In defense of shameless pleasures
We’ve moved on, right? We’re not still lying in bed at night trying to figure out ways to get in with the cool kids, right? Peer pressure is just an unpleasant memory from the past. Now, we can teach our kids to avoid the riptides under popular currents and to do their own thing. Right? If this is all true, then can someone please tell me what a “guilty pleasure” is?
Like all of the pre-fabricated phrases that clamp onto the face of popular conversation and wrestle it into a mumble, “guilty pleasures,” this relatively old — but still trendy — cousin of “at the end of the day” and “on the ground” and “comfort food” gets merrily juggled around at parties and long lunches like a hacky-sack. “What are your guilty pleasures?” a friend asks you. (Bub, you don’t want to know what my guilty pleasures are — but I can tell you they don’t happen anywhere near a Manilow album.)
I will tell you what “guilty pleasures” should not be: the music, movies, shows and books we enjoy. What are we afraid of, not getting asked to the prom? Whirlies in the locker room? Do we really feel such a deep need to broadcast that I-have-Hanson-on-my-iPod-but-I’m-just-kidding vibe? (By the way, I have Hanson on mine, and I will not apologize. Nor will I tell you who is also on there, in order to show that I really do have sophisticated tastes. Furthermore, if you don’t like “Where’s the Love?” you are a dark, dark person.)
You were not drunk when you downloaded “that song,” so stop saying so. What’s next, explaining away the Hall and Oates greatest hits CD on your kitchen counter by putting your coffee cup on it — or blaming the cleaning service for planting that well-worn copy of Twilight on your bookshelf between Kafka and Proust? For God’s sake, you are stronger than that, my friend.
Seriously, if Paula Abdul can . . . be like that, you can have the courage to read Cosmo in-between your 19th century British Romanticism and quantum physics classes. Even I used to occasionally feel the urge to hide my Stephen King novel behind a copy of Chaucer’s Major Poetry, but I came out of this around the same time I stopped calling movies “films”.
Where does it come from, this guilt? If it is a reaction to an artist’s image or to the un-hip style of a movie or novel, well, wouldn’t that just make us a little superficial? And if it is based on a knowledge that the work in question isn’t top-notch artistic or intellectual craft, what are we implying? — that we really are above this drek and that, one night, it jumped us in an alley and romper-stomped us until we yelled “uncle”? Silliness.
My boy draws pictures of smiley-faced people with arms and legs sticking right out of their heads and four bolt-straight hairs on tippy-top. Really happy little people. Clearly, the lad doesn’t have the facility of a Michaelangelo, but I would bet my teeth that his little dudes would warm your heart more than most of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. So what’s to be guilty about?
Have no shame, O lapper-up of the delicious and creamy confections offered to us by the purveyors of pop! What brings you pleasure brings you pleasure. If it connects, it connects. Don’t let the fact that you are in a post-graduate program in comparative literature stop you from weeping through an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
If you feel compelled to comment below, I hope you will partake of the catharsis that comes with saying, “I dig what I dig. Now where’s my Men Without Hats mix tape?” Don’t see it as a confession, but as a boast. It is not a “guilty pleasure” — it is what moves you. Be shameless. Granted, the thump of a kick drum may not be as lofty as a Mozart concerto, but it’s a lot sexier.
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Yeeeesss! One should never feel “guilty” about liking something. For some reason, people seem to enjoy wallowing in that feeling.
Absolutely! Be you and don’t apologize for it!
I have songs from the Brady Bunch on my iPod. And I watch America’s Next Top Model.
State it — loudy — instead of sheepishly admitting it and waiting for the potential onslaught of ridicule. Which doesn’t usually come.
It’s amazing what stays with us from high school, isn’t it?
I participated recently, at my pool, in a bonding “family fire” experience. Twenty aunts, uncles, brother, sisters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren. As we sat, we were asked to name our guilty pleasure. What was hard for me to express, while surrounded by loved ones, I now embrace and will own as a badge of honor. So what if I know all the words to “Build Me Up Buttercup” and who cares if I turn off the radio in my car to have a conversation with . . . . . (myself). I am now proud to own my “guilty pleasure”. Thank you. (by the way first tweet every)
Sorry (by the way first tweet ever) No spell check?? HA
A guilty pleasure is one in which you are uncharacteristically drawn. Some weird blip on the screen of what you will tolerate watching, hearing, learning, seeing, or being.
The guilty part is not that we do not want to accept them, but that some part of ourselves seems to turn and give us the finger in liking it. I think guilty pleasures gives us just a little peek into the undercurrent of our own psyche. The part that isn’t evolved and sucking on Shakespeare… the part that is still quite fine with episodes of the Jersey Shore.
Nothing about any person is totally evolved. Maybe even the Dali Lama watches episodes of Maury with one eye closed and the other squished in rapt horror. I know I do. I mean… seriously… some freaking discernment in lovers! How can one woman go through more than 10 lovers finding the father on one child??? The window is short!! Dear God, how much sex can you possibly manage to have in that window of opportunity?!? Blows my mind.
Maury is my guilty pleasure. I try to change the channel before the drama starts. I really do. Most of the time, I succeed. But those times I don’t… I can’t help thinking… what if an alien race came to Earth well after we are gone and only found Maury tapes to gauge our existence. Ugh. I think that is what keeps me glued.
I was raised in a strict Irish-Catholic family where even thinking of ‘shameless pleasures’ usually resulted in a weekly ritual of standing in line Saturday afternoon for confession…
My ‘shameless pleasure’ is to hum the songs my mother and grandmother used to sing together in the kitchen of my childhood home on a Sunday afternoon while rolling meatballs for dinner. Songs like “ Sentimental Journey” , “Shine on Harvest Moon’ and anything by Mitch Miller ( yes !!! I can still ‘see’ the bouncing ball over the words on the bottom of the black and white TV screen).
While I would never admit, before today, I own and hide my Manilow records ( YES ! I still have a collection of his vinyl records) and, of course, CD’s…. you have inspired me to add to my weekend ‘to do list ‘ copying my Manilow CD’s onto my IPod so at least this ‘shameless pleasure’ can be enjoyed more often !!! Thanks, Chris !!