The Guilty Pleasure.
Pleasure: a word and sensation that brings us joy while occasionally provoking an underlying sense of guilt due to the standards set by society.
The phenomenon of guilt and pleasure enjoying one another’s company undoubtedly breeds the term “guilty pleasure.” This phrase has been melted so seamlessly within our basic English jargon that I never truly saw it for what it was, an oxymoron. The definition of guilt is being “culpable of or responsible for a specified wrongdoing.” The definition of pleasure is defined as “a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment.” When indulging in one’s guilty pleasure, whether that’s eating ice cream, binging TV or reading mindless literature, you are simultaneously feeling pleasure and guilt, two completely different emotions. Therefore, while entertaining your guilty pleasure, whatever it may be, an oxymoron buzzes within you. Why should anything that brings us pleasure also make us feel guilty?
The answer is simple: society.
Hidden within the concept of guilty pleasure is the demand for conformity. Whether you choose to believe it or not, we are constantly told what we should and shouldn’t do. Don’t eat that, read that, watch that, and don’t be that but be this instead. When we stray from these ideals, by eating a tub of ice cream, watching shows like Love Island or The Bachelor, we feel guilty for it because society has upheld and fostered this notion that those are activities unworthy of our time because they have no “meaningful” purpose. Our guilty pleasures insight shame because we perceive guilt in both the act and in the pleasure itself, simply because society has conditioned us to.
By societal standards today, there is a deeply bred commitment and perception that our leisure time should be spent in pursuit of activities that improve our minds and broaden our understanding. Therefore, to spend that time seeking pleasure in things deemed shameful by society, like watching reality tv or playing video games that will “melt your brain,” we are betraying the fundamental principles that our society is so falsely built upon. Because of this common perception, we often find ourselves debunking the things that bring us joy by labeling them as shameful, simply because they bring us no monumental gain. This lies within the borders of conformity, as we resentfully label the things we feel embarrassed about because society tells us to, not because we necessarily want to. By suggesting something as a guilty pleasure you are acknowledging the “wrong” you are committing in the activity while still managing to conform.
Embedded within our society is another phenomenon that correlates with guilty pleasure. It appears that there is a belief that what we consume defines and ranks us as people. When labeling something as a guilty pleasure, we are ultimately identifying it as shameful and by extension stating we are better than those who actually like it without feeling guilty. By doing so, we are subconsciously eliminating ourselves from being placed in a category with others who don’t feel or see the shame in what you see as a guilty pleasure, which, by society’s messed up standards, isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s almost as if the phrase “guilty pleasure” has become a hall pass.
To look at the guilty pleasure through a metaphorical microscope, it would appear it’s not the wine before bed or the reading of gossip magazines that have no monumental gain, but rather it’s classifying our pleasures as guilty. Branding the things that bring us happiness as a negative can only insight a sense of unnecessary shame. Like every organ in the body, our minds need rest and by indulging in our guilty pleasures, we are allowing them to relax. Why should there be guilt in that? To eliminate this notion, we should try to reroute these feelings of guilt and shame in the things that bring us pleasure and embrace them for the feelings of bliss they enact within us. The first step in all of this is accepting it within yourself first, that these sparsely reoccurring acts are simply there to help your mind take a break and bring you ease. And we should not worry about the subconscious categories society will place us in whether we feel guilty or not for the things we enjoy. We need to eliminate this stigmatization around feeling guilty for our pleasures, and rather do the things we love without the fear of judgment.