Gwyneth & Goop

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow Thinks You Need $60 Sex Dust (http://www.allure.com/beauty-trends/blogs/daily-beauty-reporter/2015/01/goop-sex-dust.html)
BY LAUREN CARUSO, SENIOR DIGITAL EDITOR, JANUARY 22, 2015, 5:35:00 PM

http://www.allure.com/beauty-trends/blogs/daily-beauty-reporter/sex-dust.jpg

Today in Things Gwyneth Paltrow Thinks You Really, Really Need (TM): Sex Dust. $60 Sex Dust, no less. The woman who is downright obsessed with chopped salad (her words, not ours) is going crazy over a brand called Moon Juice. GP featured a four-ounce jar of the stuff on Goop this week and was nice enough to supply her readers with a recipe for Sex Bark(!), so you’re not just pouring it down your throat all willy-nilly.

In the brand’s words, the purpose of Sex Dust, an “aphrodisiac warming potion,” is to help “send waves of blood to all the right places.” It’s made from an herbal tonic called he shou wu, which Google says helps delay graying hair and knee replacements. Gwynnie promises that it’ll promote “enjoyable sex and fertility for both men and women.” Oh, and it’s low-glycemic, just like its cousin Spirit Dust. Thank goodness.

According to the Goopster, "The spirit dust feeds harmony and extrasensory perception through pineal gland de-calcification and activation, while the hemp seeds feed the brain, nourish the eyes, stimulate blood cells, and beautify hair and skin." Just in case you’re feeling extra ****ed off from the long line at Dean & Deluca. Just kidding. There’s never a line at Dean & Deluca.

All jokes aside, the woman always looks like she just emerged from a cashmere cocoon made by a thousand gluten-free hummingbirds, so maybe she’s onto something.



Sex Dust (https://www.moonjuiceshop.com/collections/tonics-dusts/products/sex-dust)
A lusty adaptogen to ignite, excite and cultivate the sexual flow in both men and women. This ancient, warming elixir sends waves of sensitivity and power to all the right places, as it supports your primordial energy and vital essence. A holistic approach to deeply nourished sexual vigor, supports not only the bedroom flow but your highest creative potential.

Add one teaspoon to 8oz of any hot or cold liquid. Delicious with nut milk water or tea. 15.5 servings per jar. Don't be afraid to double dose!

Wild Crafted Ingredients: Ho Shou Wu, Cistanche, Cacao, Shilajit, Maca, Epimedium, Schisandra, Stevia

Quantity 1 $60.00

More on Gwyneth and TCM here (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57050-Celebrites-endorsing-TCM). More on Ho Shou Wu here (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?56029-he-shou-wu).

[mickey]

Greetings,

Wasn't He Shou Wu trashed a few years ago as being toxic to the liver? I guess it comes down to who is selling it and who is making money off of it.

Why spend that kind of money on something you can make yourself for so much less?


mickey

[GeneChing]

If I could get celebrity starlet endorsement like these, I could sell qi beaters (http://www.martialartsmart.com/20-43.html) like hotcakes.

But seriously now, the creator of Moon Juice Sex Dust claims she never went to college. I wonder now if she even went to TCM school. What qualifies one as a 'health master'?


‘I never went to college a day in my life’: The woman behind Gwyneth Paltrow’s mind-altering ‘sex dust’ (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/7004660/Meet-the-woman-behind-Gwyneth-Paltrows-sex-dust.html)

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/02744/Gwyneth-Paltrow-m_2744361a.jpg
Gwyneth swears by moon dust, but what is it? Getty Images

By HANNAH FERRETT
03:39, 16 Mar 2016

GWYNETH Paltrow swears by adding a teaspoon of moon dust to her daily morning smoothie, but what is the mood-boosting powder and who created it?

Moon dust is the brainchild of Amanda Chantal Bacon and comes in six varieties - sex, spirit, action, brain, goodnight and beauty. Each blend is supposed to radically enhance one area of your life, so whether you need help in the sack or are more concerned with a good night's sleep there's one for you.

Amanda explained: "Gwyneth and I are successful in our fields. We have disposable income and choose to use the adaptogens [plants with holistic effects], herbs and plants several times a day.

“We don’t say you have to have mucuna [a medicinal herb] or you will be fat, sick and nearly dead. We are just a resource for this stuff, and maybe you just sprinkle some raw herbs on a bowl of spaghetti.

"I never went to college a day in my life. I just took art classes, travelled the world, and worked.”

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/02744/brown-paper_2744360a.jpg
Looking to boost your sex life? Perk up with the powder Getty Images

Amanda is a health master, with two of her Moon Juice shops already open in Los Angeles.

Although she hasn't been to university, she's been obsessed with clean living since she was a kid and was so ill she was regularly sick.

She said: "I had severe respiratory problems at a very young age, and I coughed so much at night that I threw up.

"I went on antibiotics and did the whole Western rigmarole, but one day in a health-food store an ayurvedic [holistic] doctor heard me coughing and told me to stick out my tongue.

"Within minutes he said to stop eating sugar, wheat and dairy, and I was completely healed in a matter of days."

That wasn't the end of her problems though, with the moon dust guru suffering a slew of health issues when she hit her teenage years.

With mood and learning problems as well as pre-diabetes, Amanda began to look into her diet. She claims to have completely healed herself by using herbs and supplements.

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/02744/Rachel-McAdams_2744355a.jpg
Rachel McAdams is also a fan Getty Images

She added: "I find that I’ve been able to transcend all of those diagnoses."

Amanda doesn't have any qualifications in nutrition or medicine, but has a herbalist on hand to help her come up with the powders. They are influenced by Eastern cultures and have been a major hit with other celebrities too, such as Hollywood actresses Shailene Woodley and Rachel McAdams and star Zoe Kravitz.

Fans claim the dusts improve their hair, skin and nails, but anti-ageing expert Dr Lionel M Bissoon is not so sure. He remains "a bit skeptical" about their promises, querying whether they contain enough active ingredients to have much impact.

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/02744/Zoe-Kravitz_2744356a.jpg
Zoe Kravitz has hit the moon dust too Fame Flynet

Amanda's dedication to her diet has been questioned before. After her food diary, which contained many herbs and supplements, was published in a magazine many poked fun at it - but Amanda insists the teasing is actually positive.

She argued: "When you strip away the bad manners, the questions that are coming up are valid and intelligent: ‘Does it work? Is it safe? Is it too expensive?'"

[herb ox]

True that, Gene! Moon Juice has a very well composed marketing presence that would convince the targeted female audience that they absolutely need this product.

Regarding the formula itself, it is interesting, though I doubt the "dust" is enough to get much of an effect, though some folks are very sensitive.

He Shou Wu builds blood and essence.

Cistanche is Rou Cong Rong - a moist Kidney Yang tonic - libido is linked the Kidney function (esp the Yang) in TCM. This herb is also good for keeping your poop regular, cause, you know, nothing kills the mood like missing your daily BM.

Shilajit is an Ayurvedic substance that is basically an ooze that comes from the rocks in the mountains of the Himalayas. Contrary to the Wikipedia entry, it has been shown in several studies to have adaptogenic, cardioprotective and immune modulating effects.

Cacao is raw chocolate substance, which as you know is an aphrodisiac for women :p

Maca is a root from Peru that is very nourishing, stimulating to the nervous system and has p-methoxybenzyl isothiocyanate which supposedly can have aphrodisiac effects as well.

Epimedium is Yin Yang Huo or ***** Goat Weed... any questions? Oh, TCM cautions against long term use of this substance 'cause it'll harsh your Kidney Yin with too much Yang movement.

Schisandra is Wu Wei Zi, the 5 Flavored seed - it's known for its astringent qualities and its ability to "calm the spirit" - 'cause, you know... nothing kills the mood more than getting into an argument 'cause you're all tense. This might actually help to moderate the drying effect of the ***** goat weed.

Not a bad formula, but for 60 bucks... sheesh. :rolleyes:

peace out

herb ox

[GeneChing]

When Gwyneth's (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Moon-Juice-Sex-Dust) Goopy Jade Eggs (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg) get Busted (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?55120-Busted-TCM-practitioners)...


Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop product claims 'deceptive,' watchdog group says (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Goop-health-claims-Gwyneth-Paltrow-TINA-11954023.php)
By Dianne de Guzman, SFGATE Updated 8:08 pm, Wednesday, August 23, 2017

http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/61/67/30/13071898/3/920x920.jpg
Gwyneth Paltrow attends book signing at goop-in@Nordstrom at The Grove on June 8, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Goop has come under fire for a number of products the site sells, with a watchdog group criticizing various health claims in the site's product marketing. Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images For Goop
Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images For Goop

Gwyneth Paltrow-run lifestyle website Goop is being called out again for its wellness products, after a consumer watchdog group cited more than 50 instances in which the site offered "deceptive" health claims in marketing for its products.
The group has filed a complaint with the California Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force to look into Goop's marketing practices.
Truth in Advertising compiled a list of instances it felt Goop falsely claimed that its products (or third-party products) could "treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms" for a variety of health issues, from thyroid dysfunction and infertility to uterine prolapse and hormonal imbalance.
"These [Goop-endorsed products] include crystal harmonics for infertility, rose flower essence tincture for depression, black rose bar for psoriasis, wearable stickers for anxiety, and vitamin D3 for cancer," TINA.org wrote in a blog post on its site Tuesday.
"The problem is that the company does not possess the competent and reliable scientific evidence required by law to make such claims."
The group fired off a letter to Paltrow and the Goop group about its findings, asking on Aug. 11 that the company modify how its content, in what TINA.org labelled as "illegal health claims." The group gave Goop a deadline of Aug. 18 to make changes to the product descriptions, before they took its issues with the site to the California Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force.
At its preset deadline, the group felt that the changes Goop made were not enough and sent a letter to California regulators.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, a Goop representative said that "while we believe that TINA's description of our interactions is misleading and their claims unsubstantiated and unfounded, we will continue to evaluate our products and our content and make those improvements that we believe are reasonable and necessary in the interests of our community of users."
The representative went on to say that the company felt it "responded promptly and in good faith to the initial outreach from representatives of TINA and hoped to engage with them to address their concerns. Unfortunately, they provided limited information and made threats under arbitrary deadlines which were not reasonable under the circumstances."
Paltrow and Goop's health claims have come under fire for various products over the past few years, since its jump from a beauty newsletter to selling wellness products. Goop made past headlines for promoting $120 Body Vibes stickers that were allegedly made with "the same conductive carbon material NASA uses to line space suits," saying the stickers would "rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies." (NASA, in turn, refuted those claims, and a former chief scientist at NASA was quoted as saying, "Wow. What a load of B.S. this is.")
Goop was also criticized for selling jade eggs, claiming that inserting the egg-shaped stones into a woman's vagina would balance hormones and improve the user's sex life. That information was disputed by San Francisco obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Jennifer Gunter, who said that using the jade egg as directed could lead to bacterial vaginosis or potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome.
The site also drew recent comparisons to radio show host Alex Jones's InfoWars and the two sites' shared love for selling wellness items with questionable health claims.

[GeneChing]

She may not be a trusted health advisor but I give her props for marketing.


Why Gwyneth Paltrow Is Not Your Trusted Health Advisor (https://www.healthline.com/health-news/criticism-of-paltrow-goop-health-advice#1)
The actress’ Goop website promotes health gear and diets. It also has pushed vagina eggs and coffee enemas. That has brought it some harsh criticism.

https://www.healthline.com/hlcmsresource/images/4901-gwyneth_paltrow-1296x728-header.jpg
Gwyneth Paltrow is widely known for her Academy Award-winning performance in the 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love.

She’s also popular with many comic-loving cinema fans for her role as Pepper Potts in the Iron Man series.

Paltrow is also known as the founder and owner of Goop, a lifestyle website that features healthy living content, style advice, and a robust e-commerce section that sells all the products you need to live the Goop life.

The website, in fact, has become popular enough that it just completed its second Goop Health Summit, held in New York City this past week.

It’s Goop that’s added the word “controversial” before Paltrow’s long list of accomplishments and acclaims.

Goop, which started in 2008 as a newsletter Paltrow produced herself, is today a multimillion dollar lifestyle brand with product extensions, licensing agreements, educational summits, and even a print magazine.

Alongside stories about what florals are best to wear in the winter, you can find vitamin packs geared to helping you work faster and stronger.

Beside a story about the parasites hiding on a playground, you can find cautionary pieces about asbestos in cosmetics.

