by Buckytat

Created on: July 23, 2010

For centuries, guilt and pleasure have often been uttered in the same sentence.  Although this sounds like an oxymoron, human nature actually desires guilty pleasures whether it is a hidden snack in the closet or secretly fulfilled fantasies in the basement of a club.  What makes something a guilty pleasure?

”A guilty pleasure is defined as something that would ruin us if our friends knew about it.”-MissKendy

First of all, let us examine the guilty part of the phrase.  A guilty pleasure leans toward guilt because of indulgence in something that is detrimental to health, well being, assets or all three.  Then, because it is something we know we shouldn’t do or don’t need, we tend to hide or downplay our indulgence in front of the people we know, thus the guilt.

“A guilty pleasure is something you enjoy even though you know it’s bad for you.”-Stephen Wong

Pleasure is the other word in this phrase because it is something that either we enjoy or is an escape from our ‘normal life’.  An enjoyable escape is a pleasure.

Sometimes a guilty pleasure can create a balance in your life to help keep you sane.  Albeit at times, giving in to guilty pleasures without recourse can ruin your life. With the former situation you can enjoy and escape with the pleasure yet the coinciding guilt will act as a buffer to keep you sensible and in touch with reality.  Take for example, the person who indulges in a whole tub of ice cream once a year because they are having a bad day.  Is it healthy?  Not really.  Do they do it every day? No!  The guilt of what consistency in this indulgence would do to them keeps them in check.  In the latter situation of what a guilty pleasure can do to you; you can either be overcome by the guilt or by the pleasure and lose your soundness of mind.  An example is Judas Iscariot.  Bribes were his guilty pleasure.  He denied what he would do but once he took the money from the council and betrayed Jesus, his guilt took over.  He tried to return the money but they wouldn’t take it and called it blood money so Judas lost his mind and hung himself.

There is an endless list of things that could be guilty pleasures.  Some examples would be indulging in fattening desserts, lying around for a whole week doing nothing but sleeping, playing video games when you should be doing something productive, etc.  Depending on an individual’s morals and standards, something that is a guilty pleasure for one might not be a guilty pleasure for another.  However, the factors that define a guilty pleasure are as follows; anything that you enjoy and use as an escape from reality but that is unnecessary and possibly harmful to health, assets and/or wellbeing.

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