I really like the song “Call Me Maybe.” I like Britney Spears. Demi Lovato is one of my heroes. “Glee” and “Supernatural” are my favorite television shows. The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles is still one of my all time favorite books, and this past summer I re-watched the entire series of “The Suite Life on Deck” and cried when they graduated.

These are all things that people, normal people, would be embarrassed about, but I’m not. I don’t care if people know these things about me. I don’t care if people look at my iPod and see a majority of Glee and pictures of Bradley James.

These are all things people would call guilty pleasures. I don’t call them that. I just call them things that I love, because having guilty pleasures is stupid.

 It’s dumb to make yourself feel bad about loving things. We are all human, right? Well, hopefully, and that means we love things. We love each other, we love music, we love books, stories, smells, sounds, and everything and anything. We love things. What’s so horrible about loving things? Why would you be ashamed?

 I say that we declare what we love. We declare it to the world and most importantly, we declare it to ourselves. Declare it to yourself in your head, declare it in written word, in a song, or screaming from the top of a mountain. Just declare it and embrace it.

There was a “Glee” episode a while back about guilty pleasures. I remember that as I was watching it, I was trying to pinpoint my guilty pleasures, but I couldn’t. I simple don’t feel guilty for liking things.

I’m a nerd. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe “nerds,” put into these eloquent words by John Green, “are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff-like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is, ‘you like stuff,’ which is not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’”

I like flailing my arms about the prospects of Kurt and Blaine getting back together on Glee. I like wearing my fandom shirts and I like going on Tumblr. I like listening to “Call Me Maybe” and I am not going to deny myself the pleasure of loving the things I love.

Neither should you. We all live every day with secrets. Maybe they’re big, and maybe they’re small, like some of mine. Why don’t we all just live life as who we are?

Being yourself means loving the things you love and being passionate about the things you find passion in. That’s just being a human.

It’s dumb to hide things you love because you’re embarrassed. If you truly loved it, you wouldn’t care what people thought about it. So, if that’s the case, it shouldn’t be a guilty pleasure; it’s just a pleasure. If it is the case, maybe you don’t know it as much as you thought.

I still love children’s movies and picture books. I will always love some Glee songs more than the originals. I love the things I love, and that’s not something to be guilty about, it’s something to embrace.