The Goop mission is to help you navigate a world that’s filled with toxic and potentially dangerous products.

“We take a curious, unbiased, open-minded, and service-centric approach to the work we do,” Goop writes on their website.

But that “unbiased” approach has left many skeptics in its wake — and with some evidence to back up their suspicions.

Goop and its controversies
Take, for example, a $66 jade egg that raised eyebrows and ire last summer. The egg’s promise, the site says, is “to increase sexual energy and pleasure.”

Goop writes that their “beauty guru/healer/inspiration/friend” Shiva Rose turned them on to jade eggs, calling it a “strictly guarded secret of Chinese royalty.”

When the egg first hit Goop’s site, the condemnation was swift.

“We’re never particularly surprised when our stories break the internet, but we were surprised by the reception of the jade egg, which stirred up a formidable debate about the practice,” Goop editors wrote in a piece that followed the egg’s release.

They then backed up their sexuality boosting stone ovum with letters from fans who said the practice has worked wonders for them.

Carol Queen, PhD, the staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, co-founder of the Center for Sex & Culture, and author of “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone,” calls the jade egg “too good to be true.”

“I’ve been horrified by a lot of her sex-related items because it doesn’t seem that either she or her doctor associates know enough about sexuality, the genitals, etc.” Queen told Healthline. “She also hasn’t chosen to find someone who does know a lot and, of course, if she did, she might have fewer things to sell.”

Queen says any attention to sexuality and sexual health is likely always a good thing, but the jade eggs — and many of Goop’s other products meant to promote sexual energy — are just a bridge too far.

“A person can be credulous when it comes to alternative claims, and if they don’t know enough about health and sexuality to begin with, they won’t be able to easily assess whether what they are hearing is correct information,” she said.

“Now, the placebo effect is a thing, and if a person believes that the item has a positive effect on their vaginal health, they are touching themselves to insert it, focusing on that area of the body, actually caring for its wellbeing, all this might have some good effects,” Queen added. “The ‘but’ of this statement has to do with the energy the stone supposedly possesses and that’s not a scientifically sound idea. It’s also about the egg itself. It won’t be a comfortable size for everyone. It can be difficult to insert if it’s too big for an individual. It can be even harder to take out. And stone isn’t always a safe material to insert into the body. It can have microfissures that might collect bacteria, for instance.”

More recently, a $135 coffee enema stirred the unease of many medical experts.

The enema, named the Implant-O-Rama, was listed as part of the brand’s “Detox Guide.” The other items listed in the guide (scrubs, saunas, and such) look to cleanse every pore, pocket, and pleat of your body, but the enema was the target of much indignation.

Enemas had a heyday in the alternative medicine world in the early 1900s, but as word spread of the potential dangers, the colon cleanses waned in popularity.

In fact, in 1919, the American Medical Association condemned the use of colon cleanses. More recently, the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology said in a statement that coffee enemas are “not merely useless but potentially dangerous.” The Mayo Clinic reports that coffee enemas have been to blame for several deaths.

Despite these warnings, enemas and colon cleanses have seen a robust return as the rise of “alternative” medicine increases in popularity.

Paltrow’s Goop is perhaps the most high-profile proponent of the practice, but they’re certainly not alone.

“In the past, we referred to lotions, potions, and elixirs with unproven efficacy as snake oils,” Zach Cordell, a registered dietitian nutritionist and an assistant professor of nutrition at Daytona State College in Florida, told Healthline. “We still have many of these around today, where people will use scientific sounding words, pick and choose what they want to believe, and it will bring people in. If you have a big soapbox to stand on, you are likely to have a larger payout.”

Despite numerous requests by Healthline for comments on this story, Goop officials did not make a representative from their organization available for an interview.

What’s Paltrow’s responsibility?

Alongside these controversial products are seemingly harmless items such as bath soaks and menstrual cups.

The latter is listed as an alternative to pads and tampons, “many of which are made with harmful chemicals,” the Goop site states.

“Her celebrity gets people in the door and perhaps the controversy does, too, but she’s just one very high-profile player in a field that has a long history [of] alternative therapies,” Queen said. “Not everything that can be described that way is problematic, nor is it likely that all the things sold on Goop are dangerous. But a customer might want to do a little due diligence on items they’ve never encountered, or ask themselves if there are ways such an item might be unsafe.”

But Donna Flagg, creator and founder of Lastics & Lastics Body, a body products company, says Goop and Paltrow are only a vessel, not a maker, for these products and their claims.

“Goop is essentially a retailer, a store. My opinion, with regard to Goop and Gwyneth, is that she is a target for one of two reasons, but more likely it’s some combination of both,” Flagg said. “One, she sells a lifestyle, but more importantly, a philosophy which challenges much of the establishment. That philosophy touches all aspects of our lives. That makes her a broader threat than, say, a company making moisturizers. Through her business, she exposes a lot of companies and their practices who do not want to be exposed.”

“Two, she is a famous, beautiful, and beloved woman,” Flagg continued. “This gives her tremendous influence among her audience, influence that is authentic, which no amount of money can buy.”

Flagg adds that these larger companies may try to discredit her influence by promoting the controversies.

“Generally, the responsibility of claims falls on whoever makes the product,” Flagg said. “Manufacturers formulate, test, and package the products. They are the ones who have the information about their product’s performance, not the retailer. A retailer is a customer of the manufacturers, and treated as such.”

For their part, Goop writes, “We test the waters so that you don’t have to. We will never recommend something that we don’t love, and think worthy of your time and your wallet. We value your trust above all things.”

However, their process for selecting items and retail partners isn’t transparent.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

What do you do about Goop?

Cordell says Paltrow and Goop have the large platform to promote their health and wellness products, their body positive messages, and many of their claims because of Paltrow’s star and popularity.

And, he concedes, the film star and brand promoter does some great things with that stage.

“I am a critic of some of their practices but admit that some of Gwyneth’s approaches are valid. Her recommendation for body positivity is beneficial, and her approach to lifestyle change is helpful rather than diets, is accurate,” he said.

Still, Cordell says, some of the claims aren’t sound or even ethical, and that can leave a naïve audience susceptible to the “snake oils” of celebrity health claims.

“There are some truths and half-truths mixed in with product placement that promise health results that the science cannot back up,” Cordell says. “Along with that, Goop and other celebrity influencers skate a very dangerous line of giving medical advice that is not grounded in science, and providing goods with claims that are unsubstantiated by research.”

“If a medical provider such as a doctor, nurse, or dietitian were to promote practices with unproven scientific claims,” he said, “there could be consequences, such as coming under review by the licensing board, being sued for malpractice, or losing your license to practice.”

Dr. Charlie Seltzer, a Philadelphia-based weight-loss expert, agrees with Cordell’s assessment of the advice.

“In a direct sense, Goop is probably more irresponsible and misguided than dangerous,” Seltzer told Healthline “The cleanse information, which appears to be pretty prevalent [on their website] is ridiculous. There is no real science behind the ideas or claims, and I almost get the feeling Goop is encouraging self-diagnosis.”

Seltzer says there’s room for “alternative” approaches to healthcare and wellness in today’s modern medical environment, but that information should still be based on sound and vetted information. That, Seltzer says, isn’t coming from Goop.

“My issue is that people with no real experience or qualifications are giving advice on how to be healthy based on anecdotes and bad science,” he said

So how do you know what the balance is? How do you find a healthy point on the axis between modern medicine and fully alternative?

“You should become as educated as possible to make an informed decision,” Seltzer said. “If you don’t want to do that, find a practitioner you can trust and ask him or her. One of my favorite parts of my job is to explain to patients the different approaches to treatment, what the research says, and what are the risks and potential benefits of each avenue.”

“For the most part, however, the information is just ineffective and a waste of time to read or try to do,” he added. “I’d encourage anyone taking advice from Goop to run it by a knowledgeable, qualified healthcare professional.”

Readers of Goop’s articles and advice may find beneficial elements among their stories. After all, articles like “10 Brands That Really Care” promotes companies that give back or make their products from sustainable sources. “What to Eat When You Have the Flu” is a rundown of comforting foods almost no one could quibble with — chicken soup made the list.

But nestled among those innocuous articles are some claims that Queen, and skeptics like her, hope you’ll take with a grain of salt.

“Jade eggs, wasps’ nests, vaginal steaming, and coffee enemas are all somewhere on the continuum that goes from pretty bad for you to deeply bad for you,” Queen said. “I’d like to see her stick to selling yoga gear, personally.”

Thread: Gwyneth & Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
Thread: Jade Egg (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg)

[GeneChing]

Woman dies after having bee-sting therapy (http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43513817)
3 hours ago

https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/EE56/production/_100541016_z3450830-honeybee_on_flower.jpg
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Apitherapy is the use of substances from honeybees to treat medical conditions

A woman has died after undergoing bee-sting therapy, a form of treatment backed by Gwyneth Paltrow.

The 55-year-old Spanish woman had been having live bee acupuncture for two years when she developed a severe reaction.

She died weeks later of multiple organ failure.

Researchers who studied the case say live bee acupuncture therapy is "unsafe and unadvisable".

It is thought to be the first death due to the treatment of someone who was previously tolerant of the stings.

The woman's case has been reported in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology, by doctors from the allergy division of University Hospital, Madrid.

She had been having the treatment once a month for two years at a private clinic to improve muscular contractures and stress.

During a session, she developed wheezing, shortness of breath, and sudden loss of consciousness immediately after a live bee sting.

She was given steroid medication but no adrenaline was available, and it took 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

The woman had no history of any other diseases like asthma or heart disease, or other risk factors, or any previous allergic reactions.


What is apitherapy?
Apitherapy is the use of substances from honeybees, such as honey, propolis, royal jelly, or even venom (extracted or from live bees), to relieve various medical conditions. One type of apitherapy is live bee acupuncture.
Although some benefits of apitherapy have been reported, they have mainly been anecdotal.
Bee-venom therapy has been used for treating conditions including arthritis and MS.
The theory behind the treatment is that bee stings cause inflammation leading to an anti-inflammatory response by the immune system.
But the Multiple Sclerosis Trust says "there is no research to show it is an effective treatment for people with MS". They said a 2008 review of non-conventional approaches to treating MS found that there was only marginal evidence for bee-venom therapy.

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GETTY IMAGES

In an interview with the New York Times in 2016 Gwyneth Paltrow said she had tried apitherapy.
"I've been stung by bees. It's a thousands-of years-old treatment called apitherapy. People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It's actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it's painful."
And on her wellbeing website Goop she says she was "given 'bee-venom therapy' for an old injury and it disappeared".
Last year, Gerard Butler revealed he had been injected with bee sting venom to try to help reduce inflammation from stunt work. He ended up in hospital after he was injected with the venom of 23 bees. He said he felt like his heart might explode and as if he had ants under his skin.
The doctors found severe anaphylaxis had caused a massive stroke and permanent coma with multiple organ failure.

The report's authors called for:

Patients to be fully informed of the dangers of apitherapy before undergoing treatment
Measures to identify sensitised patients at risk should be implemented before each apitherapy sting
Apitherapy practitioners should be trained in managing severe reactions
Apitherapy practitioners should be able to ensure they perform their techniques in a safe environment
They should have adequate facilities for management of anaphylaxis and rapid access to an intensive care unit
But they acknowledged that because the treatment often takes place in private clinics, these measures may not be possible.

One of the report's authors Ricardo Madrigal-Burgaleta concluded: "The risks of undergoing apitherapy may exceed the presumed benefits, leading us to conclude that this practice is both unsafe and unadvisable."

Amena Warner, Head of Clinical Services for Allergy UK, said:

"The public need to be very aware of the unorthodox use of allergens such as bee venom. This will come with risk and, in susceptible individuals, can lead to serious life threatening reactions."

Threads:
bee stingers for needles (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?15854-bee-stingers-for-needles)
Gwyneth & Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
TCM Fails (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69777-TCM-Fails)

[GeneChing]

goop is finally going to fact-check its bull**** claims (https://jezebel.com/goop-is-finally-going-to-fact-check-its-bull****-claims-1827858168)
hazel cills
today 9:35am

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--kepige_b--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/un6yzhpjolqzf2gp4xsx.jpg
image: Getty

goop doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to recommending alternative ~* wellness *~ treatments. The company has endorsed experts who claim that gmos cause depression, bee-sting treatments that killed one woman, and sticking jade eggs up your vagina. And after many, many, many people have called out goop’s dangerous and unsubstantiated recommendations, gwyneth paltrow says she’s finally hiring a full-time fact-checker for goop.

