The Guilty Pleasures

I can describe myself. It probably wouldn't be a very accurate description, sure, but I can do it. The description would change depending on my mood, the books I'm reading, what I've been doing the hours prior to the description, how I'm feeling about myself... Some things would remain more or less constant, I guess. The fact that I'm terribly shy. That I like to giggle. That my favourite book (books?) is  Harry Potter. That my favourite movie is Reservoir Dogs. Some things change. Sometimes I'd describe myself as responsible, sometimes as irresponsible, sometimes I'd say I'm judgemental, sometimes I don't give a shit. Sometimes I'm brave, sometimes I'm a coward. At times, I believe that as long as someone's reasonably honest I'm OK with most things they'll do, then other times the most trifling thing upsets me.

These are all things that would be included in one or another description of me by myself. However, there are things I'd never include. It's things I won't admit to anyone, or maybe to just a few very close friends. They include things like the fact that I love watching rom-coms (not just once in a while, I watch at least one or two every single week...), that I listen to Bruno Mars songs, that I like reading books by Lauren Weisberg. Of course, right now I'm censoring myself. My real guilty pleasures I wouldn't admit to so openly, but I think you get my drift. They're the kind of things that you enjoy doing but don't really tell anyone about. The things that will put a smile on your face, but you feel that they shouldn't.

As I get older, these guilty pleasures become less and less private. People who know me minimally well will definitely know about many of them. This is probably because I care a lot less than I did about what people think, probably because as I get older I get more and more comfortable in my own skin. Does this lack of privacy make them less guilty? No. I still don't like myself for indulging in them, though of course they provide a break from the seriousness of only liking the "right" things. I mean, I would be a much more boring person if I hadn't read "The Devil Wears Prada" more than once, I'm sure.

A friend once mentioned that guilty pleasures are what make you you. They are a group of things that you enjoy a lot, although one by one these things are considered mediocre or even bad by general consensus. I don't agree. I find, also, that as I get older my guilty pleasures become not only less and less private, but also simply less and less. I haven't opened the Cosmopolitan web in years, and I don't pay to go watch a rom-com in the cinema anymore (unless it's by Woody Allen, but then, is it considered a rom-com?). Maybe guilty pleasures are an adolescent thing, that wears off as you grow older...

A few years ago I wrote about guilty pleasures somewhere else. I started by saying that I would confess to mine, and continued by making a list. I read that list recently. None of the guilty pleasures I admitted to back then are private anymore. A few of them I've written about above. Others I don't do anymore. A few more are still things I do, but now quite publicly. Today, I started to think about my current guilty pleasures, thought about publishing them again. But no. Guilty pleasures are, as a matter of fact, the things I don't talk about.