek trait to be self-deprecating. do not slander all lesbians gays bottoms and bottom aligneds like this. somewhere out there, there is a femme bottom, living her best life, driving fast and doing triple integrals at the same time…and she believes in you.
Plot Designing 