Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't think her life is perfect. She smokes a cigarette each month, after all. And Goop, her rosé-tinted lifestyle brand, isn't supposed to make you perfect either.
But it still dishes out chocolate that purports to regulate your hormones, claims jade eggs can prevent vaginal prolapse, and makes a fortune on unproven medical advice disguised as quinoa breakfast bars — advice that hasn't been fact-checked since Paltrow launched Goop in 2008, The New York Times Magazine reports.
The Goop brand began as Paltrow's newsletter full of recommendations, and she celebrated when it first brought in $45 in advertising revenue, the Times says. Now it's Paltrow's $250 million pastel kingdom, selling "skincare you can drink," throwing "wellness summits," and encouraging women to know where their latex comes from. It has also rejected medical knowledge in favor of all-natural solutions to all of life's problems, like using frog venom as a psychedelic or drinking bottled water that's full of "valuable electrons."
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Balancing the holistic with the capitalistic is the key to Goop's — and Paltrow's — identity. Paltrow will gladly encourage vaginal steaming, but also covet a $2,132 purse that's literally made of straw. It's an unnatural combination, and one that's grown to the point where Paltrow feels it's time to hire a fact checker, seeing as the bee sting therapy mentioned in a Goop article killed someone last year, the Times points out.
Sure, this questionable medical advice has attracted some negative attention for Goop. But Paltrow tells the Times she's perfectly happy to "monetize those eyeballs." Read more about the world of Goop in The New York Times Magazine.
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