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.

   • 2012, Seth Vannatta, Chuck Klosterman and Philosophy: The Real and the Cereal‎, 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.