In a long profile of paltrow and goop over at the new york times magazine, writer taffy brodesser-akner reports that while all of the negative press about the site over the past few years may have generated some nice traffic, paltrow has decided goop needs some extra support:

After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, g.p. Made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from condé nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a ph.d. In nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former stanford professor. And in september, goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.p. Chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”

in other words, it seems like goop is finally going to have to answer for its bull**** wellness claims. It’s also a big deal considering that goop was originally supposed to make their magazine with condé nast and in partnership with anna wintour, but paltrow reportedly backed out of the deal because of the journalistic constraints of the company like...fact-checking! “goop wanted goop magazine to be like the goop website in another way: To allow the goop family of doctors and healers to go unchallenged in their recommendations via the kinds of q. And a.s published, and that just didn’t pass condé nast standards,” writes akner. “those standards require traditional backup for scientific claims, like double-blind, peer-reviewed studies.”

and whenever an outlet has criticized goop for peddling information that’s false or could hurt people (such as when an advertising watchdog group accused the site of incorrectly claiming many of its products could cure depression, anxiety, and infertility, to name a few), paltrow and her partner elise loehnen respond that they’re not making statements, they’re “just asking questions.” and it doesn’t hurt that the crazier the post, the more people visit the site, which paltrow herself reportedly admitted to a class at harvard:

“i can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: To corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about g.p. Herself and turn them into cash. It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “it’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” the room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “vagina! Vagina! Vagina!” as if she were yodeling.

Keep yodeling gwyneth, but now your yodels will have to be legally vetted.

vagina! Vagina! Vagina!

[GeneChing]

How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/magazine/big-business-gwyneth-paltrow-wellness.html)
Inside the growth of the most controversial brand in the wellness industry.

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Gwyneth Paltrow.Credit Amanda Demme for The New York Times

By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
July 25, 2018

On a Monday morning in November, students at Harvard Business School convened in their classroom to find Gwyneth Paltrow. She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all, using her phone, as they took their seats along with guests they brought to class that day — wives, mothers, boyfriends. Each seat filled, and some guests had to stand along the back wall and sit on the steps. The class was called the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports. The students were there to interrogate Paltrow about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business, and to learn how to create a “sustainable competitive advantage,” according to the class catalog.

She moved to the teacher’s desk, where she sat down and crossed her legs. She talked about why she started the business, how she only ever wanted to be someone who recommended things. When she was in Italy, on the set of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” she’d ask someone on the crew about, say, where the best gelato was. When she was in London, on the set of “Shakespeare in Love,” she asked a crew member where to find the best coffee; in Paris, she asked an extra where to find the best bikini wax; in Berlin, the massage you can’t miss. She wasn’t just curious. She was planning this the whole time.

The first iteration of the company was only these lists — where to go and what to buy once you get there — via a newsletter she emailed out of her kitchen, the first one with recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins. One evening, at a party in London, one of the newsletter’s recipients, a venture capitalist named Juliet de Baubigny, told her, “I love what you’re doing with Goop.” G.P., as she is called by nearly everyone in her employ, didn’t even know what a venture capitalist was. She was using off-the-shelf newsletter software. But De Baubigny became a “godmother” to Paltrow, she said. She encouraged her vision and “gave permission” to start thinking about how to monetize it.

At first, Goop — so named not just for her initials and for, you know, goop, but because someone along the way told her that all the successful internet companies had double O’s — appealed to an audience that admired G.P.’s rarefied lifestyle. Martha Stewart (for example) was an aspirational lifestyle brand, true, but the lifestyle was so easily attainable once Stewart took her wares to Kmart and Macy’s.

G.P. didn’t want to go broad. She wanted you to have what she had: the $795 G. Label trench coat and the $1,505 Betony Vernon S&M chain set. Why mass-market a lifestyle that lives in definitional opposition to the mass market? Goop’s ethic was this: that having beautiful things sometimes costs money; finding beautiful things was sometimes a result of an immense privilege; but a lack of that privilege didn’t mean you shouldn’t have those things. Besides, just because some people cannot afford it doesn’t mean that no one can and that no one should want it. If this bothered anyone, well, the newsletter content was free, and so were the recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins.

By the time she stood in that Harvard classroom, Goop was a clothing manufacturer, a beauty company, an advertising hub, a publishing house, a podcast producer and a portal of health-and-healing information, and soon it would become a TV-show producer. It was a clearinghouse of alternative health claims, sex-and-intimacy advice and probes into the mind, body and soul. There was no part of the self that Goop didn’t aim to serve.

“I want to help you solve problems,” G.P. said. “I want to be an additive to your life.” Goop is now worth $250 million, according to a source close to the company.

The students nodded studiously as she spoke about her clothing line and CPGs and “contextual commerce” and open rates and being “cash positive” and “radical wellness” and how she likes to hire “smart people with founder DNA” and working mothers: “That ***** will get things done.”

For all the students’ questions about those newsletters and their use of all kinds of three-letter acronyms, it felt to me as if everyone was missing the point. G.P.’s business began in 2008 and was incorporated in 2013, but it really started when she was being hunted by the paparazzi and living in such a lonely, high-altitude world that she could basically be friends with only Madonna. Or even before that when, as a 19-year-old, she would run lines with her mother, the actress Blythe Danner, and Danner noticed that it was all too easy for her, that there was something preternatural about her talent (an assessment one of her former co-stars also said to me almost verbatim). Or maybe even before that, when some combination of her parents’ DNA formed a genetic supernova that would allow for her name to appear in the same paragraph as the word “luminous” 227 times when searching in a LexisNexis database.

The outside world began to creep in. The students asked second-date questions about the topics she has been criticized for, starting with charges of elitism. Someone asked how she planned to engage with people of lesser incomes. She said: “It’s crucial to me that we remain aspirational. Not in price point, because content is always free.” The things they were making — the clothing, yes, but also the creams and oils — couldn’t be made cheaply. “Our stuff is beautiful,” she said. “The ingredients are beautiful. You can’t get that at a lower price point. You can’t make these things mass-market.”

They nodded, mesmerized, stars and dollar signs in their eyes. They took notes, but why? When G.P. said “aspirational,” she wasn’t kidding. Her business depended on no one ever being able to be her. Though I guess it also depended on their ability to think they might.


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[GeneChing]

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Goop products, including the Dry Brush, the Jade Egg and the Rose Quartz Soothing Face-Massage Roller, on display at Goop’s wellness summit in Los Angeles in June.CreditMatt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

The minute the phrase “having it all” lost favor among women, wellness came in to pick up the pieces. It was a way to reorient ourselves — we were not in service to anyone else, and we were worthy subjects of our own care. It wasn’t about achieving; it was about putting ourselves at the top of a list that we hadn’t even previously been on. Wellness was maybe a result of too much having it all, too much pursuit, too many boxes that we’d seen our exhausted mothers fall into bed without checking off. Wellness arrived because it was gravely needed.

Before we knew it, the wellness point of view had invaded everything in our lives: Summer-solstice sales are wellness. Yoga in the park is wellness. Yoga at work is wellness. Yoga in Times Square is peak wellness. When people give you namaste hands and bow as a way of saying thank you. The organic produce section of Whole Foods. Whole Foods. Hemp. Oprah. CBD. “Body work.” Reiki. So is: SoulCycle, açaí, antioxidants, the phrase “mind-body,” meditation, the mindfulness jar my son brought home from school, kombucha, chai, juice bars, oat milk, almond milk, all the milks from substances that can’t technically be milked, clean anything. “Living your best life.” “Living your truth.” Crystals.

Goop’s first newsletter left G.P.’s kitchen in 2008, right when the economy was collapsing around us. It wasn’t just the homes people no longer owned and the jobs people no longer had. It was the environmental crisis. It was the endless exposure of corruption. Whom exactly were we trusting with our care? Why did we decide to trust them in the first place? Who says that only certain kinds of people are allowed to give us the answers?

These phenomena gave an easy rise to Gwyneth Paltrow, who was at first curating teas and lingerie and sweaters she thought you’d like. But people were looking for leaders, and she was already committing public displays of ostentatious wellness: She showed up at a movie premiere with cupping marks on her back; she let bees sting her because I don’t know why. Suddenly Gwyneth Paltrow, the movie star, was a major player in an industry that was big business.

Other celebrities followed. Jessica Alba’s Honest Company was worth more than $1 billion at its peak, but it really offers mostly cleaning and beauty products. Miranda Kerr has a line of organic beauty products. Amanda Chantal Bacon’s Moon Juice, a line of supplements, is a ship launched directly from Port Goop. None of them aim to treat every single aspect of the human as wholly as Goop does. Nothing is as elemental an extension of its source as Goop is.

The Goop campus in Santa Monica consists of four squat gray buildings, where in June a diverse group of about 200 young, exuberant, well-dressed people were working hard to plan the coming weekend’s event, the In Goop Health wellness summit. G.P. sat at her desk behind the glass walls of her office, which was spare and also decorated in shades of gray. Her golden hair fell over the paper she was reading. She was wearing a tank top, shearling-lined white Birkenstocks and Goop x Frame wide-legged palazzo jeans. Back when she wore them at Harvard, I’d never seen anyone else wear them. Now she was making them, and everyone else I knew was wearing the same style.

We ate salmon hand rolls. She was trying to be low-carb today, but it wasn’t happening. There was too much going on. The wellness summit, a daylong immersion in Goop-endorsed products, panels, doctors and other “healers,” was a “heavy lift for the team.”

“It’s intense, man,” she said. She reached behind her to her bookshelf, which held about a dozen blue bottles of something called Real Water, which is not stripped of “valuable electrons,” which supposedly creates free radicals something something from the body’s cells. “It’s insane, and then I have to do a lot on the day, and I really don’t like speaking in public, and I have to keep getting up in front of a crowd.”

The summit is great, don’t get her wrong. All three so far have sold out, with tickets ranging from $500 to $4,500, the highest of which included two dinners with G.P. plus two nights at Casa del Mar. But lately she has been wondering if the summit does everything it needs to. She worries that she’s just serving the same customers over and over. She met a woman who took a very long bus ride from she thinks rural Pennsylvania to the Goop summit in New York in January. “Seventy-nine percent of our American customers aren’t in New York or Los Angeles,” where these summits are held, she said; they’re in secondary markets.

So how do you bring them in? There have been pop-up Goop stores everywhere from Dallas to Miami. There would be a digital pass to the summit. But you can’t taste a plate of ancient grains and avocado in citrus dressing on a computer. You can’t feel someone push warm oil with a jade roller over your skin through an iPad. You can’t eat a piece of chocolate that will supposedly not just regulate your hormones but restore your sex life — chocolate! — on your phone. You can only watch some panels and one-on-one conversations. So she’s thinking they might take the thing on the road. Can you believe this? She was incredulous. She still remembers sitting in her kitchen in London, celebrating a day when $45 had come in because of an advertising partnership.

The newsletter was at first kind of mainstream New Age-forward. It had some kooky stuff in it, but nothing totally outrageous. It was concerned with basic wellness causes, like detoxes and cleanses and meditation. It wasn’t until 2014 that it began to resemble the thing it is now, a wellspring of both totally legitimate wellness tips and completely bonkers magical thinking: advice from psychotherapists and advice from doctors about how much Vitamin D to take (answer: a lot! Too much!) and vitamins for sale and body brushing and dieting and the afterlife and crystals and I swear to God something called Psychic Vampire Repellent, which is a “sprayable elixir” that uses “gem healing” to something something “bad vibes.”

That was the year after G.P. met Elise Loehnen, 38, a former magazine editor who had been ghostwriting for G.P.’s friend, the extremely extreme personal trainer Tracy Anderson, in whose business G.P. is a minority stakeholder. Loehnen wasn’t just interested in wellness; she was obsessed with it. Wellness, she argued, isn’t just about a spa you’re going to or a cleanse you’ve started or a diet you’re on. It’s how local your food is. It’s how the chickens you eat all went to the right schools. It’s the water you drink. It’s the cures you never thought possible. It’s the level of well-being you didn’t even know to ask for.



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[GeneChing]

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Paltrow and Elise Loehnen, Goop’s chief content officer, at the wellness summit.CreditEmma McIntyre/Getty Images

G.P. was so excited by the way Loehnen thought. Over the last few years, as wellness went mainstream, G.P. allowed her two sides — the G.P. who was known to sit without underwear over mugwort steam to regulate her hormones and the G.P. who wanted the $2,132 straw pocketbook from Sanayi 313 that is, to be clear, made of straw — to finally be one.

