New Rumpelstiltskin? How Gwyneth Paltrow Spins Straw Into Gold
The phenomenal success of Gwyneth Paltrow’s company Goop truly boggles the mind. She has put a new spin on nonsense and made gullibility and ignorance profitable. Is she a 21st century Rumpelstiltskin?
In the fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin had the knack of spinning straw into gold. He was a fictional character, but Gwyneth Paltrow is very real, and her Goop empire has spun her own brand of “wellness” straw into financial gold. But the analogy with Rumpelstiltskin is imperfect. Straw is a real, material substance with many uses; Goop is all about lifestyle and wellness. What Paltrow is selling is more of a mishmash of nebulous, immaterial ideas. Much of it is imaginary, and the claims for her products are not based on reality. The appeal is hard for a skeptic and scientist like me to understand.
The name Goop with its negative overtone is also puzzling. Why didn’t Paltrow choose a more pleasant-sounding name? When I learned the explanation, I was disappointed. Apparently, someone told her that all big internet companies had two O’s in their title, so she just added her initials on either side of the O’s: ergo, Goop. If her name had been Dominique Morris (Doom) or Penelope Perkins (Poop), Or Felicia Larkin (Fool) would she have applied the same metric? It must have been a good marketing decision because Goop quickly grew into a $250 million corporation.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Godmother
The Goop phenomenon is not unprecedented. A recent article in Smithsonian magazine tells the storyof a 19th century forerunner, an American woman the author dubbed “the spiritual godmother of Gwyneth Paltrow.”
A century before today’s celebrity health gurus, this American businesswoman made a fortune marketing herself. Born Maude Mayberg in 1852, she called herself Madame Yale. A former homemaker with a talent for personal branding, she gave public presentations to preach her “Religion of Beauty.” She sold a variety of lotions and potions that she claimed had turned her from a sallow, fat, exhausted woman into the stylish beauty that stood before them today.
Madame Yale, like Paltrow, was selling beauty, leading customers to believe they could look like her if they used her products. Both made claims of attaining biochemical purity. One Goop product claims to increase cell turnover and detoxify pores. Madame Yale sold a blood tonic that would “drive impurities from the system as the rain drives the debris along the gutters.” Madame Yale’s most advertised product was Fruitcura, an elixir that she had come upon during a dark period when “my cheeks were sunken, eyes hollow and vacant in expression, and my complexion was to all appearances hopelessly ruined. My suffering was almost unbearable.” Fruitcura brought her from “a life of despair into an existence of sunshine and renewed sensations of youth.” She said that helping her sisters in misery was a sacred purpose.
The pursuit of beauty might be disparaged as vanity; but then, as today, pursuing wellness was considered not only morally acceptable but laudable.
The FDA sued Madame Yale for misbranding, seized her products, and condemned them and her as frauds. She was fined $500 and barred from selling a third of her most popular products. Was she a wellness visionary ahead of her time, or a scam artist? She was both.
What is Goop?
So what, exactly, is Goop all about? It calls itself a lifestyle and wellness company. “We operate from a place of curiosity and nonjudgment, and we start hard conversations, crack open taboos, and look for connection and resonance everywhere we can find it,” the company advertises, and “we believe that people can take what serves them and leave what doesn’t.”
That explains why scientists and skeptics object to Goop. No judgment, no looking at evidence, no asking what is effective, no prioritizing reality over fantasy; just “looking for connection and resonance.” And people are encouraged to take what they imagine “serves” them (makes them feel good?) rather than asking what is true.
An Empire is Born
Goop started as a newsletter and quickly developed into a vast enterprise with a website, an online shop, a print magazine, a podcast, a boutique, and a documentary series on Netflix. The company is now worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
It even held a one-day wellness summit, which quickly sold out despite charging $500-$1500 per ticket. It featured a flavored oxygen bar, aura readings, an IV drip bar, wellness activations, a Workout Shop, a Clean Beauty Apothecary shop, bee pollen smoothies, kale ice cream, an elaborate swag bag, a free worry bracelet for each attendee, and panels where Paltrow herself chatted with girlfriends about leech facials and with psychotherapists about the importance of allowing yourself to be imperfect. People magazine covered the conference documenting “the craziest things we witnessed” and noting that 99% of the attendees were female.
