I must have been 8 or 9 when I first became obsessed with The Little Mermaid. I had the VHS, the cassette tape, the easy piano sheet music—you name it, I owned it. And one of my favorite pastimes was to take a cushion from the couch, place it on my back with a green macramé shawl holding it in place, and perform "Under the Sea" for my entire family. And yes, you better believe this white Jewish child did the full Jamaican accent. My family adored it. I was asked to do command performances. It was one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano just so I could accompany myself. And while there's nothing wrong with a child soaking up that validation, I think there was something else going on. I didn't want to be Sebastian the crab; I wanted to be Ariel.
I wanted to find a prince washed up on a beach and sing to him until he fell in love with me. I wanted him to see beyond my voice and care for the person underneath. I wanted my family to celebrate our unorthodox marriage with rainbows. I knew that wasn't "normal"—I watched enough Sally Jessy Raphael and Jerry Springer to know that those people were always the butt of the joke. Family vacations to Palm Springs always included snide comments about "the boys" in town.
Looking back, it’s so clear to me what I was learning. I couldn’t control the way my family would react if they found out I was gay. But I could control how well I sang, how hard I worked, how much praise I earned. I had to be the best singer, the most committed performer. If I could get them all to love me enough for my accomplishments, then maybe when they found out I was queer they could somehow overlook that part of me and love me despite it. Ariel was willing to trade her voice for a chance at love, but I was making a different bargain with mine.
The Bargain We Make to Be Loved
It turns out I’m not alone here. In a study inspired by Andrew Tobias’ memoir The Best Little Boy in the World, researchers Pachankis and Hatzenbuehler explored how growing up gay informs how men understand their value. They found that young queer men were more likely than their straight peers to derive their self-worth from their performance and their looks, especially if they had spent a long time closeted or experienced anti-LGBTQ+ stigma growing up. When you can’t control whether or not your friends and family will accept you for who you truly are, you find other things you can control. Your grades. Your looks. Your career. Maybe if you surround yourself with enough markers of external success, they’ll all love you despite your queerness.
But what happens when we don’t need the shield anymore? If you’re like me, you grew up, you came out, and you found that the people who actually mattered loved you for exactly who you are. Maybe you crafted a career, made friends, found a partner, and built a life that seemed unimaginable to your younger self. But the little boy who believed he had to be the best in order to be loved hasn’t gone away. He didn’t get the memo. He’s still pushing you to get to the gym, to find the next accomplishment, to reach the next step in your career. He’s still living by the same rules, just wearing grown-up clothes.
I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with wanting to be good at something. I love to sing, especially with an adoring audience. I feel a sense of pride when a session with a client goes particularly well. But there’s a difference between enjoying the satisfaction of a job well done and needing that rush to know that you’re OK. When our worth is on the line, there will always be something more to do. The praise feels great for a moment, but we spend our lives chasing more applause. Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent much of my adult life collecting evidence that I deserve love but never actually being convinced by any of it.
When Being Good Enough Is Enough
Frankly, I’m exhausted trying to prove this to little me. And so I’ve decided to try something new. Now, it would be so easy to say that the answer is more self-love, but then you’d just go out there and become the best at self-love there ever was. Down, Best Little Boy. Down! Actually, I think the answer is defiance. When I notice that familiar urge to prove my worth, I’m going to see what happens if I just let it be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up my ambition or pretending that being good at something doesn’t matter to me. But I’m no longer interested in making that a condition for whether or not I deserve to be loved. I’m going to allow myself to let someone down. I’m going to be just so-so at something. I’m going to let people see parts of me that are mediocre, at best. Laying down the shield feels really dangerous, but I’m ready to try.
That little boy with the couch cushion on his back loved performing so much, and I’d never dream of taking that joy away from him. I’d ask him to reconsider the Jamaican accent, but there are some things we just can’t take back. What I want to release him from is the belief that he needed to give his family a reason to love him once they learned the truth. Ariel gave up her voice because she thought that was the cost of loving who she loved. I spent a lifetime pushing myself to make mine stronger for much the same reason.
These days when I sing, I still love the applause. I’m just trying to remember that the people who love me will still be there, whether or not I sing an encore.
References
Pachankis, J. E., & Hatzenbuehler, M. L. (2013). The social development of contingent self-worth in sexual minority young men: An empirical investigation of the “Best Little Boy in the World” hypothesis. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35(2), 176–190.