Unpopular Opinion: In Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow & Goop (Mostly)

No one is more controversial, polarizing even, amongst women (and many men) as Gwyneth Paltrow and her brand Goop. I know this post might inflame some (a lot) of you—even a mention of Goop in our Sunday links post gets some of you going—but over the course of several years, as a follower of the site and now, after attending this year’s “In Goop Health” health summit, I’ve gone through a bit of a “it’s fine, it’s problematic, it’s good” roller coaster in terms of my stance on it (the brand, not Gwyneth herself, keep reading).

Fair warning that this post is looooong. I have a lot to say here. And while I promise to get to my actual review (and criticisms) of the summit in case you guys are wondering what that THOUSAND DOLLAR ticket buys you, first, I need to take you on my GP + Goop journey to help you understand my thought process about it all.

First off, let’s talk about Gwyneth Paltrow. I’ve gotten into so many heated debates that have ended in arguments not because I feel so passionately about ol’ Gwynnie, but because I think that most of the dislike/distaste for her comes out of close-mindedness, judgement and jealousy, and that’s a trigger for me. I’ve found that my friends who can’t stand her or her brand haven’t ever even gone to Goop.com, certainly haven’t listened to the podcast, and instead, are just reacting to a persona that the media is trashing because of her privilege. Do I agree with everything she’s ever done or said? Of course not. But she’s also just a mom, businesswoman and writer trying to put forth some progressive ideas that aren’t for everyone though meant to be helpful and generally positive. Sure, she was born and raised wealthy and has aspired to turn her career as an actor into a lifestyle brand; people take issue with this, although they would probably never do this for a man.

I was on board with her from the start even though I couldn’t relate to her (at the time I wasn’t her demographic—I was broke and even when I had a TV show, I couldn’t have afforded anything from her gift guide). But I thought she did what she did really well. She found a hole in the market and she filled it beautifully (her cookbooks were good, her travel guides were beautiful). Did I make the recipes or go to those countries? No, but I thought she did a great job at speaking to her audience and I liked watching. She wasn’t putting garbage out there, but her product wasn’t for everyone. It was (maybe?) unintentionally exclusive, mostly for wealthy people and inherently that is alienating to many, and when one feels alienated, it’s easy to be angry/dismissive.

How I saw it though, was like this: if you don’t like her, you don’t have to buy her product or read her content. Goop isn’t for you so just move on. But I also know it’s not actually that simple or straight-forward.

That is, until a few years ago when I found myself turned off by what I was seeing. The fear-based marketing that they were doing at the time had been bugging me for a while, and then one day, an article from Goop with a headline similar to “Are you poisoning your future baby with these toxins?” popped up into my Facebook feed. I can’t find the article now so full disclosure that might be an exaggeration, but it was inflammatory and the definition of fear-based click bait. I think I was likely pregnant at the time and got pissed. Women are already riddled with guilt about what they are putting in their bodies while pregnant and breastfeeding, now I need to feel guilty about the things I might have put in my body (and thus the future fetus) even before I became pregnant?

It just went too far. I already despised fear-based marketing and was just so bummed that a female-founded company was turning it on us.

This might have been around the same time as vagina steaming. That didn’t help her image. But I still defended her. My nanny at the time was friends with a nanny whose family was best friends with her and they had only incredibly nice things to say about Gwyneth and Chris, how they co-parented, how they showed up at every activity, just how normal they were. This nanny also had very unlovely things to say about a lot of celebrities so for her to go out of her way to praise Gwyneth felt genuine. Also, when people freaked out when she rebranded her divorce as “conscious uncoupling” (which she didn’t invent, it’s from the ’70s), I was like “HEY JERKS, SHE IS A MOM WHO IS GOING THROUGH WHAT MUST BE THE MOST PAINFUL THING IN THE WORLD” and she wants to give it a positive spin for her kids and take the power away from DIVORCE. Unfortunately, what it did was make anybody who had gotten a divorce and called it just that, feel bad. Listen to Dax Shepard’s podcast with her about it.

“The general brand did start feeling like they were pressuring women to buy Moon Dust (tried it, gave me anxiety) and jade eggs.”

