guilty pleasure

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guilty pleasure (plural guilty pleasures)

1. (idiomatic) Something that brings pleasure but is considered taboo, unadvisable or lowbrow.

   For the renowned sushi chef, it was a guilty pleasure to eat fish sticks drowned in tartar sauce.

   • 2004 October 31, Kelefa Sanneh, “The Rap Against Rockism”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     Rock bands record classic albums, while pop stars create "guilty pleasure" singles. It's supposed to be self-evident: U2's entire oeuvre deserves respectful consideration, while a spookily seductive song by an R&B singer named Tweet can only be, in the smug words of a recent VH1 special, "awesomely bad."

   • 2012, Seth Vannatta, Chuck Klosterman and Philosophy: The Real and the Cereal‎^[2], Open Court, →ISBN, page ix:

     We all have guilty pleasures, don't we? During the summer of 1993, my guilty pleasure was watching Saved by the Bell reruns.

   • 2013, Laura Frost, The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 242:

     In postmodernism, mass culture is not so much a guilty pleasure as it is the white noise of our time.