Unguilty Pleasures

Generally, anything deemed a ‘guilty pleasure’ means it must be an indulgence hidden from sight for fear of judgment or embarrassment. It’s a relatively new concept too, first appearing in print in 1990.

Ask around as to what your friend’s guilty pleasures might be and you may hear a collection of trashy TV listings from Keeping Up With The Kardashians to Dr Pimple Popper or any of the ‘housewives’ franchises. You might also receive word of vintage Kylie Minogue music at kitchen discos or tales of midlifers roaring out songs from The Greatest Showman at the top of their voices as they sit in traffic (of course, maybe that’s just the Heyday writers!).

Recently, I’ve read and thought a lot about this premise, the fact that there are many things which fall into this category of ‘guilt’ that we feel, for want of a better term, ashamed about. Enough, at least, to label it in such a way that society deems acceptable. Something to enjoy, but not proudly. Not enough to make a song and dance about it. Outside of your own kitchen anyway.

Alan Jern of Psychology Today looked at this concept in detail; why we feel bad for liking certain things – and if we should at all. He draws the same conclusion, it always comes back to shame. Philosophers Kris Goffin and Florian Cova also noted that the term tends to be associated more with "shame or embarrassment rather than with guilt itself."

They even ran a study on it. They asked 89 online subjects to think about a work of art, like a TV show, that they felt bad about enjoying. They then rated how strongly they agreed with various statements that tested different possible reasons for why they might feel bad. For example, one statement read, "I feel bad about enjoying this work because there is, objectively speaking, nothing good about it," tested whether subjects felt bad for liking things that were artistically bad. And another statement tested whether subjects felt bad because others might judge them negatively for enjoying it.

Jern goes on to say that many psychologists believe that guilt is adaptive in that it motivates people to follow social norms. “Essentially, we feel bad when we break the rules, which then prevents us from breaking the rules as often. When it comes to TV shows and other forms of art, the norms might be what is socially acceptable to like.”

Social media heightens this concept. It’s always easier, and indeed accepted, to follow the crowd when it comes to what is deemed good or bad when in the arts.

Emily in Paris is a recent example. It was almost universally rejected. It was stereotypical, unrealistic and awash in its own privilege. But how many secretly really enjoyed it and felt they couldn’t say so? It was quickly cast aside as something of little substance without addressing the fact that it was, regardless of popular opinion, okay to enjoy it for what it was: light relief and distraction from Covid-19. The trailer for Wild Mountain Thyme garnered the same reaction, it was so bad it couldn’t possibly be good, but if under the umbrella of a guilty pleasure, it could possibly be enjoyed without judgement.

Grammy-winning Canadian musician Chilly Gonzales even wrote a book, Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures, exploring why people would rather label their tastes as "guilty pleasures" instead of embracing them wholeheartedly.

On one hand, he argues that some simply don’t have enough confidence in their tastes to be open about them. On the other, it comes about naturally as we age and form social groupings. “When you become a teenager, your taste becomes an expression of your social group. It's a self-definition exercise. You want to listen to different music than your older brother or belong to a certain kind of subsect of your school. So you decide to listen to music for that reason. When those come into conflict, there lies the guilty pleasure.”

They all mention the same thing: At the end of the day, anything that brings you pleasure, is still a pleasure.

Where is the sense in rejecting what brings us joy? Maybe you won’t be intellectually stimulated by Emily in Paris. But that’s okay. You’ll relax, switch off and forget about the problems of the world for 40 minutes. And tuning in to Sophie Ellis Bextor’s frankly marvellous kitchen discos on Instagram and singing along at the top of your voice? There are so many benefits to that, so no guilt allowed.