With Loehnen as editorial director, Goop began publishing extended Q. and A.s with doctors and healers like Alejandro Junger, a cardiologist who created an anti-inflammatory regimen and recently talked on Goop’s podcast about frog venom as a psychedelic for healing, which, O.K.! Steven Gundry, a cardiac surgeon, believes that lectins, a protein in some foods, are dangerous for people with autoimmune diseases. (There are a great many people who do not believe this.) Anyone from an acupuncturist to a psychic to an endocrinologist to a psychologist addressed questions that the modern woman couldn’t seem to find answers to: Why am I so unhappy? Why am I so tired? Why am I so fat? Why don’t I want to have sex anymore?

There were stories that talked about bee-sting therapy (don’t try it; someone died from it this year) and ashwagandha and adaptogens and autoimmune diseases — an autoimmune disease at every corner, be it thyroid disease, arthritis or celiac disease; trust them, you have one. Last year, G.P. gave a platform to her friend Shiva Rose, a healer who talked about inserting a jade egg into the vagina, which she says concubines did and which she claimed could help prevent uterine prolapse. This did not go unnoticed! They sold a brush that would help your lymph flow, a salt shampoo that would detoxify your scalp, a water bottle with rose quartz in it that would infuse your water with positive energy.

Goop knew what readers were clicking on, and it was nimble enough to meet those needs by actually manufacturing the things its readers wanted. When a story about beauty products that didn’t have endocrine disrupters and formaldehyde got a lot of traffic in 2015, the company started Goop by Juice Beauty, a collection of “clean” face creams and oils and cleansers that it promised lacked those things. When a story about “postnatal depletion,” a syndrome coined by one of the Goop doctors, did even-better-than-average business in 2017, it introduced Goop Wellness, a series of four vitamin “protocols” for women with different concerns — weight, energy, focus, etc. Goop says it sold $100,000 of them on their first day.

The weirder Goop went, the more its readers rejoiced. And then, of course, the more Goop was criticized: by mainstream doctors with accusations of pseudoscience, by websites like Slate and Jezebel saying it was no longer ludicrous — no, now it was dangerous. And elsewhere people would wonder how Gwyneth Paltrow could try to solve our problems when her life seemed almost comically problem-free. But every time there was a negative story about her or her company, all that did was bring more people to the site — among them those who had similar kinds of questions and couldn’t find help in mainstream medicine.

With assaults coming from all sides, Goop began to dig its heels into the dirt, not only because dirt is a natural exfoliant and also contains selenium, which is a mineral many of us are lacking and helps with thyroid function. Now Goop was growing only more successful. Now Goop was a cause, and G.P. was its martyr.

In February, G.P. invited me over to dinner at her house, which lay heart-stopping beneath the Los Angeles palm trees and an impossible sky. She wore a white shirred-neck dress by Tibi that would be advertised in the Goop newsletter the next week as she stood in front of her stove, steaming clams and grilling bread in her devastating kitchen. She wore no apron and cooked the meal herself right in front of me. She wore no apron and cooked it herself right in front of me and drank a whiskey on the rocks.

A woman who has worked for G.P. for a long time stood beside her, cooking an entirely separate dinner for G.P.’s children. The meal we would eat — the clams and the bread — took only a half-hour to make, but G.P. said it could have taken only 15 minutes if we weren’t talking so much. It is a recipe out of her fourth cookbook, “It’s All Easy,” which she wrote in the wake of her divorce from Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay. Suddenly, as a single mother, she wanted to create recipes that followed her particular set of food values but that she could execute quickly.

G.P. asked what I would like to drink. I asked for a glass of red wine. G.P. gave the nod to someone over my left shoulder. I turned to see Jeffrey, the same man in a shawl-collar sweater who opened the door for me earlier. He nodded back.

“Is he your butler?” I whispered to her when he was out of earshot.

“No, he’s a house manager,” she said. She doesn’t know what she’d do without him. “He’s the best. He’s from Chicago. He’s so incredible. He helps me with everything.”

Chris Martin walked in and sat down at the kitchen island and introduced himself. He saw my tape recorder and immediately told me that though I seemed nice and trustworthy, he had no interest in being part of my article, so please keep anything he says out of it.

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[GeneChing]

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Goopglow, advertised as ‘‘skincare you can drink.’’Credit Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

A very good-looking young boy appeared. “Hi, lover,” G.P. said. The boy, whom I recognized as her youngest child, Moses, immediately came to my side, made socially appropriate eye contact and shook my hand. “Hello, nice to meet you,” he said. Moses is 12, about the same age as my older son.

My phone rang. It was the mother of my son’s friend, back home in stupid New Jersey, and I realized she wouldn’t be calling if not for something gone awry. I apologized to G.P. and picked up the phone. The mom told me that my son was insisting that I was supposed to be picking him up. “I’m in California!” I whispered. “I’m with Gwyneth Paltrow!” She said she’d pass the message along and proceed as usual. G.P. said something, but I couldn’t concentrate because I was trying to understand how my 7-year-old didn’t know that I was out of town. Had I not said goodbye?

A teenage girl orbited herself into the kitchen. She stuck her hand out to me. “I’m Apple. Nice to meet you.” She had a fine, assured grip and a blunt bob and eyeliner and looked like a child version of the Wes Anderson character Margot Tenenbaum, which, of course, she was.

“What’s wrong?” G.P. asked.

“I’m so tired,” Apple said, frustrated, rubbing her eyes with her fists. She sounded exactly like her mother, down to the slight, soft nasal on the vowels: hiiii, Aaapple, guuuys, wooow, tiiiiired.

G.P. stuck out her lips and clucked sympathy.

“I started watching ‘The Office,’ and I find it so funny,” Apple said.

“The English one?” G.P. asked.

“No, the U.S. one.”

“You have to see the English one.”

The children followed Martin into another room so that they could practice their musical instruments with him. As Moses left, he asked G.P. if he should leave both doors open so she could hear him play. She said, “Yes. I want to hear you.” Then, to me: “He’s going to play AC/DC. He keeps such good time.” They were going to become musicians, she just knew it.

She wasn’t going to have more kids. That she also knew. Her business, her age, which is 45 — not impossible, but still. She’d wanted a third. She told me that after she asked how many I had, and I told her I had two children as well, and it was wonderful, but I was sad I didn’t have a third.

She told me I should rethink it while I’m still young enough. “All I’m saying is it’s not nothing,” she said. “I really wanted another one.” I nodded solemnly. (Later, I cried.)

Brad Falchuk, a writer and director, who is also Ryan Murphy’s producing partner, entered the kitchen. He and G.P. had just announced their engagement on the cover of the second issue of Goop magazine, whose theme was, conveniently, sex and love. I congratulated them.

“Thank you,” he said, standing behind her, his arms around her waist and his face buried in her neck. She registered his snuggle and returned it with a return-snuggle body spasm without stopping her cooking actions.

I heard the first few notes of “Blackbird” and looked up and around for the speakers. I’d never heard such a beautiful version. “Where is it coming from?” I asked. Again G.P. nodded her chin over my shoulder, my right one this time, and I turned around to see Apple on a couch behind me, strumming her guitar. Apple told me she doesn’t like to use a pick. She likes the calluses.

“Apple, that’s so beautiful,” G.P. said. I turned back to G.P. in astonishment. She smiled. In front of me, our glasses had been filled again.

G.P. and Falchuk and I ate the clams with the grilled bread in a candlelit dining room with a fireplace off pewter dishes from Match, which I admired. “They’re getting kind of old,” she said. Her dress remained white. Mine had clam juice down the front.

After dinner, G.P. and I sat in her living room on the floor. I had read that she smokes one cigarette a week. I had brought a pack of cigarettes to test this out. I used to smoke but stopped more than 10 years ago. She had her own pack of Nat Shermans hidden away somewhere and told me that these days it was more like a few times a year. Falchuk sat with us, tan and smiley, but wouldn’t smoke. “I’ve never had a cigarette in my life.”

“He’s a doctor’s son,” she said. Then, to him: “Will you be mad?”

He smiled at her and shook his head. Her feet were bare now, and they had a perfect, substantial arch, just as the Romans intended, engineered to support her statue body. I bet they were a Size 8. People make shoes so that feet like those can wear them. We blew smoke up the chimney.

I drove back to my hotel to find that a family that owned a Mercedes dealership would be hosting an impromptu all-night party around the pool and that I would never get any sleep. I thought about my children, one of whom plays the flute, but unwillingly, and therefore won’t practice. Yes, I thought about my children, only one of whom might shake your hand while the other would sooner spit on it, though they will both reliably do an elaborate orchestration of armpit ****ing while I’m trying to hear myself think. I thought of my mother and father, and an earlier conversation I had with my sisters that day about where to arrange our parents in a room for one of our kids’ bar mitzvahs so that they wouldn’t interact, so raw still are the wounds 35 years after their divorce. I thought of my big, disgusting Size 11 feet, which are wide and flat and have the look of scuba flippers and which designers have shod only begrudgingly. I thought of the third child I don’t have, the one I ache for. The car salespeople danced below.

I thought about the word “aspiration,” how to aspire seems so noble, but how aspiration is always infused with a kind of suffering, and I smoked another cigarette.



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[GeneChing]

The quarterly Goop magazine was introduced last fall with a picture of G.P.’s bikinied body covered in mud and just one cover line: “Earth to Gwyneth.” She does things like that to demonstrate a kind of self-awareness around what she knows is the rap on her, that she’s a privileged, white rich lady who is into some wackadoo stuff.

That issue, like the second issue (the one with a cover photo of her and Falchuk and the words “In Deep”), was $15 on newsstands and a product of a partnership with Condé Nast. At first, it seemed like a perfect fit. “Goop and Condé Nast are natural partners, and I’m excited she’s bringing her point of view to the company,” said Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s artistic director and editor in chief of Vogue, when the deal was announced in April 2017. The print product would be a collaboration — Goop content overseen by a Vogue editor.

It didn’t work out. “They’re a company that’s really in transition and do things in a very old-school way,” G.P. said. The parting was amicable. “But it was amazing to work with Anna. I love her. She’s a total idol of mine. We realized we could just do a better job of it ourselves in-house. I think for us it was really like we like to work where we are in an expansive space. Somewhere like Condé, understandably, there are a lot of rules.”

The rules she’s referring to are the rules of traditional magazine making — all upheld strictly at an institution like Condé Nast. One of them is that they weren’t allowed to use the magazine as part of their “contextual commerce” strategy. They wanted to be able to sell Goop products (in addition to other products, just as they do on their site). But Condé Nast insisted that they have a more “agnostic” editorial approach. The company publishes magazines, not catalogs. But why? G.P. wanted to know. She wanted the Goop magazine to be a natural extension of the Goop website. She wanted the reader to be able to do things like text a code to purchase a product without even having to leave her inert reading position and wander over to her computer. A magazine customer is also a regular customer.

But the other rule is — well, the thing couldn’t be fact-checked. Goop wanted Goop magazine to be like the Goop website in another way: to allow the Goop family of doctors and healers to go unchallenged in their recommendations via the kinds of Q. and A.s published, and that just didn’t pass Condé Nast standards. Those standards require traditional backup for scientific claims, like double-blind, peer-reviewed studies. The stories Loehnen, now Goop’s chief content officer, wanted to publish had to be quickly replaced at the last minute by packages like the one on “clean” getaways.

G.P. didn’t understand the problem. “We’re never making statements,” she said. Meaning, they’re never asserting anything like a fact. They’re just asking unconventional sources some interesting questions. (Loehnen told me, “We’re just asking questions.”) But what is “making a statement”? Some would argue — her former partners at Condé Nast, for sure — that it is giving an unfiltered platform to quackery or witchery. O.K., O.K., but what is quackery? What is witchery? Is it claims that have been observed but not the subject of double-blind, peer-reviewed studies? Yes? Right. O.K., G.P. would say, then what is science, and is it all-encompassing and altruistic and without error and always acting in the interests of humanity?

