A few weeks ago, on a gorgeous, warm afternoon, I was driving my car through campus. I felt too lazy to find an adequate playlist on my phone, so I turned on the local pop country hits station, which immediately put me in a good mood. As I waited to turn the corner, windows down, I noticed David Lynn, the editor of the Kenyon Review and a creative writing professor, looking at me from a few feet away with an expression that at least acknowledged that he heard whatever atrocity was currently coming out of my speakers. Whatever he may have thought about my choice of music, I felt embarrassed.
If a Kenyon professor doesn’t like pop country music, I have little grounds to argue with them. My friends in Nashville, who have every reason to like contemporary country music, don’t really like it. My boyfriend, who spoke for an hour the other day with a woman he thought was Kasey Musgrave, doesn’t really like it. I don’t really like it. But sometimes I listen to it to find that odd satisfaction that some people find in drinking Starbucks Frappucinos or reading about Miley Cyrus’s personal life. Many people enjoy these things, fully aware that they should “know better.” In fact, many people enjoy these things because they should know better. It’s as if the acknowledgement that the source of enjoyment is terrible makes it a treat.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking terrible things. For instance, I often go into Hot Topic and actually consider buying some of the clothes that are definitely for middle school girls who cut their own bangs with kitchen scissors. Throughout high school, I cultivated a strange collection of Hello Kitty-themed clothes, not to be ironic, but because I honestly liked Hello Kitty.
Having terrible taste has worked as a positive force in my life. I have forged and deepened friendships over mutual appreciation of deeply uncool music, food, clothing, and hobbies. Sometimes, I need a break from Jane Austen and Andrew Marvell, and my terrible taste in literature provides a welcome hiatus. In addition, liking such a wide range of terrible things has marked me as someone who is accessible and down-to-earth. How could I edit your essay judgmentally if I read the entire Twilight series and kind of liked it? How could I judge your outfit if I could be wearing Hello Kitty underwear at this very moment?
At Kenyon, I constantly catch myself trying to sound impressive. I frequently find myself under pressure to demonstrate that I hold the right opinions, whether about coffee, current politics, music, or (most commonly) books. Although I like some of the “right” things, I find myself tempted to hide the parts of me that enjoy activities that would mark me as someone with bad taste. But honestly, I think that if you like terrible things, you should own it. We get to dictate what art is, and we get to dictate what we think “good” means. And if that means country music, Starbucks, Pretty Little Liars, Twilight, pork rinds, comic sans, or whatever terrible things you can think of, more power to you. Your terrible taste makes you unique. And chances are, more people than you know genuinely enjoy the same terrible things that you do. I know I certainly do.
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