Anyway, I kept following and defending Gwyneth and liked some of the content, but the general brand did start feeling like they were pressuring women to buy Moon Dust (tried it, gave me anxiety) and jade eggs. To be fair, I consider myself a very open-minded and curious person and love hearing, listening and debating all new theories. When people started buying crystals, I laughed and said, “great, which ones should I get?” (turns out two experts told me the same thing—I shouldn’t carry rose quartz because I’m already too high energy and should be wearing more copper to help ground me). I honestly love this stuff because guess what guys? NOBODY REALLY KNOWS.

But last year, my two best friends from Oregon came down to go to the Goop wellness summit, In Goop Health. Let me preface this by saying that these ladies are the most grounded, solid people I know. All of us were raised middle class, all of us have worked our asses off since college and are the dominant financial earners in our families. Do they like face cream and are curious about supplements that help detox the liver? Sure! But being that they are both in marketing, they more so admired the success of the brand and liked a lot of the wellness components and self-improvement aspects of the brand. Me, too.

If you haven’t already started screaming “BUT THE PSEUDOSCIENCE” at your device/computer, I’m getting to it. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, the brand has gotten some heat for promoting health and wellness techniques that some claim are pseudoscience, meaning anecdotal evidence at best and not actually founded in scientific method. Many people criticized that what they were promoting was dangerous, which was possibly true. Not everyone should be taking every supplement and certainly trendy diets can be harmful to your health. Plus, buying into anything that feels “science-y” and absolute without much—or any—backing should make your red flags raise a little. That said, they’ve since shifted from this mostly, and as a follower, what I’ve noticed is that they rephrase things to be less factual and more “hey, here is a theory,” and they have employed far more scientists and functional doctors than they used to. If you are wondering what a functional doctor is, you aren’t alone. It’s a doctor with a western medical Ph.D. that focuses more on a holistic approach analyzing nutrition and lifestyle and genes in addition to bloodwork to find underlying causes of disease. It’s an absolute no brainer to me as I believe strongly that what you put in your body and your mental health effects and contributes to your physical success. After much analyzing, here is how I stand on this: I drank the alternative life Koolaid/kombucha in addition to my love of western medicine. My kids get vaccinated. We employ medicine when needed. While I previously thought that a lot of what Goop was spewing was pretentious, expensive pseudoscience—particularly when they were using that fear-based marketing I talked about—I’ve actually shifted.

What was the cause of this shift?

Glad you asked. It all has to do with my “spiritual journey” that I’ve been on the last year and a half to well, ha, find meaning and purpose in life. It’s like my only hobby outside of decorating. I listen to podcast after podcast on self-help, business, spirituality, parenting, and wellness, buy and borrow so many self-improvement books, all to help me figure out how to live more consciously, feel more connected to everyone and everything on this earth and essentially have a more fulfilling life.

One podcast that I LOVE and listen to weekly (sometimes I marathon it while I’m cleaning the house) is The Goop Podcast and it’s really where the mental change happened for me (though keep reading for my criticism). If you are on the side of “ugh, I hate Gwyneth and Goop,” please listen to a few episodes before you comment negatively below.

“Do I agree with everything Goop does? Nope, but how can I denigrate a nice woman, trying to do something new and different in media?”

Here’s why: generally, the guests are experts in their field—doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, motivational speakers—and they are pretty inspiring. Nobody is telling you to not vaccinate yourself or your kids; it’s more about how you can rewire your brain to create better habits or even heal physical ailments (TRUE), how eating less meat can lead to less cardiovascular problems, or very interesting theories on why auto-immune disorders have shot up in the last 30 years. I know what lectins are now, guys, and my gut is happier. I learn so much and it’s honestly made me strive to be a better person. Moreover, when Gwyneth is on, you’ll hear how she actually is—a mom, a divorced wife, a newlywed, a business owner, a daughter of a beloved dad who passed,  and most importantly, a human being who admits her flaws as much as we do and is just trying to figure it all out and be a good person. She’s refreshingly honest and vulnerable. Again, do I agree with everything Goop does? Nope, but how can I denigrate a nice woman, trying to do something new and different in media? Her brand has inadvertently made people feel bad and that’s their biggest problem.

OKAY, ON TO THE WELLNESS SUMMIT.