These questions had been plaguing Goop for a while — not just what is a fact, or how important is a fact, but also what exactly is Goop allowed to be suggesting? In 2016, a division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus began an inquiry into Goop for deceptive marketing claims about the life-optimizing powers of Moon Juice products, which appeared on the Goop site as a key ingredient in a smoothie that G.P. drank every morning. (Goop voluntarily stopped making these claims.) And last summer, the watchdog organization TruthInAdvertising.org (TINA) sent G.P. a letter that referred to numerous instances of deceptive marketing claims — that the site’s products cured, treated or prevented inflammation, autoimmune diseases and more. Goop replied and adjusted some of its claims in the short period the letter allotted, but TINA found its response inadequate and reported Goop to the district attorney’s offices in both Santa Cruz and Santa Clara. (The district attorney’s offices would not comment on the matter.)


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[GeneChing]

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A light-therapy device meant to stimulate collagen production, being used at Goop’s wellness summit in June.Credit Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

A gynecologist and obstetrician in San Francisco named Jen Gunter, who also writes a column on reproductive health for The Times, has criticized Goop in about 30 blog posts on her website since 2015. A post she wrote last May — an open letter that she signed on behalf of “Science” — generated more than 800,000 page views. She was angry about all the bad advice she had seen from Goop in the last few years. She was angry that her own patients were worried they’d given themselves breast cancer by wearing underwire bras, thanks to an article by an osteopath who cited a much-debunked book published in 1995. Gunter cited many of Goop’s greatest hits: “Tampons are not vaginal death sticks, vegetables with lectins are not killing us, vaginas don’t need steaming, Epstein Barr virus (E.B.V.) does not cause every thyroid disease and for [expletive] sake no one needs to know their latex farmer; what they need to know is that the only thing between them and H.I.V. or gonorrhea is a few millimeters of latex, so glove that [expletive] up.”

But something strange happened. Each of these pronouncements set off a series of blog posts and articles and tweets that linked directly to the site, driving up traffic. At Harvard, G.P. called these moments “cultural firestorms.” “I can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash. It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “It’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!” as if she were yodeling.

As of June, there were 2.4 million unique visitors to the site per month, according to the numbers Goop provided me. The podcast, which is mostly hosted by Loehnen and features interviews with wellness practitioners, receives 100,000 to 650,000 listens per week. Goop wanted to publish articles about autoimmune diseases and infrared saunas and thyroids, and now it can, on its own terms — sort of.

After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, G.P. made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from Condé Nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a Ph.D. in nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former Stanford professor. And in September, Goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.P. chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”

It wasn’t as if the appetite for Goop’s content was going away. I’ve spoken to dozens of people who feel better after a detox cleanse, and science can’t really tell them why.

I once went to an internist twice, complaining of preternatural exhaustion, only to be told that I was depressed and sent home. On the third visit, she begrudgingly took my blood and called me later to even more begrudgingly apologize and tell me I had a surprising case of mononucleosis. I know women who’ve been dismissed by their doctors for being lazy and careless and depressed and downright crazy. Was it any wonder that they would start to seek help from sources that assumed that their symptoms weren’t all in their head?

In her office, G.P. opened her MacBook. There was a guy this whole situation reminded her of, and she had forgotten his name, but a quick Wikipedia search and, ah, there it was: “Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, German,” she read to me. Semmelweis, once described as a “savior of mothers,” discovered that cases of puerperal fever could be significantly cut by washing hands before surgery.

Here she shook her head. “This is so sad. This gives me chills.” She continued reading, “In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum where he died at 47 of pyaemia after being beaten by the guards only 14 days after he was committed.” (There is debate about how Semmelweis died.)

She stood up. Her posture was a marvel. “You ask what is happening when someone says, ‘Have we just thought about this?’ That” — being beaten to death in an asylum — “is what happened to this guy.”

“Where do you think it ends for you?” I asked her, getting up from my chair.

She laughed. “When I’m committed to an asylum.”

I heard a rumor that she drank a Guinness every day of her pregnancies. I heard a rumor that she was staying with Winona Ryder after her breakup with Brad Pitt and that when Ryder was in the shower G.P. picked up a script on her coffee table, read it and took it for herself, and this precipitated all the troubles Ryder had next. I heard that she had an affair with Viggo Mortensen while she was with Ben Affleck. I heard that she had an affair with her “Sliding Doors” co-star John Hannah when she was with Brad Pitt. I have read more than 100 takedowns of her. I read an article that began with the sentence “I hate Gwyneth Paltrow.” I read a book that was literally called “Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?” She was too privileged, they said. She had everything handed to her. Martha Stewart told Porter magazine in 2014: “She just needs to be quiet. She’s a movie star. If she were confident in her acting she wouldn’t be trying to be Martha Stewart.” (Recently, on a talk show, Stewart answered a question about G.P.’s company with professed ignorance. “Who’s Goop?”)

Or maybe it’s just that G.P. disrupted the contract between the celebrity and the civilian who is observing her. In a typical women’s magazine profile, the implicit pact is that the celebrity will not make the woman feel bad by implying that the woman could have what the celebrity has if only she would work: “It’s all in my genes, what can I say!” the celebrity proclaims. But G.P. was different. She would talk openly about the food habits and exercise obsessions that allowed her to look the way she did. “It’s so much easier to sit home and not exercise and criticize other people,” she told Elle magazine in 2011. “My life is good,” she wrote on Goop’s website, “because I am not passive about it. I want to nourish what is real, and I want to do it without wasting time.” People think they want celebrities to speak honestly, but we’re not really that happy when they do.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/07/29/magazine/29mag-paltrow-slide-ZH7R/29mag-paltrow-slide-ZH7R-jumbo.png?quality=90&auto=webp
Guests attending a reiki workshop at Goop’s wellness summit. Tickets to past summits have ranged from $500 to $4,500.Credit Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

We talked about this one morning at a suite at the Carlyle, where she lay across a sofa like a poem. She wasn’t wearing shoes. (I had taken to, when barefoot, extending the sesamoid part of my foot without pointing my toes, so that my feet looked like Barbie feet, which created an arch where I had none. “See?” I’d say to my husband in bed. “This is what her feet look like just regular.”)

She didn’t know why people felt the way they did. She said the decision to stop acting and pursue Goop was not difficult, but it had nothing to do with her reputation. “I really liked acting,” she told me. “But at a certain point, it started to feel frustrating in a way not to have true agency, like to be beholden to other people to give you a job, or to create something, to put something into the world.” She was doing three or four or five movies a year, and the primary relationship in those films was with Harvey Weinstein. “The one time that Harvey propositioned me was really almost the least of it in terms of how onerous that relationship was, and it was very quid pro quo and punitive, and I always felt like I was on thin ice, and he could be truly horrible and mean and then be incredibly generous. It was kind of like a classic abusive relationship.”

When she and Chris Martin separated via something that they called “conscious uncoupling,” she was blindsided by the backlash. What people heard, she thinks, was that even her divorce was going to be better than theirs. “I was really saying we’re in a lot of pain, we failed at this; we’re going to try and do it in a different way. But I was so raw that I didn’t anticipate.” She trailed off. “I think that was an instance where it really hit me that an insouciance with language from me is different than from somebody else.”

What can she say? It’s hard to talk about herself like this. How can she really understand who she is in the culture anyway? She’s the only one who can’t see herself clearly. All she knows is what she hears, and she once heard that she eats in front of the mirror naked.

The hatred used to feel personal to her, but it doesn’t anymore. Now it feels as if she’s watching a soap opera. She remembers the week that Star Magazine called her the most hated celebrity in the world. “I remember being like: Really? More than, like, Chris Brown? Me? Really? Wow. It was also the same week that I was People’s Most Beautiful Woman. For a minute I was like: Wait, I don’t understand. Am I hated to the bone or am I the world’s most beautiful?”

Anyway, this was an old conversation, she insisted. “I really notice as the business grows, there’s a lot less of that, and I think people are like: Oh, this is real, and I feel like that’s sort of, you know, a nine-months-ago story. You know what I mean?”

I didn’t. I was introduced to G.P. through Bill Burton, a communications strategist known for his work for Barack Obama. That’s not really how stories about start-ups or celebrities typically get done. I have a Google alert for her (as I do for everyone I’m writing about), and each day, that alert goes off and is somewhat filled with pictures of her in a bikini on a yacht but is mostly filled with pus and bile — for her supposed smugness, her jade eggs, her ability to smoke a cigarette without becoming an addict. Bloggers at New York magazine’s The Cut regularly mock Goop’s gift guides (to which G.P. said, “I don’t know what The Cut is”).

So this is why people hate her? “Because I have discipline?” she said. She remembers reading that Michio Kushi, the father of macrobiotics, smoked cigarettes sometimes. She wanted to be like that. It’s something she cultivated.

I said, don’t you see? The last cigarette she had was in February, sitting on the floor next to her chimney with me. It was June. I smoked now. I walked down the street sucking on cigarettes the way I did in my youth. I recently got into bed with my poor son, and he told me that I “smell like the city.”

She doesn’t understand it. She doesn’t think she’s perfect. She is the way she is because of hard work. How could people hate her for that? It’s just hard work. It’s just intention. The content is free, and it’s all right there. Go to her website. Do some meditation. Just eat more produce. Take some time for yourself. Hydrate.

We’re so hard on one another, G.P. said. We’re so hard on ourselves, too. “That’s all we do as women,” she said. “We just kick the [expletive] out of ourselves. It’s like that inner critic is so vicious, and it’s like: Why do we do that? It’s so nuts.” She continued: “People say that there’s no link between emotions and consciousness and physical illness. And yet look at the plethora of autoimmune diseases around you. One man to 10 women have autoimmune. We literally have turned on ourselves.”

The In Goop Health summit was perhaps the most gracefully and elegantly executed event I’ve ever been to. There was food everywhere — small plates of ancient grains and salads and not a brown avocado in the bunch. There was keto food (which create ketones), vegan food (which doesn’t use animal products), paleo food (made out of, I don’t know, dinosaurs). Syringes of CBD oil. Coffee with pea milk. Nothing was rushed. Everything was plentiful. Somewhere during my reporting, I had stopped thinking about food deserts and people who didn’t even have access to ancient grains.

continued from previous post

[GeneChing]

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s $250 million company started out as a newsletter of recommendations.Credit Amanda Demme for The New York Times

Everyone glowed. Everyone wore flowing dresses and wide-legged jumpsuits. There was a woman asleep on one of the couches. Also: a manifestation workshop; acroyoga, where we bobbed up and down on scarves hanging from the ceiling; a medium who told me my grandmother was standing next to me telling me I have thyroid disease; a man who stuck two ungloved fingers into my ears and said he “fixed” my jaw, which there was nothing wrong with. Trust him, he said, he’s not a doctor. He’s not even a physical therapist. He’s a weight trainer, and he said he has a list of 2,000 people waiting to get fixed by him. All these people, wasting their money on traditional medicine, when he’s willing to take you into his office and lay you on a table and make you good as new without the hassle of insurance.

This always struck me as funny about the wellness world: how some people would brag about their mainstream credentials (“Trust me,” they’d say, with a straightening of their tie. “I’m a doctor”), while others felt that their legitimacy lay in the fact that they had no credentials. (“Trust me,” they’d say, jamming their thumbs mockingly toward the doctors. “I’m not a doctor.”)

I pulled down my pants for a man in scrubs who was giving out B12 shots, never telling him my secret, that I’d been taking the Goop vitamins and my urine was already a fluorescent yellow — no, gold — a superfood elixir.

A woman called an akashic-records healer who reads your past, present and possible future lives sat me down and asked about my foot pain. I asked her how she knew I had foot pain. I wasn’t limping. She said, “You have flat feet.” I nodded, incredulous. “I do,” I said. “I have flat feet.” She told me that 13 lives ago, my feet were chopped off as punishment for a crime. As a result, since then, whenever I reincarnate (which is every 100 to 500 years because I like to rest between incarnations), my feet are flat because I like the surety of them entirely touching the ground.

What I’m saying is: There was nothing that couldn’t be healed at the summit.

The next morning, I had another article to write. But my hotel was on the beach, and the ocean was just a block away. I still had a bottle of Madame Dry Rose Water, which is “botanically infused, positively charged” water that is filtered through rose-quartz crystals, and a bottle of Lifewtr, which is just water without vowels. I thought, for maybe the first time in my life, that work could wait. Self-care. Wellness. It started now. I had a long trip home ahead of me, and now I was someone who said “self-care.”

