{"id":1057,"date":"2015-11-05T18:31:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T02:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/?p=1057"},"modified":"2015-11-05T18:31:29","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T02:31:29","slug":"on-guilty-pleasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/2015\/11\/05\/on-guilty-pleasures\/","title":{"rendered":"On Guilty Pleasures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Guiltypleasures2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s do a thought experiment. If I say, \u201cguilty pleasure TV,\u201d what shows come to mind? My guess: reality shows like \u201cAmerica\u2019s Next Top Model\u201d or \u201cThe Bachelor.\u201d What about films? Probably anything IMDb labels a \u201cchick flick<\/a>.\u201d Books? \u201cChick lit.\u201d And has anyone gone to a boy band concert lately?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sensing a pattern here. Content produced by and\/or for women is suspect.<\/p>\n

For the historical view, Jane Austen is a familiar place to start. Yes, I mean the Jane Austen you read in your AP English class, the one whose books have prominent positions on Barnes & Noble\u2019s \u201cClassics\u201d shelves. Jane Austen, novelist at a time when the novel was a literary genre dominated by women\u2014and therefore devalued<\/a> (sorry, biology majors).<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than any other literary corporation in this world, no species of composition has been so much decried. \u2026 There seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and under-valuing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.\u201d [x<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jane Austen wrote the trashy romance novels of the early nineteenth century, and she knew it, and she understood how unfair it was that her work\u2014and, as a consequence, those who found pleasure<\/a> in it\u2014was trivialized.<\/p>\n

For a contemporary perspective, we can turn to Kristan Higgins, who writes<\/a> of modern romance novels, \u201cThe categorical dismissal of the most-read genre in the world reveals ignorance, not intellectual superiority. This is a billion-dollar industry, and it\u2019s not built on vapidity and clich\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I see it, here is what generally happens. A lot of well paid, mostly white, mostly male executives work to produce and market<\/a> something for (at) young women. Young women then like this thing, like this thing so much<\/em> that they take bits<\/a> of it and make it their own<\/a>, or simply like it so very openly<\/a> that white male cultural commentators bemoan female hysteria (did we never leave the nineteenth century?) and whine about how vapid we all are. Even though we are consuming and loving The Thing that was created for us to consume and love; even though they are making money<\/a> off of our engagement<\/a> with The Thing.<\/p>\n

To recap: the media understood to be \u2018guilty pleasure\u2019 content tends to be specifically marketed at women, who are then belittled for their consumption of it. Young women\u2019s enthusiasm is something akin to a reverse Midas touch: whatever we claim becomes tainted\u2014even though we might, more or less literally, be handing gold to the men who hold the copyright.<\/p>\n

Men, on the other hand, are allowed to love things<\/a>. We might roll our eyes a bit at Dad\u2019s obsession with NASCAR or an uncle\u2019s passion for the NFL, but we don\u2019t tend to automatically assume men who enjoy these things are less intelligent and less worthy of our respect. Following a sport or two is acceptable, normal. This is rather amusing when one considers that, in the hands of male fans, sports have become the definition of guilty <\/em>pleasures\u2014can we talk about the damage done by post-game riots<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tempted, here, to tell you that I don\u2019t read romance novels, to note that I\u2019ve never even been<\/em> in the bodice-ripper section of a bookstore or library, to distance myself from this subject and impress you with my intellectual bona fides. But while that specific example might be true, I do consume a large amount of guilty pleasure media, and I\u2019m mostly interested in my knee-jerk impulse to make a shield out of every word of Dostoyevsky and Nabokov and Flaubert that I\u2019ve ever read. (See what I did there?)<\/p>\n

The concept of \u2018guilty pleasures\u2019 is gendered and misogynistic, and I\u2019m tired of playing defense. Being generally clever or thoughtful or equally passionate about High Culture Things shouldn\u2019t be the get-out-of-jail-free card that \u2018permits\u2019 us to be enthusiastic about our \u2018guilty pleasures.\u2019 I\u2019m tired of using a bargaining system to distance myself from things I love, this system of, \u201cI am capable of speaking intelligently about Important Things and therefore you should take me seriously as a person even after I\u2019m fangirled in front of you.\u201d I\u2019m tired of people praising me when I an express an interest in something that isn\u2019t thought of as a \u2018guilty pleasure,\u2019 because \u2018I\u2019m not like other girls<\/a>\u2019 is another sentiment I\u2019d like to eliminate from the way in which I engage with the world.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that I never have any problems with my \u2018guilty pleasure\u2019 consumption. This is not to say that I don\u2019t identify with Roxane Gay\u2019s conception of \u2018bad feminist<\/a>.\u2019 As author Daniel Jos\u00e9 Older wrote in an April 2014 Buzzfeed article<\/a>, \u201cWe can love a thing and still critique it. In fact, that\u2019s the only way to really love a thing,\u201d which is perhaps a little bit like saying we can have our cake and eat it, too.<\/p>\n

It would be my pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s do a thought experiment. If I say, \u201cguilty pleasure TV,\u201d what shows come to mind? My guess: reality shows like \u201cAmerica\u2019s Next Top Model\u201d or \u201cThe Bachelor.\u201d What about films? Probably anything IMDb labels a \u201cchick flick.\u201d Books? \u201cChick lit.\u201d And has anyone gone to a boy band concert lately? I\u2019m sensing a pattern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,205,55],"tags":[276],"class_list":["post-1057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-historical-perspective","category-pop-culture","tag-miel-jasper"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}