In Defense of Trashy TV: Stop Apologizing for the Shows You Actually Love

Let me paint you a picture. It's a Sunday afternoon. You've got nowhere to be. You've made a truly irresponsible amount of snacks. And you are deep — like, episode nine of a fifteen-episode season deep — into a reality dating show where a grown adult is sobbing because someone they met eleven days ago chose to give a rose to someone else.

You are happy. You are invested. You are, by almost every measurable standard, having a great time.

And then your phone rings, or your roommate walks in, or someone texts asking what you're up to — and suddenly you're minimizing the tab, fumbling for the remote, rehearsing some version of "oh, I've just had it on in the background" like you've been caught doing something genuinely shameful.

Why do we do this? And more importantly — can we please stop?

The Guilt Is the Problem, Not the Pleasure

The phrase "guilty pleasure" is doing a lot of work in our culture, and most of it is pretty unhelpful. It implies a hierarchy of entertainment where some things are worth your time and brain cells and other things are, at best, a forgivable indulgence. High-minded prestige dramas sit at the top. Reality TV, superhero movies, pop music, and beach reads are somewhere near the bottom, tolerated but not exactly celebrated.

Who decided this? Seriously — who made the call that watching a six-part documentary about a Scandinavian serial killer is intellectually superior to watching twenty strangers compete for love on a tropical island? Both are, at their core, about human drama. Both are designed to hold your attention. Both involve you sitting on a couch doing nothing particularly productive.

The difference is purely aesthetic — and aesthetic preferences aren't moral categories, even though we treat them like they are.

What Your Guilty Pleasures Actually Say About You

Here's the thing that nobody in the cultural snobbery business wants to admit: the entertainment we consume when we're not performing for anyone else is probably more revealing than whatever we claim to love in polite company.

The person who watches The Bachelor every Monday night isn't doing it ironically. They're doing it because they're genuinely fascinated by how people behave under romantic pressure, in manufactured environments, in front of cameras. That's a pretty interesting thing to be interested in! Reality TV, at its best, is basically unscripted social psychology with better lighting.

The person who's seen every Marvel movie in the theatrical release order isn't consuming it despite being smart — they're consuming it because they love serialized storytelling, visual spectacle, and the kind of world-building that rewards obsessive attention to detail. That's not lowbrow. That's just a different flavor of fandom than the kind that gets called literary.

And the person who has every Taylor Swift album memorized, who can tell you exactly which breakup inspired which lyric? They're engaging with music the same way people engage with poetry — emotionally, personally, with their whole chest. The fact that it's also extremely popular doesn't make it less meaningful.

The Snob Problem Is Actually a Class Problem

It's worth naming something that often gets left out of these conversations: a lot of entertainment snobbery is really just class signaling wearing a cultural criticism costume.

The stuff that gets labeled "highbrow" tends to be expensive to access — film festival darlings, literary fiction, opera, prestige cable. The stuff that gets called "lowbrow" tends to be widely accessible, broadly popular, and enthusiastically consumed by people across every income level. There's a not-so-subtle implication that taste is something you cultivate through education and exposure, and that people who like "common" entertainment just haven't been properly elevated yet.

That's a pretty condescending framework. And it ignores the fact that a lot of so-called guilty pleasures are actually doing sophisticated things. RuPaul's Drag Race is a show about performance, identity, creativity, and community. The Real Housewives franchise is, depending on the city, basically a prestige drama about wealth, friendship, and the specific cruelties of social competition among women. Calling these things trashy says more about the person doing the labeling than about the content itself.

The Joy Is the Point

There's also just a simpler argument here, one that doesn't require any cultural theory: entertainment is supposed to be enjoyable. That's the whole deal. If something brings you genuine joy — if it makes you laugh, or gasp, or feel something real — that is a complete and sufficient reason to consume it.

You don't need to justify your love of Love Is Blind by pointing out its sociological implications. You don't need to defend your superhero movie habit by citing the quality of the cinematography. You don't need to preface your enthusiasm for a pop album with "I know it's not exactly sophisticated, but..."

Joy doesn't need a footnote.

A Personal Note from Your Friendly Neighborhood Entertainment Fan

I'll go first. I have watched the same reality competition show elimination scenes multiple times, rewound them, and then watched them again. I have strong opinions about which Bachelor seasons were underrated. I have sent voice memos to friends that were entirely about fictional characters I was emotionally invested in.

And I also love independent film and literary fiction and the kind of music that takes three listens before it opens up. Both of these things are true simultaneously. They're not in conflict. My taste isn't a carefully curated identity statement — it's just a reflection of what I happen to find interesting or moving or fun on any given day.

That's what taste actually is, for most people. It's not a moral position. It's just what you like.

Watch What You Want. Unironically.

The next time someone asks what you've been watching, tell them the truth. All of it. The prestige drama and the reality TV. The art house film and the superhero blockbuster. The podcast that makes you think and the one that's basically just celebrity gossip with better production values.

Own your entertainment choices with the same confidence you'd own anything else you're genuinely enthusiastic about. Life is short, the content library is enormous, and there's absolutely no prize for watching things you don't actually enjoy.

The guilty pleasure era is over. From here on out, they're just pleasures.