I walked down to the beach with my waters. I sat on a bench as I drank them. I became buoyant with hope. I could feel my posture straightening. I was so free of anxiety and so full of forward motion. I couldn’t remember feeling that way ever before. I could do this, I thought. I could change. I could be someone who pursued only the best. The ocean air. The sand. The sky. All the wellness, it was mine. I could stop smoking. I could exercise. I could hydrate. Look at all the kinds of waters we have! Look at all the kinds of moisturizer! All the ingredients, all of them so beautiful. Everything beautiful, lovely and clean. What if you could pay the price — time, intention, a serious allocation of funds — and make it all this way? I could. I would.

I finished my waters and headed to the airport, where I dropped my rental car and boarded the Hertz bus. But something was wrong at the airport, or it was just Los Angeles being Los Angeles, and the bus didn’t move. The normally 10-minute ride was now 20, and then 30, and then 40. I had to go to the bathroom so badly. My terminal was at the end and there was a stop at every single other terminal — even Air China. At 50 minutes, I realized I could no longer hold it and alerted the bus driver. Someone suggested I just get off at the next terminal and then pick the next bus up again. I screamed that I couldn’t! I didn’t have time! My kids and husband were waiting for me!

Finally, I got off two terminals early. I ran through the check-in area, screaming: “Where’s the bathroom? Where’s the bathroom?” I peed my beautiful pee wondering what the point of it all had been. I ran through the next two terminals till I finally got to the United check-in area. I cut the line, screaming still, “I was on a Hertz bus for an hour!”

I dropped off my suitcase just before the cutoff. I ran through the airport, my new smoker’s cough slowing me down. I went through security but didn’t have time to get something to eat at the fancy place, and so I got a premade fried chicken sandwich, which I would eat and feel every preservative and every sodium molecule course through my blood.

As I was boarding, my sister called me.

“How was it?” she asked.

The image of the reiki workshop I’d gone to at the summit returned to me. The practitioner had us lie on the floor and announced that we were all sharing one another’s energy, and I didn’t know how to feel about that, as if I hadn’t consented to it. She said, “The future is your best teacher.” She waved her hands over us like a sorceress. She gave us each a charged rose crystal that was shaped like a heart but flat and told us to put it in our bras. At the end, we lay, eyes closed, and put our hands on our hearts, and I opened my eyes before everyone else and saw all these women dressed in light colors, lined up like desperate, exquisite corpses, their hands over their hearts, totally inert.

We are doomed to aspire for the rest of our lives. Aspiration is suffering. Wellness is suffering. As soon as you level up, you greet how infinite the possibilities are, and it all becomes too awful to live without.

I told her, “It was ridiculous.”

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for the magazine and a writer for The Times’s culture desk. She last wrote for the magazine about the author Jonathan Franzen.

I never put together the meaning of goop before. brilliant.

[GeneChing]

I'm idly curious about how these items were dis-proven. ;)


Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Pays $145,000 Over Jade Vaginal-Egg Claims (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/gwyneth-paltrow-s-goop-settles-claims-over-vaginal-egg-benefits)
By Christopher Palmeri and Lucas Shaw
September 4, 2018, 5:04 PM PDT

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Gwyneth Paltrow Photographer: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Goop Inc., the lifestyle company founded by Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, agreed to pay $145,000 to settle allegations it made unscientific claims about the benefits of three products.

The case involved Goop’s Jade Egg, a $66 item inserted into vaginas to enhance sexual energy; the Rose Quartz Egg, a similar product; and Inner Judge Flower Essence Blend, a tincture.

Goop advertised that the eggs could balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles and increase bladder control, according to a statement Tuesday from Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who was part of a task force of California district attorneys that negotiated the settlement. Goop sold Inner Judge Flower as helping prevent depression.

In addition to the settlement, Goop agreed to refund money to customers who purchased the products and stop making claims about their efficacy.

Goop, which is based in Santa Monica, California, said it disagreed with the prosecutors’ position and did no wrong, but wanted to settle the matter quickly.

“Goop provides a forum for practitioners to present their views and experiences with various products like the Jade Egg,” Erica Moore, the company’s chief financial officer, said in an emailed statement. “The law, though, sometimes views statement like this as advertising claims, which are subject to various legal requirements.”

THREADS
Gwyneth & Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
Jade Egg (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg)

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow's seasonal gift guide includes solid gold rolling papers and an entire Spanish village (https://www.thisisinsider.com/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-gift-guide-includes-spanish-village-2018-11)
Sara Hendricks Nov. 19, 2018, 11:20 AM

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Gwyneth Paltrow's goop has quite the extravagant gift guide this year. Jordan Strauss/AP

Gwyneth Paltrow's website and lifestyle brand, goop, has become well known for having slightly outlandish items on its yearly gift guides.
This year, one of the items on its "Ridiculous but Awesome" roundup is an entire village in Spain.
The guide also includes an Hermès surfboard, 24-karat gold rolling papers, and a zero-emissions yacht.
No one has ever been able to accuse Gwyneth Paltrow— or her aspirational lifestyle brand, goop— of being too relatable.

Because of this, it should surprise no one that if you were to buy every item on this year's aptly-named "Ridiculous but Awesome" gift guide, the total price would be $497,384. And that's without including the "price upon request"-only items.

One of the most expensive gifts is an entire rural village near Lugo, Spain

The village costs $172,910. According to its listing on Aldeast Abandonadas (a real estate website that sells abandoned villages), it includes at least three houses, and is complete with water, electricity, a functioning sewer system, and an oven "to make bread." The website also states that the village has panoramic views, a farmhouse, and is in an ideal location next to a river.

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The village is said to include three houses and panoramic views. Scott Roth/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

This isn't the only village for sale in the Galicia region of Spain, where Lugo is located. According to NPR, many of these villages were abandoned as people flocked into the cities. The result is a growing market in which real estate agents hope to match up abandoned villages with foreign buyers.

Other notable items on the "Ridiculous but Awesome" roster include an Hermès surfboard ($7,700), a shiny lamp in the shape of a banana ($340), 24-karat gold rolling papers ($55), and a zero-emissions yacht (price upon request).

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The Hermes surfboard sells for $7,700. Hermes

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The banana lamp sells for $340. Gessato

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Goop sells the papers for $55. Shine

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The luxury yacht is 100% electric. Q Yachts

Gift guides from the actress and lifestyle guru's website always create a mildly panicked ripple across the internet, and this year was no different. People on Twitter reacted with a mix of dismay, anger, and resigned amusement.
I didn't copy all of the comments. You can follow the link if you're that interested.




Hold the phone - "The village costs $172,910" - That's cheaper than most houses here in the SF Bay Area. I would actually be able to afford that if I was solvent. :eek:

[GeneChing]

https://images.wsj.net/im-40327/IM
Marc Jacobs slipdress, $695, marcjacobs​.com LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

Gwyneth Paltrow Wants to Convert You (https://www.wsj.com/articles/gwyneth-paltrow-wants-to-convert-you-1543931659)
Newly remarried, the Goop CEO is living her best life—and believes she can help you live yours better, too
By Elisa Lipsky-Karasz
Dec. 4, 2018 8:54 a.m. ET

ON A JULY DAY two months before Gwyneth Paltrow is due to be married—for the second time, to writer and TV producer Brad Falchuk—she is holed up at her Amagansett, New York, compound, reveling in the East Coast summer and avoiding wedding preparations. (No, she hasn’t chosen a dress yet.) Sipping iced green tea and looking out across acres of rolling lawn, she seems like an incarnation of a word-association game about Gwyneth Paltrow: tawny, tan, toned. Lithe. Lissome. Limber. She’s just come back from the beach wearing a black bikini and sarong, laughing and apparently not the least bit worried about trailing sand into her gray-and-ivory living room, the one with the two Ellsworth Kelly drawings over the fireplace, a handmade BDDW stereo and linen-covered slipper chairs.

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ON THE COVER Gwyneth Paltrow, photographed on the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., by Lachlan Bailey and styled by George Cortina. PHOTO: LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

Paltrow and her ex, Chris Martin, bought this house in 2006 for $5.4 million. Since their separation in 2014, she has redecorated the place, dispensing with its Hollywood Regency style, which included a giant black-and-white needlework of the British crown in the foyer. Now it feels like an elevated version of a store from her lifestyle company, Goop—complete with a gray-and-ivory kitchen. After bounding upstairs to change into denim cutoffs and a pink shirt, she curls up on a lounge chair and explains one of her catchphrases. Not “conscious uncoupling,” the term she applied to her breakup with Martin, for which she was mercilessly teased. Today she’s talking about “contextual commerce.” This, it turns out, is when potential Goop customers are flooded with newsletters, blog posts, print magazines, conferences, events, podcasts and Instagram ads that surround Goop products in a cocoon of content.

“We sort of made it up. It’s the why of why you’re buying something,” says Paltrow, 46. “It’s really about finding things that we love, whether it’s a restaurant down the street here or a face product or whatever, and we write about why we love it, and then it converts really well.”

What she means is that readers are enticed into the Goop world by search-engine-friendly headlines like “The Gorgeous Furniture Line That Makes Us Want to Lounge Forever” ($5,500 greige sofas from London-based line Pinch), “What Drinking Collagen Might Do for Your Skin” (improve it, with a $95 one-month supply of GoopGenes collagen powder) or “Ten Minutes to Yourself” (best spent taking a bath). The last one features a $4,700 free-standing tub from Kohler as the centerpiece of the post, which was sponsored by the kitchen-and-bath brand. Readers can buy most of these things with a couple of clicks. Conversion is the holy grail of marketing: the point at which people are willing to type in their credit-card information in exchange for a one-month, $90 supply of Goop’s “Why Am I So Effing Tired” supplements, a $499 firewood tote from Goop’s recent capsule collection with home furnishings company CB2 or $22,560 one-of-a-kind sapphire-and-diamond earrings by L.A.-based jewelry company Vram. Entering those 16 digits is an analog speed-bump that makes most people think twice—the current global conversion rate for online shopping is 2.86 percent.

It turns out Goop is extremely efficient at converting people, both to the company’s neo–New Age way of thinking and to piling products into virtual shopping carts. Paltrow first woke up to her powers of influence in 2012, when she was still living with Martin in London and Goop was a niche website selling towels, bikinis, jeans and tees, among other items. She partnered with J.Crew by modeling eight outfits curated from the fall collection. The day the Goop newsletter with the J.Crew feature was blasted out, “we sent them like 10 percent of their traffic. We were just a tiny little website. So for us, that was this huge metric,” she says. (It was 8 percent, impressive nonetheless.)

The following year, Goop incorporated, and by 2014 the company was operating out of a barn-cum-office at her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home, where she moved full time. (The original 15 employees are known as Barn People.) In 2015, a Series A fundraising round garnered $10 million; the next year a Series B round netted $15 million, and Paltrow was named CEO. Soon thereafter, she raised $50 million from venture-capital firms New Enterprise Associates, Lightspeed and Felix Capital, among others.

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BODY OF EVIDENCE “I remember when I started doing yoga and people were like, ‘What is yoga? She’s a witch. She’s a freak,’ ” Paltrow says. Miu Miu sweater, $945, select Miu Miu boutiques, Jacquemus swim brief, $125, jacquemus​.com PHOTO: LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

Goop says it has tripled revenues in the past two years and is on track to double them this year, in part from direct-to-consumer sales of Goop-branded products, which are up 80 percent year-over-year. (The company does not disclose its revenue or profits.) It also curates and sells other brands, as well as partnering with firms like CB2 to expand Goop’s reach. In 2015, Goop moved to its current office in Santa Monica and will soon relocate to a nearby complex to accommodate a rapidly expanding staff. There are stores in Los Angeles, New York and London, with more European locations and an Australian expansion in the works. Even the contextual content earns its keep, with advertising partners that include Cartier, Saks and Prada. Often, the different divisions work in concert: The revenue team identifies an enclave of devoted Goop fans in, say, Dallas, Texas, and hosts a Cointreau-sponsored dinner celebrating a Goop pop-up store that the retail team has stocked with beauty products, table linens, jewelry and a calming mist for kids called Chill Child. The content team covers all the happenings on the Goop website.

Tony Florence, a general partner at NEA and one of Goop’s three board members (the others are Paltrow and Frederic Court of Felix Capital), also noticed Goop’s draw around 2012. During a board meeting for a firm he’d invested in, as he was reviewing recent performance, he noticed a spike in sales owing to a single mention on Goop—a company he’d never heard of. He started cold-calling. “I finally got connected with their IT manager,” he says. A few years later he met Paltrow and invested in Goop’s Series A round. “It was the first time I had seen a founder articulate a really big vision to use content to drive commerce,” he says. NEA has invested in each round since.