Products Sold on Goop
Goop first became notorious for selling jade eggs to insert into the vagina to “improve your sex life, balance your menstrual cycles, and intensify your feminine energy.” After the claims got them reported for deceptive advertising, the company was sued and agreed to pay $145,000, issued refunds to customers, and deleted all such health claims for the jade egg from its advertising. That little stumble didn’t hurt the company as they could easily afford to pay the penalty, bad publicity is good for business, and despite Health magazine advising women “don’t put one in your vagina,” they’re still selling jade eggs.
It’s fascinating to peruse the hundreds of products sold in Goop’s online shop. For instance, “G.Tox Detoxifying Superpowder” is a mixture of detoxifying nutrients and botanical extracts to help neutralize dietary and environmental toxins for healthy, vibrant skin. Price: $60 for a month’s supply.
Among categories under the “Shop” tab, you can choose Aromatherapy or Cosmic Health. Or you can see what Paltrow chooses in the “GP Picks” category. Among those are a “This Smells like My Vagina” candle for $75, a Goop University sweatshirt for $195, acupressure rings ($55), a handblown carafe ($1320), a powder to make 20 servings of saffron latte ($64), an amethyst crystal-infused water bottle to help you tap into your own intuition ($84), a set of 49 “Inner Compass Cards” to guide your intuition ($55), a Travel Meditation Kit ($119), a Firewood Tote ($499), a yoga mat ($128), a bamboo toothbrush ($8), and all kinds of supplements, detox products, questionable wellness books such as The Longevity Diet and Hero Foods, overpriced clothing with pictures of Paltrow wearing them to make them look more attractive, and much more. The products are mainly aimed at women, but they don’t neglect men (“G.Tox Himalayan Salt Scalp Scrub Shampoo” for $42).
The candle that “Smells like My Vagina” started out as a joke and was sold for $75, and, unbelievably, it quickly sold out and was then offered on eBay for $250.
An article on their website tells you “How to have fulfilling phone sex.” Maybe that came in handy for singles during the COVID-19 social isolation.
The Goop Lab
The six episodes of the Netflix series Goop Lab are a showcase in human gullibility. Paltrow and other Goop executives listen to nonsense and try out implausible things for themselves. Considering Paltrow’s enthusiastic recommendations for vaginal steaming and jade vaginal eggs, it is hilarious to hear her admit that she didn’t know what a vagina was: she didn’t know what “vulva” meant and she always thought “vagina” meant the whole thing. She thanks her informant for the anatomy lesson!
Episode 1 sent staffers to a retreat in Jamaica to take psychedelic mushrooms, which are legal there. We see them giggling uncontrollably, breaking down in tears, and afterwards we hear them say how they felt the experience was healing. Magic mushroom therapy remains very controversial. It produces hallucinations and is sometimes perceived as life-altering; but it commonly causes vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, and muscle weakness, and can even cause psychosis. Researchers at Johns Hopkins reported a high incidence of “bad trips”, with nearly 11 percent of users reporting that they put themselves or others at risk for physical harm.
In episode 2, “Cold Comfort,” the extreme athlete Wim Hof teaches participants to tolerate sitting naked in the snow and plunging into frigid water. (Well, not completely naked; they did wear skimpy swimsuits.) He says the breathing method he teaches will raise the body’s pH. Well, duh! But that’s not a good thing. Hyperventilation produces respiratory alkalosis, one of the four basic categories of disruption of acidbase homeostasis. It is an abnormal condition that causes lightheadedness, tingling, and muscle spasms in the hands and feet. In the episode, one participant reports those symptoms and says it feels just like her panic attacks, but without the emotion. If continued long enough, hyperventilation can make you pass out. Because of that possibility, Wim Hof rightly cautions against using his method when driving or diving. After passing out, normal pH balance is quickly re-established by the body’s normal compensatory mechanisms.
