Secret Sunday: My Guilty Pleasures

Today's Secret Sunday is brought to you by the letter M, for "My embarrassing, and entirely shameful, guilty pleasures."

I hope you all still like me by the end of it.

***DISCLAIMER: If, upon skimming this before reading it, you have found a. . . *certain picture*. . . and have decided you no longer want to be my friend, PLEASE NOTE that that is NOT one of the things on this list. Or any list of mine. Except perhaps "Most Fun To Phaeton-ize".***

10: America's Next Top Model

Now, I don't watch the new episodes when they're on, and I couldn't tell you what season they're up to now. But every day without fail, I sit down in front of the TV and check two different channels to see if one of the older cycles is replaying. Even if I've already seen it, even if I've only got ten minutes to relax and eat breakfast before school. . . I just need my fix of bitchy twenty-somethings, effeminate makeup artists, and of course, Tyra.

9: Memes

I like memes, even though sometimes I am really confused by them, because they make me feel included. I feel like I'm in on some big inside joke, complete with the weird looks from people because they don't understand what the hell I'm talking about and I sound like one of those big douches who spends all day trolling 4chan. Which, for the record, I don't. . . just the Cheezburger network. All of it. And not even all day! Just for a few hours. Most days.

8: Occasionally Wanting To Embody Really, and I Mean Really, Stupid "Scenes"

This actually started from Guilty Pleasure #9, when I discovered Scene Wolf, and unearthed an entire world I had never known existed. An entirely ridiculous and hostile world, filled with tight pink pants and plastic diamonds and girls with terribly over-processed hair. A world I shamefully, secretly, sort of wished I could be a part of.

I actually set out to make a scene kid costume right away. I bought cheap extensions and hair mascara, and found all my silly plastic jewelry.

Then I was reminded of terrible hipsters, and I put on all the thrift store clothes and hand-me-downs I've accumulated through the years and held a solo late-night photo shoot. Then I found cybergoths, and within that, "dread falls". (I decided to make my own out of yarn because they looked silly, and they turned out being way more cute than douchey but I'm still kind of embarrassed about it).

7: Downright Awful Chick Flicks and Hilariously Bad Horror Movies

There is something just so optimistic about watching awful chick flicks. . . but underneath that is something dark and desperate. I am painfully aware of both. I can honestly enjoy watching movies like The Perfect Man and Honey, while fully, and viscerally, appreciating my inevitable transformation into a fat, crazy spinster aunt with impossibly high standards and self-esteem so low as to be nonexistent. It is because of this Guilty Pleasure that The Holiday has remained one of my favorite movies to this day.

I love bad horror movies. I don't mean movies where the plot is bad but everything else is still scary; I'm talking movies like Killer Klowns from Outer Space (the tagline? "In space, no one can eat ice cream."), Event Horizon, which has really grown on me, and Evolver, which is a movie from the early 90's about a killer laser tag robot. I like bad horror movies because I scare really easily, and they don't scare me.

I do own a movie that perfectly combines the two. If you haven't seen Swimfan (a dark, provocative movie about a dark, provocative girl with a dark, provocative secret), please, please do. I'm not gonna say you won't regret it, because that is an outright lie, but it'll be one of those funny regrets you look back on years later and sort of secretly want to reenact.

6: Talking Like A Bro

(Huh. I just looked up "bro slang" on Google, and I learned that in Welsh, the plural of "bro" is "broydd". You learn something new every day.)
If you are around me after ten PM, immediately after watching an episode of Bad Girls Club, or during one of my Ambien fuzzes, you will notice two things.
1) My spelling is just awful, and
2) I am saying a lot of stupid things that you would normally hear being tossed around a frat bar in Ann Arbor.
There's a reason this only comes out of me at certain, shall we say, vulnerable times.

5: Fanfiction

I love fanfiction. There I said it. I love fanfiction. I love fanfiction. I love fanfiction. I am currently mentally writing a fanfiction about myself and a certain charming British reaper.

I would never write it down though. Because then somebody might see it.

In other news, I've started writing a romantic story about two characters named Pelli and Pason, who happen to be Prim Peapers.

4: Teen Fiction "Novels"

I should preface this by assuring you that my favorite authors are Stephen King and Christopher Moore. I can read Shakespeare with no trouble at all. I own a suitably worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. My favorite book is IT, which I've read 23 times and bought five times because it's gotten ruined or loaned to someone.

But I just can't stay away from the Teen Fiction section of Borders.

I've been following the Princess Diaries saga since eighth grade, and I keep rereading the last book because I just LOVEITSOMUCHOKAY. Unfortunately, because the series is over, I need to get my fix of prom-obsessed high-school girls somewhere else. I am fully (and also rightfully) ashamed to report that the search for that abhorrent fix led me to the Monster High ("where freaky is fabulous") series. . . which thankfully only just started, and therefore only has one book.

One terrible, horrible book. That I did not read twice.

Since then I've picked up the Pretty Little Liars series. . . and haven't been able to put it down. Fortunately, there is so much to it (eight books and an ongoing TV series) that I can just suck on that vodka-flavored teat for a while and just savor it without resorting to more. . . desperate measures.

We're all counting on you, Pretty Little Liars.

3: Trashy (and I Mean TRAAA-SHY) Reality Shows

I'm picky about my trashy reality shows. Your Real Housewives can go wife up someone else's house; I have no love for New York; I do not care to keep up with any Kardashians. That said, I'm an absolute sucker for shows like You're Cut Off and Bridezillas. Rock of Love and Real Chance of Love are the only exceptions to the "No Celebrity Dating Shows" rule, because come on, they're hilarious. Like you don't secretly watch those too. In your pajamas. Alone. With your cat. And post GIFs from them on Tumblr.

Like you don't.

2: Tabloid/Fashion Magazines

This only started recently, but awakened a big girly fire in me. A pink one, full of cotton candy and shirtless boys. In the break room at work, the tables are usually littered with (ahem) "juicy" tabloid rags and style magazines. So I usually peruse them while eating my hot pretzel, two flatbread sandwiches, chips, and hashbrowns all at the same time, because all those processed foods can't satiate my hunger for fashion tips and relationship advice from Wendy Williams.

If you should happen to note me looking conspicuously "on-trend" and "of-the-moment". . . well, that's why.



And now, a dramatic pause for the guiltiest Guilty Pleasure it is my guilty pleasure to possess. . .

1: Bad Girls Club

This trashy reality show is so awesome, so bad, so unabashedly, quintessentially Trash TV that it gets its own entry outside of the Trashy TV entry. If you don't know what Bad Girls Club is, here is a summary:

Seven "bad girls" get sent to LA to live in a house together. There's no goal. Nothing more to it. They don't try and lure you into watching a trashy show by covering it up with morals and group therapy. They just put a whole bunch of bitches in a house together, just to see what happens. Sure, they get sent on trips and stuff, and host events. But that's it. If you want a better summary, here you go, but there's literally nothing else to it.

And for some reason, I can't get enough of it.

It compels me. Every Monday, when I get home from school, you'd best believe I am right there in front of my TV, catching up on last week's drama and waiting for the new episode to come on. This is my third season in. I'm hooked. I've even drawn some of my friends in.

And you know what? I'm not sorry. Not one bit. As Muhammad Ali said, ROTATE AND/OR PLAY WIT IT.