Paltrow came of age at a time when actresses were expected to aim for an Oscar (hers came in 1999, at age 26, for Shakespeare in Love) and then, perhaps, parlay that into a makeup contract (she did that, too, signing with Estée Lauder in 2005). “I felt like I had hit all of those benchmarks. I’m very competitive with myself and I thought, Well, what am I supposed to do now?” she says. “On some level I had gotten the message, ‘If you’re not achieving something that’s quantifiable, you might not be worth that much.’ Somehow, that wire got fused together in my head. So, I was like, How do I keep achieving something?”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CN696_GWYNET_16H_20181203181958.jpg
BLITHE SPIRIT “I think a lot of Goop was an expression of her own creative guide,” says Paltrow’s longtime yoga teacher, Eddie Stern. “ ‘This is who I am; this is what I have to offer,’ and she grew with that.” Araks bikini, $230 for set, araks​.com, Prada skirt, $1,840, select Prada boutiques PHOTO: LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

At the time, as Paltrow was considering her next move, there was no Instagram or Snapchat; Facebook was mostly for college kids. “Influencer” was not yet a job description, so she couldn’t post images from her yoga classes with Madonna, her yacht trips with Valentino Garavani or her homemade meals—hashtag “wellness”—and wait for deals to roll in. Nor had the rabid thirst for a celebrity’s daily life quite reached today’s fever pitch. “Cameron Diaz and I talk about this all the time. We’re like, ‘Thank God in the early ’90s there were [so few] paparazzi. Thank God.’ We cry in gratitude that no one was following us around and seeing what we were doing,” she says. “I remember when Brad Pitt and I broke up, it was on the cover of the New York Post and there was no one outside my house. That would never happen today.”

Celebrities were just starting to become brands, though most examples were of apparel and fragrance lines created by mass-market licensing deals and partnerships with manufacturers. By 2005, Jennifer Lopez’s fragrance line had $100 million a year in revenue. The same year, Jessica Simpson launched a self-named fashion and accessories brand, which went on to clock a reported $1 billion in annual sales. But the term “female founder” was not yet trending—there was no Honest Company from Jessica Alba, no ED by Ellen DeGeneres, no Draper James from Reese Witherspoon. Creating a company from scratch was not something Paltrow’s peers were doing. “I didn’t even know what a VC was,” she says. She still isn’t sure what drove her to sit down at her kitchen table in 2008 and write a newsletter that included a recipe for turkey ragù. “I’m still, to be totally honest, trying to sort out the why. I think I do have a very entrepreneurial spirit—you have to have that in order to be an actor, right?” says Paltrow. “In my acting life, it was very clear what the path was. This was very mysterious. I felt like I was following a thread in a dark room, but I was compelled to follow it.”

The Goop name came from a combination of her initials and the double o that a branding-expert friend had joked was a trend in Silicon Valley ( Yahoo ; Google). And just like Google, which became a verb, the name is now used as an adjective, as in: “That coconut-yogurt dragon-fruit bowl is so Goopy.”

From the start, Goop’s focus included wellness, a lifestyle that had called to Paltrow since her father, director Bruce Paltrow, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998. (He died four years later, at 58, when Paltrow was 30.) “He’s the reason I got into this whole thing. I just remember the surgery was so brutal, and then I thought, Wow. What else can we do?” Paltrow began reading up on macrobiotics and seeking answers to the potential causes of his disease—an imbalance, environmental toxins, HPV virus, smoking. “I was trying to take control of his life because he wouldn’t,” she says. He died suddenly, when they were traveling together in Italy for her birthday. Facing mortality head-on was a shock: “I don’t think I’ll ever be whole again, on some level,” she says now.

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CN697_GWYNET_16H_20181203182016.jpg
IN THE SWIM “We’re trailblazers,” Paltrow says of Goop. “We’re going to write about **** that people haven’t heard of.” Solid & Striped bikini, $160 for set, solidandstriped​.com PHOTO: LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

Shifting her persona from a whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking cool girl to a health nut had an unintended effect. “That was the beginning of people thinking I was a crackpot. Like, ‘What do you mean food can affect your health, you f—ing psycho?’ ” she says. “I remember when I started doing yoga and people were like, ‘What is yoga? She’s a witch. She’s a freak.’ ’’

“She was searching for something in the same way that anyone who comes to yoga is searching,” says her longtime teacher, Eddie Stern, who remembers her coming to the 5:30 a.m. classes at his SoHo studio on a daily basis. “I think a lot of Goop was an expression of her own creative guide. ‘This is who I am; this is what I have to offer,’ and she grew with that.”

“We’re trailblazers. We’re going to write about **** that people haven’t heard of,” says Paltrow. “It’s often women’s sexual health that is the most triggering.” A single 2015 Goop post that featured a Korean spa offering vaginal steaming has spawned reams of commentary in response. Enraged doctors accuse Goop of undermining the scientific method and engaging in quackery, citing everything from promoting stickers that claim to rebalance the body’s energy to publishing articles by a self-described “medical medium.”

This summer, Goop settled a lawsuit brought by a group of 10 California county district attorneys alleging “misleading advertising” of three of its products, including crystal yoni eggs, which Goop had offered as a sexual health aid. (They are now for sale on the site for $55, with almost no description beyond “rose quartz egg.”) Goop paid $145,000 in civil penalties and offered refunds for the products. The company says it recognizes that the forum it provides to describe experiences with its products may be subject to the same legal requirements as advertising and expressed gratitude for the guidance it has received as it “moves from a pioneer in this space to an established wellness authority.”

“I’m so happy to suffer those slings and arrows, because if you look at the culture from then to now, people are so curious,” Paltrow says. “It’s so beautiful to see people feeling empowered by natural solutions or ancient modalities alongside science and medicine.

“Forgive me if this comes out wrong,” Paltrow continues, “but I went to do a yoga class in L.A. recently and the 22-year-old girl behind the counter was like, ‘Have you ever done yoga before?’ And literally I turned to my friend, and I was like, ‘You have this job because I’ve done yoga before.’ ”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CN694_WELL_O_16H_20181203181935.jpg
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE Marc Jacobs sweater, $595, marcjacobs​.com, Jacquemus swim brief, $125, jacquemus​.com PHOTO: LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

Wellness is now a $4.2 trillion business, according to a 2018 report by the Global Wellness Institute. Goop’s valuation hit $250 million this year. Though its revenues represent a fraction of the industry, for many it serves as an unofficial portal to all things wellness, with Paltrow in the role of patron saint—and lightning rod. The inverse of wellness is, of course, illness. The movement is built on a combustible combination: the fear of death, a growing distrust of Big Pharma and a dose of transcendentalism, that thoroughly American blend of self-actualization, spiritual freedom and love of the natural world that dates back to the 1800s of Emerson and Thoreau. When Goop devotees read about “rocking your intuitive crown” and performing meditation “cleanses” that the site dubs “spiritual botox,” they are closer to the ethos of Thoreau’s Walden Pond than they might think.

Around the same era, in England and America, snake oil became a widespread cure for common ailments. While traditional Chinese snake oil contains eicosapentaenoic acid, an anti-inflammatory and analgesic, versions sold in the Western world were often overpriced placebos. It wasn’t until the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act that such nostrums—sold as medications—were banned, setting the stage for the modern-day Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA does not test and approve cosmetics in the $135 billion skin-care or vitamins in the $96 billion dietary supplement industries. As with most vitamins, comparable products from Goop come with a caveat: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” Goop says it also tests its own products from formulation to production. This fall, the company introduced Goopgenes; G. Day, a collection of body-care products formulated to “increase energy”; and Madame Ovary, a combo of herbs, adaptogens, nutrients and vitamins tailored for women in menopause, available for $90 per box or $75 as a monthly subscription.

Paltrow draws ire for her support of outlier medical opinions, but also for her products’ prices. The Goop by Juice Beauty Revitalizing Day Moisturizer is $100, on par with Tata Harper’s $110 Repairative Moisturizer, a similarly “clean” product, though it costs far less than luxury creams like La Mer’s, at $325. Clothing ranges from $200 to $1200, comparable to what the fashion industry calls “contemporary,” a tier below luxury fashion. (Witherspoon’s Draper James brand, by comparison, sells dresses in the $150 range.) The recent collaboration with CB2 includes $9.95 glasses and $16.95 plates, but on an Instagram ad for $125 Goop Exfoliating Instant Facial, comments include, “How much is it, $9,081 per ounce?”, “Go away, Gwyneth Paltrow,” and “Is there a way to ‘de-Goopify’ my feed?”

Paltrow has spent some time thinking about this. “It’s like the week that I was People’s most beautiful woman and Star’s most hated celebrity,” in 2013, she says. “It’s a lesson that I learned when we did the ‘conscious uncoupling’ thing.” The term went viral, and the reaction was “so vitriolic,” she says. “I was so raw. It was so hard to be getting a divorce and letting go of this dream, and the public stuff was super painful. I wanted to see if we could check our pain and egos at the door and remember what we love about each other and be a family for these kids. What I didn’t understand at the time was, I think there’s a message in that, which is, ‘If you don’t do it this way, you’re hurting your kids.’

“I think people take that as: ‘She thinks she is better than me,’ ” Paltrow says. She imagines everyone thinking: “Wait till she gets into it. It’s going to be hell.”

So far, Paltrow seems to have avoided hell. On the day of our interview, her son, Moses, and a friend ride ATVs up and down the property past Paltrow’s on-site yoga studio, pausing for a snack. “Oh, my gosh,” Paltrow says, bursting out in laughter. “They have my chief of staff—who has a degree from Harvard Business School—delivering them ice cream!” Martin later shows up to join Paltrow and the kids for dinner. In California, whenever Martin is not touring he picks up the kids from the school bus and takes them to Paltrow’s house in Brentwood. Paltrow handles morning drop-off, hits a class at the Paltrow-backed gym Tracy Anderson and then heads to the Goop offices. She leaves work at 5 p.m. to get home for dinner. When she is traveling, Martin sleeps at Paltrow’s house, where he has a room.

Thus far, she and Falchuk, who also has two teenage children, haven’t merged households and are taking it slow, even post-marriage. “We are still doing it in our own way. With teenage kids, you’ve got to tread lightly. It’s pretty intense, the teenage thing,” she says. “I’ve never been a stepmother before. I don’t know how to do it.” The pair met when Paltrow guest-starred on the Fox TV series Glee, which Falchuk co-created with producer Ryan Murphy. He and Murphy also created the upcoming Netflix series The Politician—in which Falchuk convinced Paltrow to take a supporting role. (Falchuk has an inside track, says Paltrow: “He said, ‘I wrote it for you and I know you don’t really want to do it and you probably can’t do it, but I would love you to read it.’ And he’s such a great writer.”) Her CEO responsibilities at Goop have left little room for acting, though Paltrow will reprise her recurring role as Pepper Potts in the next installment of the Avengers franchise.

The couple squeezed in their wedding between September back-to-school and the launch party for Goop’s London pop-up. In front of a small group of guests at Paltrow’s Amagansett home, she wore a Valentino gown. Stern, her yoga guru, officiated. On a phone call five weeks later, she says she is thrilled with married life: “It’s fantastic. I feel like we are probably better equipped to choose our life partner when we are halfway through life. But generally we have to pick our spouses a lot earlier because of the whole procreation piece.... For me it has been more of a process, and so I feel really lucky to have met this person who is an incredible, true partner.”

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CN698_GWYNET_16H_20181203182025.jpg
Stock vintage sweater, $185, Stock Vintage, 143 East 13th Street, New York, Flagpole swim brief, $185, flagpolenyc​.com. Set design, Heath Mattioli; hair, Lorenzo Martin; makeup, Mark Carrasquillo; manicure, Miwa Kobayashi. PHOTO: LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

The newlyweds spent a couple of days honeymooning in Tuscany and Paris before she continued on to London alone. Falchuk serves as a sounding board—though “not if I need to talk about Ebitda,” she says, laughing at her CEO-speak for the measure of company profitability. He has appeared on the cover of her magazine as well as in the pages of her next cookbook, The Clean Plate, out in January. (Paltrow’s books sell well enough that Goop now has its own imprint at Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group.) “I bit off a lot—I’m trying to chew through it every day,” she says.