So my friends from Oregon (Robyn and Nicole) attended last year, I missed it, but they RAVED about it being this really inspiring and fun day so I, of course, wanted to join. They bought their tickets and flights and we had it all set, but when I went to buy my ticket, I was SHOCKED to find out that it was a $1,000. You read that right, although it seems unbelievable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS for a one day conference. Woah. Surely I could get a press pass. I knew “influencers” who went last year with 1/10th the following who got passes. But nope. By the time I reached out they were out. In fact, they were out of tickets entirely and they pulled strings to even let me buy my ticket. So then, I had to make a choice and I figured if I could write it off through the business (by writing this article) I would go to A. not let my friends down and miss a VERY fun day, but B. What could possibly happen in 9 hours that would be worth $1,000??? It became more about marketing and brand research than a girls’ day really.

Held at Rolling Greens in downtown LA (which is a stunning space), the summit was an extremely well-produced event, beautifully decorated and flowed great. We got there at 8 am sharp since we weren’t going to miss a second of our $1,000 day and proceeded to spend an hour and a half exploring. We got our B-12 shots in our bottoms, we watched the tuning fork therapy (which I think can work because I believe a lot of theories about energy healing but a 5-minute session won’t do much and the line was always long). We did a guided meditation to “plant music”…that’s right, there is this guy that has an instrument that takes the energy of plants and transforms it into music. It was weird and silly but if you are game to experience it—you’d have to be in order to be there to begin with—then it’s fun. Goop’s Chief Content Officer Elisa Loehnen chimed in to say that “that may or may not be the goopiest thing you do all day” and everyone laughed. They make fun of themselves, they are in on the joke. We ate and drank delicious food and bopped into a lot of fun workshops and tested new products. There were no real hiccups in the production; no Fyre Festival here.

At 9:30, the first session started with Gwyneth and Elizabeth Gilbert, who spoke about grief, fear and creativity in a way that left us almost in tears (and excited to buy her book). Most of the sessions were totally inspiring I took an entire notebook of notes. Lacy Phillips taught us her three easy steps to manifesting what you want in life (I’m currently manifesting a new office space). Most inspiring was Lynne Twist who wrote “The Soul of Money,” a powerful book about the history of money and how we’ve all shifted from citizens to consumers (with the irony being of course that there was a massive gift shop inside the conference). The session with medium Laura Day was so entertaining (I love her) and the final session with Busy Phillips, Olivia Wilde, Jessica Alba and Taraji P. Henson was actually amazing. I was there for the other experts, not the celebrities, but they were all very authentic, articulate and inspiring.

We left with our 20-pound gift bag feeling utterly inspired and spent the next three days debriefing—how we felt it was as a marketing event for their brand as well as what changes we were going to make in our lives because of it. There was a lot to unpack from it.

Now for my criticism.

I believe a large part of wellness comes from helping others and this conference was certainly SELF-help. Now, nothing is innately wrong with that, but there is something so confronting about being in a room with 600 HIGHLY privileged mostly white women, and there not being one word about helping others (except Lynne Twist). No percentage of the $1,000 ticket sales went towards a cause, and none of the sessions were focused on helping anything but yourself. What I love so much about the podcast is that they do dive into a lot of that, and it was missing from the conference. You have 600 either rich or powerful (press) in the room and boy did it feel like such a missed opportunity to not create a conversation or dialogue about what we can do both macro and micro to change the world for the better. So while we left feeling inspired, we also left feeling a little gross and very guilty. Give me the opportunity to give back and use my privilege to contribute. Have a speaker that helps us understand how to best help our community and give back and frankly remind these women that it’s the responsibility of the elite to serve others. It just is. But again, that’s not the Goop brand or ethos, which I suppose is my biggest issue. I don’t really know what they value, I don’t understand their “why” beyond creating interesting conversations and recommending the newest organic self-tanner. The clothes they promote on their site aren’t even sustainable brands. They are a self-proclaimed “Modern Lifestyle Brand” and I suppose I just wish it were bigger, more empowering and more responsible.

But listen, this is a “wellness” summit and frankly can’t do everything, nor should it. I suppose I just want to go to a different conference.

All in all, it was GREAT for what it set out to do, I think I just wanted it to be less about how can I be a better me and more about the earth, community, etc. Will I go again? I’m torn. I mean if I get a press pass, then of course. If my best friends fly down again for girls weekend it will be very hard to stay home, but if they don’t then no I wouldn’t spend $1,000 again. (FYI, all the speakers become podcasts soon after, so you can tune in to that for FREE).

Okay…now it’s your turn (but remember, this is a place of commentary that is both respectful and constructive; please check your anger and blatant negativity before hitting that “comment” button).

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