In Defense of Guilty Pleasures

What is the best question to ask if you really want to get to know someone?

What is your favorite color?
What is your favorite movie?
How do you spend your weekends?

Of course, no single question can truly unravel the complexity of a person’s inner world. Still, I believe some questions offer a small but meaningful glimpse into how someone sees themselves and the world.

One of my favorites is this:

“What is your guilty pleasure?”

A guilty pleasure is usually something you enjoy even though you feel you probably should not. Something too silly, too childish, too mainstream, too dramatic, or too uncool to proudly admit.

One afternoon, over the rim of a cup of steaming tea, I asked this question to a newly acquired friend. I expected him to say something like “Netflix reality shows” or “junk food at midnight.”

Instead, he paused and said, “Well, I actually have a gripe with the phrase guilty pleasure. If I like something, I shouldn’t have to feel guilty about it. I will proudly defend it.”

There was something fiercely determined in the way he said it, but his voice was also merciful. His answer was a defense, but it did not sound defensive. He sounded like someone who had already made peace with the things he loved. Like someone who knew all too well the particular sorrow of opening his heart, only to have it brushed aside.

After we parted ways, I kept thinking about his answer. Then I started wondering what my own guilty pleasure would be.

I think mine is Taylor Swift.

You may wonder why anyone would feel guilty about liking Taylor Swift. She is, after all, one of the most successful musicians in the world. But maybe that is exactly why. Among people who consider themselves musically inclined or culturally sophisticated, her music is sometimes dismissed as too mainstream, too poppy, too emotional, or too juvenile.

And yet, I like her.

Her songs make me feel like a strong, independent woman who knows her own value and knows how to have fun, while still carrying a tender heart, sometimes too tender for this harsh world. In my opinion, that is golden main character energy.

Her music is the perfect soundtrack for the very important work of romanticizing my own life. I choose to do that every day, because I want to pour my heart into loving my life with the kind of force that might make people think I am a little bit unhinged.

And maybe that is exactly where the “guilty” part lives for me. Not in the music itself, but in the fact that it moves me so openly, so easily, and with absolutely no concern for being cool.

But if we admit the guilt and still call it pleasure, doesn’t the phrase contain a small rebellion?

To say: yes, this may be uncool. It may not meet someone else’s standards of taste or sophistication. But it brings me joy. And if that makes me sinful in the court of coolness, I will gladly receive the verdict.

The more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of self-acceptance. I think self-love is often misunderstood as liking everything about yourself. But maybe its truer form is more layered than that.

Maybe self-love is the willingness to see all of it: the imperfections, the awkwardness, the tenderness, the places where you do not match the ideal image you once had for yourself. Even the qualities you secretly believe are less worthy in the eyes of the world.

And still, somehow, stay with all of it.

For all the good, and all the bad.

Maybe it begins with a confession.

This is me.
This is what I love.
This is what moves my heart.

I am guilty as charged.

Written by SAKURACO