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Home > Blogs > Women's Life > Archives > 2011 > June > 14
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Confession time: Guilty pleasures
Men and women alike, we all harbor them. Indulgences. Secret hobbies. Quirks. Things we allow ourselves to enjoy, but are embarrassed to share because someone, somewhere, told us we’re not supposed to like them - or at least, not like them too much.
Here are some of mine:
Daytime television. I work at night and we don’t have cable or DVR, so sometimes it can feel like I’m scraping the barrel as I flip through the few channels we do get over the antenna. I usually skip over the soap operas and game shows and end up watching reruns of old sitcoms. Roseanne has become one of my favorites - the writing is pretty sharp and the characters are easy to care about. But the guiltiest of the guilty pleasures has to be the reruns of old seasons of The Real Housewives of (Insert City Here). At first I just had it on as background noise while I cleaned the kitchen or folded laundry. I didn’t want to like it. I thought it was vapid and IQ-draining and stereotyped and everything bad about reality TV. But eventually I fell victim to the over-the-top drama and petty disputes. Sigh At least I have something to gossip about with my coworkers.
Lady Gaga. I resisted her for almost a year after she became a star, but she makes herself pretty darn hard to ignore. I’m not saying I idolize her or approve of everything she says and does, but at the very least she’s an interesting spectacle who makes catchy, fluffy music I can dance to in the car, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (Sidebar: I wish we still lived in an age where we could use the word “Lady” as a title. I’ve never been fond of Mrs. or Ms., but Lady Becker? Yes please!)
Advice columns. Especially relationship advice columns, not because my relationship is in trouble, but because I married my high school sweetheart and skipped the whole “being single/dating/breaking up/getting over it” thing. It’s all foreign to me so I am fascinated by others’ experiences with it. It also makes me grateful for what I have. Sure, I’ve got problems, but at least I’m not stressing out about when to say “I love you” or what to say on a first date.
Puzzle books. My mom used to buy these for my brother and me when we went on long family trips. Logic puzzles, crosswords and word searches were always my favorites. When my husband and I flew to Washington last winter to visit family, I saw a puzzle book at the airport and HAD to have it, if only for old times’ sake. I know “there’s an app for that” nowadays, and I do play digital Scrabble, but puzzle books never run out of battery life.
Real estate listings. Oo, this one is a doozy. It’s all about the fantasy - dreaming about a life in such and such house, how I would decorate it, what my furniture would look like in it, waking up every morning in that master bedroom with the skylights and going downstairs to the kitchen with the granite countertops and stainless steel refrigerator, the pitter-patter of my dog’s toenails on a hardwood floor…I love every minute of it, even if I have no intention of (or money for) buying a new house soon. It’s also fun, if bittersweet, to look at the houses I’ll never be able to afford in this lifetime. I don’t know of any English majors/grads living in spotless, ultramodern, million-dollar riverfront condos, do you?
So what are your guilty pleasures? And please, folks, keep it clean. I know the phrase “guilty pleasure” might bring to mind any number of dirty jokes; I can promise you they will be removed.
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