I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. The phrase means that you should feel bad or ashamed for deriving joy from something that brings you joy. Bizarre. People throw it around when they talk about reality TV or eating chocolate. I find pleasure in a lot of things that would fall into this category, mainly tropey fanfiction.
I used to use guilty pleasure to describe a lot of things I like. I have always been prone to nerdiness and I embrace that wholeheartedly now. One could argue I over-embrace in the actions I take to show the world my identity. (If my Spider-Man bedspread doesn’t give me away, the Harry Potter tattoo on my collarbone usually does it.)
Somewhere into my adulthood, I found that I didn’t feel guilty for my “pleasure.” Not at all. And I’ve banished the “guilty pleasure” term from my vocabulary.
I just don’t think we should shame ourselves for enjoying ourselves. Unless you are really doing something monstrous and harmful to others – then yeah, dose yourself in some shame, work up to remorse, and stop fucking doing it – feeling bad for feeling good is a very self-destructive habit.
Brené Brown writes in her book Braving the Wilderness that “Joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience in our lives.” She adds, “And if you cannot tolerate joy, what you do is you start dress rehearsing tragedy.” This means that we don’t take our joy for what it is and instead start predicting terrible fates or believing that things are “too good” and cannot last.
I think guilty pleasures are another manifestation of not being able to tolerate joy. We need to practice letting ourselves being happy and authentic. Loving what you love without guilt is a way to love yourself. Something we could all stand to practice more.
And okay, if you really feel guilty for something I would step back and ask if it really brought you pleasure at all? If binge eating chocolate is a stress trigger, are you really gaining any joy from it even at the moment? A distraction can mask itself as pleasure, but it’s all on the surface. When I’ve stayed up late reading fanfiction because I was scared of falling asleep and facing another day, that was not finding true pleasure in my fanfiction.
So my point is twofold when you identify your own guilty pleasures:
- Does it make you happy? Is it relatively harmless to yourself and others? Let it just be a pleasure. Shelf the guilt.
- Does it serve mainly as a distraction? Is the perceived joy shortlived? Call it what it is. Distractions are sometimes needed, but don’t have to become a habit. There’s a different problem to be solved.
Do yourself a favor, believe you deserve to be happy. Sans guilt.
With Love,
Natalie