Thanks everybody for commenting on my Fess Up entry. It seems a lot of you claim reality TV as your guilty pleasure. Why? What makes you guilty over it? Because it basically traffics in the humiliation of others? Or because you consider it wasting time? I waste time all day long on TV – I’ve been watching Days of Our Lives and General Hospital for as long as I can remember. I’ve literally spent hours on end watching The Nanny! But they don’t make me feel guilty – stupid, yes.
I feel guilty watching 24 because it goes against a lot of what I stand for – it promotes racism and stereotyping. It romanticizes extreme violence and lawlessness (all within the confines of a government agency – hmmm, sound familiar?). By watching it I’m inadvertently supporting a media outlet, conglomerate really, that I despise and do my best to avoid. Hence the guilt.
I’m sorry Wendy (and please, I don’t mean to single you out, but I have to! 😉 ) but I don’t understand. What can be bad about watching Fiddler on the Roof? Why would you feel guilty?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that by guilty I meant something much more sinister than bad TV. Because we all know that many times the worst TV can easily be the best.
So I invite you all to try again – or elaborate. Please. I’m enjoying thinking about this.
School Daze
Well, class starts tonight and it’s full! I don’t have a thing to wear! I had to rip out a bunch of rows yesterday, but all is right now. That Manos can stick though. It’s like it felts from the heat of my fingertips. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish it this weekend – at least the front, if not the whole thing. It’s going really fast.
I have to go prepare for teaching. I’m not looking forward to it – I have to talk a lot tonight and my cough is getting the better of me. Didn’t I mention? The rugrats got me sick AGAIN!
Wish me luck!
Let’s see if I can make anyone feel less guilty about their TV time with a full confession. I have a show for each night of the week, sometime two. I tape a lot and I am getting the new Comcast box.
On my defense I can say that I do knit while I watch and that I have never watched a reality TV show and intend to keep it that way.
To list all the shows I watch would be too long, so I am going to do on my blog.
Hop over and feel good.
Ok, here’s my other guilty pleasure: Rob Schneider movies (e.g., Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo.)
I win. 🙂
Alright, alright…really something I won’t even really admit to myself?! I sometimes like Howard Stern. Him, not so much the people he has on or the people that call his shows. I know, I know. That’s why it’s a guilty pleasure!
Hm… you pose an interesting question. I don’t know about others who responded, but I guess my first instinct was to name something that I was more “embarrassed” to admit I watched, rather than something I felt “guilty” for watching.
That said, let me change my answer… Something that I truly do feel guilty for watching is action movies. They go against my pacifist beliefs, and (in general) they promote violence. But yet, I still somehow find a few entertaining and will actually spend money to watch some of them.
Oh, I know what my guilty pleasure is~ watching MTV and reading People magazine. I feel guilty reading People because it is such a waste of time~ mind candy. And, I feel guilty for watching MTV because it’s…uh, MTV. Especially the Real World, and Pimp My Ride. I’m embarrassed to even write “Pimp my Ride”. Sheesh.
Your class sounds wonderful. I wish I was nearby and could actually TAKE your class. 🙂
For me, trashy food is my “guilty” pleasure. Buying and eating foods that are produced by giant corporations, often to the detriment of the environment and local people, then shipped half way across the globe doesn’t sit well with me. And then there is the knowledge that what we eat becomes part of us – pesticides included. Yikes. So, I try to grow or buy foods that are organically grown and, hopefully, local as well.
That being said, every now and then my husband and I will get the urge for trashy treats – corn dogs seem to be the thing for him, while I’ve been known to crave fish sticks (please, don’t tell me how completely awful they are, on all levels – I know!). And there are things like Cheetos. Pizza rolls. And onion rings. Maybe onion rings aren’t really bad since they “should” be made with a real onion… Raspberry zingers (chilled in the refrigerator for some reason).
You get the picture – food that comes in somewhat unnatural colors or have some childhood allure to them yet. Yet still the sort of thing that makes you feel like a hyocrite or a fool as you put them in the cart next to the organic potatoes and locally produced organic jam.
I always feel somewhat bad about giving in to these cravings (and not just physically), but I know that periodically we’ll still give in. Since SVW and I typically do the shopping together, we both have to agree on whether junk food is an option or not – and a lot of time, at least one of us can resist. But then there are other times… and I can live with that and enjoy it.
ohh. really cheesy romance novels, all bodice-ripping, ‘heaving bosoms’, and eye-rollingly-embarassing names for male genital parts.
i try and limit the indulging to a few times a year but i don’t try anymore to just stop for ever and ever, it’s just too addictive.
don’t tell anyone, ok? :sigh:
I watch Alias which is a very poor substitute for Buffy, which I was not embarassed to admit watching at all. And I have just realised that I have to confess to reading romance novels too, this is such a guilty pleasure it refused to even come to mind when called – someone else had to point it out. youch.