Vanessa Fowler, online editor
I’m certain you are familiar with the phrase “guilty pleasure” and it is, quite honestly, one of my least favorite phrases. For those unfamiliar with the term, it essentially describes enjoying something that others might look down upon. Perhaps a male friend of yours says that his guilty pleasure is watching romantic comedies, something that has been traditionally seen as something only women are meant to enjoy.
Oftentimes, guilty pleasures are seen as things you should be ashamed to enjoy because the general public believes that you shouldn’t like it. If it brings you joy to engage with it, why is that something you should be guilty of? The answer is simply, you shouldn’t feel guilty for liking the things you do.
As a 22-year-old, I can proudly say I enjoy watching kids’ cartoons or movies. All of the movies and TV shows geared towards people my age tend to be full of the nitty gritty stuff, more vulgar and violent and sometimes, too much for me. Which is why I find enjoyment and peace when I see a cartoon that is meant to be geared towards younger audiences because the plot points are things like problem solving for a baking contest as opposed to figuring out who this murderer is.
For a long time, I considered watching kids’ cartoons my guilty pleasure. After all, I’m an adult and should only care about movies or shows that are meant for my demographic, which I find unfair. If you can only enjoy certain aspects of the media because of your age, you are missing out so many great stories.
What helps is the growing acceptance and popularity of talking about this without actually using the words “guilty pleasure.” One such thing you’ll hear about are “Disney Adults,” adults who happen to love Disney just as much as children do. They get swept up in the magic and get excited about it, they’re just older.
As you can imagine, for a long time that would be looked down upon for adults to be as excited about Disney as children were because a lot of Disney is geared towards children. But let’s be real, who doesn’t love Disney? There are so many great Disney movies and shows we loved as children, but at some point, we were told that we should only look back on them with nostalgia and actively enjoying them was somehow wrong.
This hasn’t been as pressing of an issue as it once was, but I can still remember all the guilt and shame I felt when it came to me being excited about all these things geared towards younger audiences. I wasn’t supposed to be as invested in them because I was older and I needed to, in a sense, grow up.
It’s not just Disney movies and shows that are meant for younger audiences. Some other things people had been shamed for liking and were labeled guilty pleasures include things like slice of life anime, comic books, reality tv shows or certain video games. All sorts of things can qualify as a guilty pleasure if the general public looks down on the interest, which again is so unfair.
We all have something we really enjoy and like to talk about, so it becomes really disheartening for something we genuinely like to just be labeled as a guilty pleasure. That leads to people feeling as if they shouldn’t enjoy the stuff they do and now, have to be embarrassed by what they look which forces them to hide it from everyone else. There comes a point in life, however, when many people will have to make a choice to either ignore the media items they enjoy and continue to feel guilty about it or enjoy them anyway and challenge those feelings of guilt. As a bunch of college students, the world is full of people who will judge and critique us as we begin our journey into adulthood.
Given the state of the world and all of the pressure on us, I think we deserve to enjoy the things we do without having to justify it or feel guilty for it. So, enjoy your “guilty pleasure” without the guilt. Just have fun with it.