Episode 3 covers female sexuality, telling women they need permission to experience sexual pleasure and need to be taught how to have orgasms. Isn’t that demeaning and sexist? It features a roomful of naked women and photos showing the variations in appearance of the normal vulva, so that might appeal to some prurient viewers.
Episode 4 is about anti-aging claims. A blood test of “biological age” is applied to Paltrow and staff members before and after they go on a short trial of a diet that is supposed to have anti-aging effects. Sure enough, five days of a low-calorie vegan diet and other brief interventions are followed by slight decreases in the blood test results. But there is no accurate test of “biological age,” and it really doesn’t have any scientific meaning. An online quiz said my biological age was 59; I’m 74 and some days I feel like 94.
In episode 5, energy healers work on staff members. A chiropractor touches a patient and then “moves the energy around” with his hands three feet away from the patient’s body, which he claims is where the energy can be felt most strongly. Staff members cooperate by writhing around, groaning, and reporting how they feel. It’s all imagination: there is no such thing as a human energy field, and tests have shown that practitioners are fooling themselves. The chiropractor tries to explain the scientific basis of how it works but only succeeds in making a fool of himself and demonstrating his ignorance of quantum physics.
Episode 6 is all about intuition. It claims everyone is intuitive and can communicate with the dead. It features a medium and a parapsychologist: that probably says all you need to know. The medium did a cold reading on a staff member that was inadvertently hilarious and self-refuting. Every suggestion from her cold reading was emphatically rejected by the staffer and then another staffer spoke up to say the medium had obviously been in contact with her recently deceased grandmother! “That happens sometimes,” the medium explained. Sure it does.
Jonathan Jarry, of McGill Universitiy’s Office for Science and Society in Montreal, Canada, criticized the series for its “coronation of personal experience,” for suggesting that the subjective experiences of a few select individuals can mean more than the results of randomized, controlled clinical trials.
Criticism
Critical reactions by scientists and doctors were quick and devastating. Goop-bashing became a popular sport. Goop-bashing with logic and evidence may not accomplish much, but it is fun and may influence those whose minds have not already been irretrievably Gooped up.
When Goop praised coffee enemas as a good way to “supercharge your annual goop detox,” Edzard Ernst dubbed it “a triumph of ignorance over science.”
Gwyneth Paltrow was ridiculed for recommending vaginal steaming, which involves squatting over a basin of hot water and herbs for 30 minutes or so. She thinks it can relieve menstrual cramps, cleanse the vagina and uterus, boost fertility, and even relieve headaches. Gynecologists quickly protested, saying that it had no health benefits and was dangerous, potentially causing burns and infections.
Goop claims to empower women, but gynecologist Jen Gunter pointed out that “Giving people incorrect information is the opposite of empowerment.”
Paltrow thinks the criticism in the media is unfair, saying it is just opportunistic clickbait. She insists Goop is not giving health advice. Maybe not technically, but it is advertised as a “wellness” site, and what is wellness if not a synonym for health? Each episode of “The Goop Lab” is preceded by a disclaimer that it is for entertainment and information only. It would more properly read “for disinformation and indulgence of fantasies only.”
Queen Midas?
After careful consideration, I think Paltrow would be better compared to King Midas than to Rumpelstiltskin: everything she touches turns to gold. King Midas died of starvation; but so far, criticism and lawsuits haven’t managed to affect her goopy endeavors. The FDA stopped her “spiritual godmother” Madame Yale, but nothing seems able to touch Paltrow.
Michael Shermer’s book explained Why People Believe Weird Things, but the prodigious success of Goop still baffles me. I guess it shouldn’t; after all, there are plenty of people who still believe vaccines cause autism and that the earth is flat.