a) they are potentially harmful/not ideal to you, or to someone else. This can include something like gossiping, which, so people say, is not in the best interests of the person about whom you are gossiping, or something like eating food of a quantity/quality no-one would recommend.
b) they aren't cool. This applies to books/music/films that have fallen out of favour, contain excessive amounts of giggling or glitter, or were aimed at a demographic a decade (or five!) younger than you.
So, counting out everything that causes actual harm to yourself or others, which is not a matter for a Nice Place, and is a much more in depth and interesting psychological discussion waiting to happen somewhere else, we're left with something like this:
(I don't know if Carnation milk travels, but I recently discovered that my gran wasn't lying when she said you could boil a can of this stuff for an hour and it would turn into glorious toffee. This seemed like witchcraft, but, no, true. Amazing. It's like science, but tastier.)
So, if I eat the whole can, I will firstly be some kind of incredible competition-like eating force of nature (because seriously, incredibly dense), secondly, I will be sick, and thirdly, and most importantly, the niceness would've gone by about the second spoonful.
But, if I just have a bit, it will be nice. It will be nice because it is not something I have often. If you have something that's a whole heap of Delicious too often, it isn't nice, it's just habit. And if it's habit, it isn't a guilty pleasure. Guilty pleasures are something you always, actively enjoy. They're not bad habits. And if it doesn't hurt anyone (including yourself!) then why would you bother feeling guilty?
(HUGE bottle of whisky-interlude - apply condensed milk-thoughts as above!)
Sooooo, then b). It's not cool. You know when people doth protest too much about how cool/uncool they are/how much they don't care about that? I shall not do this. My point is that, whilst I have been drawn to people because of what they loved, I have never run away from people because of it. So...if you like a film, and I like a film, we can talk about it and maybe we'll get on. If you like a film and I think it's ridiculous, we might still talk about it, or not talk about it at all, but it won't stop me from talking to you again.
When I was nine, I thought this here on the left was the coolest album ever. Truly, I did. I also thought this when I was seventeen, and when I was twenty-two. And I still think it's shockingly cool. At various points in my life, people have thought this worth mocking, or called that album, their guilty pleasure. Why? Why the guilt? Why the faux-irony? One of the most perfect moments I've had was driving through Sweden, years and years after first discovering that Sweden has a special kind of pop music which we just don't have enough of (Melodifestivalen - you're getting your own entry one day), listening to that album. It was like the culmination of an idea, a want, sparked decades before by a bit of music, and it was one of the things that took me to Sweden and on all kinds of adventures.
Compare with this my love of Pink Floyd, which has never really changed in itself since I was a kid, but which has rendered me, at various points in the eyes of all kinds of people who thought they should tell me how my Pink Floyd appreciation made them feel, cool - tragic - pretentious - hipster - boring - muso. No-one could call Pink Floyd a guilty pleasure, I don't think, but you could call them all sorts of other things. Where's the line between loving Ace of Base, and Pink Floyd? Between loving La Boheme and Legally Blonde? Between steak and boiled condensed milk?
This is already much longer than I'd meant it to be, but perhaps I've found a point at the end of it! Too much of anything isn't a good idea, but it's easier to eat too much toffee than too much steak, to hear too much pop as opposed to too much classical, to spend too long lying in bed rather than too long out for a run.
The morals of the story? (Generally - there are no absolutes) it really, really doesn't matter how popular the song/meal/person you like is; it doesn't change - it shouldn't change - how much you like them. Guilty pleasures are generally quick pleasures, little things, a single instance of something that is really great until you tell yourself to put it away. The guilt is perhaps just what makes sure you don't overdo it, turning it into something harmful. But don't ever shy away from the good things, the things that induce smiles, just because someone else might not think they're worth deriving pleasure from. Like this really, really amazing sandwich.
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