Paltrow has a tight circle she reaches out to for advice, including a business coach, Albert Lee, whom she speaks to regularly, and uses tricks like turning off her phone in meetings to focus. Her “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” mentor is Disney ’s Bob Iger. Getting to Oprah is no problem, but there is one person she can’t reach: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “I’ve emailed him,” she says. “He won’t email back.” (A spokesperson for Bezos declined to comment.)

Paltrow has been experimenting with pulling away from some aspects of the business, such as G. Label clothing, which she models less often these days, or fronting the Goop podcast. She still test-drives nearly every product sold, and a recent board meeting was held at her Amagansett home. Finding a balance is a struggle. “How can the brand stand on its own two feet so that it’s genuinely scalable and I’m a good asset?” she asks herself. Her goal, she says, is to have what she calls a global “heritage” lifestyle brand.

“Part of me thinks it’s good for Goop that I also am still Gwyneth Paltrow, you know?” she says. She’s a spokesmodel for the beauty products, since, as she points out, she has been hired to do the same for other brands. “Over time, it would be great if somebody else could do that, especially since, you know, I’m not like a 20-year-old.”

In the meantime, she is trying to enjoy the ride. “In one way you think, Oh, my God. I hit the freaking jackpot. I won the lottery. I get to be this person, and that served as a platform for me to start my business and to have all this incredible access to amazing people and artists and designers, and I’ve had such a fascinating life,” she says. “And then on the other hand, you get old and a little grumpy and you just want to kind of be a hermit.”

But Paltrow is not one to take her foot off the gas. “I’m here one f—ing time. I want an incredible life,” she says. “I used to be in my trailer, smoking a cigarette and waiting for Ethan Hawke to open the door. Now look at me.” •

'Oh, my God. I hit the freaking jackpot. I won the lottery.' **** right :eek:

[GeneChing]

cracking up...


03 FEBRUARY 2019
Cracking the truth on vaginal eggs (https://www.health24.com/Medical/Vaginal-health/News/cracking-the-truth-on-vaginal-eggs-20181022-2)
A stone egg inserted into the vagina is believed to provide a series of health benefits.


Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop to pay $145k over vaginal egg claims

Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle website Goop has agreed to pay $145,000 over its claims about vaginal eggs, after the California Food, Drug, and Medical Device Task Force filed a complaint against the company.

https://cdn.24.co.za/files/Cms/General/d/8087/49254e5dbe1847b18b2bb0302cbaf164.jpg
Vaginal eggs may not be all they're cracked up to be.

Love eggs, yoni eggs, jade eggs, vaginal jade eggs... There are even more names for the device than there are benefits.

These eggs are made from a variety of materials; however, the most common are smoothed rose quartz, black obsidian or nephrite jade.

These stones are believed to strengthen vaginal muscles, increase libido, enhance feminine energy, improve physical appearance and prevent and alleviate uterine prolapse.

In order to reap these health benefits, the egg needs to be inserted into the vagina.

In an interview with Women’s Health, medical doctor and sexologist Dr Elna Rudolph states that the egg should only be inserted for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time. “I wouldn’t advise anybody wear one 24/7 – you need to relax your pelvic floor at times.”

Loud criticism

Over the last year, the love egg has come under scrutiny and a lot of criticism after Goop, the affluent lifestyle site owned by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, published an article praising the incredible healing qualities of the stones.

The story, now removed from the site, stated that the stones can provide women with various vaginal health benefits.

Gynaecologists, however, emerged in droves to deny any health benefits attributed to the stone and claimed that there was no scientific evidence to back the claims made by the site.

In an interview with Health, gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter warns that using these eggs can be really harmful, “The stones are really porous, so I’m not sure how they could be cleaned or sterilised between uses… [It’s] especially an issue when one of the recommended ways to use it is sleeping with it in. We don't recommend that tampons or menstrual cups be left in for longer than 12 hours, and those are either disposable or cleanable."

Speaking to Vogue, physical therapist Stacey J Futterman Tauriello, who specialises in pelvic-floor rehabilitation, states, “Saying that [a jade egg] can alleviate uterine prolapse is absurd. Prolapse is a laxity of ligaments. [Strengthening] the pelvic floor helps support those organs, but it doesn’t change the structure of them.”

Insufficient scientific evidence

Last month the Goop site had to settle a R2 075 000 lawsuit over the health benefits the site attributed to the egg. According to court documents, the claims about the egg made by the site were not backed with scientific evidence.

In a statement, Goop noted, “This settlement does not indicate any liability on Goop’s part. While the company has not received any complaints regarding these product claims, it is happy to fully refund any Goop customer who has purchased any of the challenged products.”

The vaginal jade eggs are still for sale on the lifestyle site.

Image credit: iStock
Lauren Mitchell

That being said, more people prolly know goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop) from this whole jade egg (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg) kerfuffle.

[David Jamieson]

She's a delightful and sexy ignoramus. I'll give her that. :D

[mawali]

She's a delightful and sexy ignoramus. I'll give her that. :D

That stuff sells! Images:D Illusion:D Hollywood affiliation (on some levels):D etc all work within the marketing and capitalistic world of imagination and self congratulatory praise:confused:

[GeneChing]

From jade eggs to ibogaine. Gwyneth gots GOOP going on... :eek:


Gwyneth Paltrow Says Psychedelics Are The Next Wellness Craze — & She's Not Wrong (https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/03/226232/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-psychedelic-drug-ibogaine-effects)
CORY STIEG
MARCH 6, 2019, 12:15 PM

https://s2.r29static.com//bin/entry/171/340x408,85/2138624/image.webp
PHOTO: PHILLIP FARAONE/GETTY IMAGES.
Usually, when Gwyneth Paltrow says something wildly inaccurate about health or wellness on goop, a chorus of "actually's" reverberates throughout the internet. But in a new interview with The New York Times, the actress and CEO addressed the dangerous pseudoscientific advice that occasionally appears on goop, explaining that it's never meant to be prescriptive. "Somehow gets translated into, 'Gwyneth says you should do this,'" she told The New York Times.
When asked what she sees as the "next big thing" in wellness, Paltrow gave a surprising answer: "I think how psychedelics affect health and mental health and addiction will come more into the mainstream," she said. After clarifying that she had never personally used psychedelics before, she said, "I mean there’s undeniably some link between being in that state and being connected to some other universal cosmic something." As it turns out, she might be onto something.
Just like Paltrow didn't invent yoga, she also didn't invent psychedelic drugs. Since the 1960s, people have contested their use for treating depression and anxiety. But promising new research suggests that using psychedelic drugs such as LSD, MDMA, psilocybin (aka "mushrooms"), and ayahuasca, in conjunction with psychotherapy can improve symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). This is still an emerging field, but is gaining mainstream attention from people looking for an alternative to antidepressants. Just yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray that contains ketamine, an anesthetic drug that goes by the name "Special K," and can be used to treat depression.
So, yeah, psychedelics might be the "big new thing" that Paltrow described. In The New York Times interview, she named "ibogaine, that shrub from Gabon" as one she had heard of. Ibogaine is a powerful psychedelic drug that occurs naturally in West Africa, and is used in rituals and healing ceremonies. However, ibogaine may significantly reduce withdrawal from opiates and even eliminate substance-related cravings, according to MAPS. For this reason, there's a lot of interest in researching how ibogaine can be used treat the opioid epidemic.
Paltrow's summation about psychedelics connecting people to a larger "cosmic something" isn't that off, either. Using hallucinogens, experts believe, helps people develop greater "levels of spirituality," which researchers believe improves emotional stability, and reduces symptoms of anxiety, depression, and disordered eating. There's also a more physiological change that takes place: Hallucinogenic drugs re-structure the function of neurons in the brain, which essentially "repairs" circuits that may malfunction in a person with anxiety or mood disorders, according to a 2018 study.
Whether or not this is exactly what Paltrow was referring to in the interview remains to be seen (on goop, likely). So, while this might seem like one more far-out thing she's promoting, it's worth knowing that it's kind of legit.

[GeneChing]

How Gwyneth Paltrow got over her impostor syndrome and embraced being a CEO (https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/success/gwyneth-paltrow-impostor-syndrome-boss-files/index.html)
Poppy Harlow
By Poppy Harlow, CNN
Updated 3:35 PM ET, Mon April 1, 2019

It's rare for a CEO to admit to feeling like an impostor, but Gwyneth Paltrow embraces it.

The Founder and CEO of Goop, a lifestyle content and retail website, says the learning curve has been steep.

"The provenance of how I got here — it's unusual, and I didn't finish college. I don't have an MBA ... I had no business starting a business," she told CNN during a Boss Files interview at the SXSW festival. "So I've had to really, really learn on the job."
Paltrow has said her U-turn from Oscar-winning actress to C-suite executive has made her the most fulfilled she has ever been.
"I have this incredible company and I love my role, I love my team," she said. "I feel like I have a lot of agency and I feel so thrilled by all the challenges and so excited by how much there is to learn every day."
Today, the privately-held Goop places its valuation at roughly $250 million. But Paltrow admits that even now, more than 10 years after founding the company in her kitchen, she still has a lot to learn.
"There are still days where something comes across my desk and I think, I don't know what I don't know about this. That is the scariest thing for me," she said.
But unlike many of her peers in the C-suite, she says she's not afraid to ask questions others may view as "dumb."
"I was really afraid to ask dumb questions in the beginning, especially with the acronyms ... I'd be in a meeting Googling 'What is a SAS business?...What is AUR? Wait, why is that different from an AOV?" Frustrated, she said, she'd finally just blurt out the question to her team.
This reformed 'club rat' has raised millions for clean water projects
Paltrow now credits much of her success in the business world to that vulnerability and sense of self-awareness. "It's scary until you decide asking questions is not a measure of lack of intelligence," she said. "You might be ignorant about something, and the way to cure that is to ask the question."
Paltrow's road as a leader has been long, and not without controversy. Last year, Goop settled with the California District Attorney's office over "unsubstantiated claims" related to two products sold on the Goop website.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190311151659-gwyneth-paltrow-sxsw-restricted-exlarge-169.jpg
Poppy Harlow interviews Gwyneth Paltrow at the SXSW festival in Austin.

Paltrow says there were "no customer complaints ever" about the items, and says the experience has ultimately made Goop a stronger company.
"We were a young company and ... We didn't understand about compliance and regulations. We just thought we were writing a blog ... It's been an incredible lesson because also we came to understand the power of our influence."
Another struggle she's had along the way is giving people "difficult feedback," which she says is a critical skill for a successful leader. "I think that's harder for women somehow," she says.
She says she'd like to see more "vulnerable" leaders in the business world, including more women.
"I think it's part of how I strive to be as leader and empower the women that I work with, who will go off and be CEOs of their own companies one day," Paltrow says. "I try to lead from this model of being an actual woman and harnessing all the great things that inherently come with being a woman."
Asked what she thinks America would look like with more female leaders in business, she says, "Well I think we would have gotten a lot further than we've gotten so far."

It boggles my mind how much she's made slinging goop.

[mawali]

Image is definitely Everything! It goes a long way.
As a sometime yoga doer:confused: the simplicity of it is wonderful but when I look at the various yoga magazine and journals out there, I can see why some people may say it is just out of their league.

So much glitter has been added to a simple way of life that I am amazed at how this is seen as the real sttuff of being:D

[GeneChing]

Jessica Alba, Olivia Wilde, Busy Philipps to Headline Gwyneth Paltrow's In Goop Health Summit (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jessica-alba-olivia-wilde-busy-philipps-headline-gwyneth-paltrows-goop-health-summit-1199678)
2:57 PM PDT 4/4/2019 by Ericka Franklin

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2019/04/gwyneth_paltrow_speaks_onstage_at_the_in_goop_heal th_summit-getty-h_2019_.jpg
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

The past five Goop summits (which have attracted actresses Demi Moore, Lake Bell and Meg Ryan) have all sold out.
On May 18, Gwyneth Paltrow’s “In Goop Health” summit will return for its third installment in Los Angeles with Jessica Alba (founder of The Honest Company), Busy Philipps (who hosts the late-night talk show Busy Tonight and spoke to THR earlier this month about self-care, the border crisis and style) and Olivia Wilde (who recently made her directorial debut with Booksmart). All three will chat with Paltrow about challenges, their comfort zone with the unfamiliar, and the mentorships and friendships that have helped to guide their careers.

The past five Goop summits (which have touched down in New York and Vancouver in addition to L.A.) have all sold out.

For Goop devotees who spend $4,500 for a Wellness Weekender Pass, the retreat will begin by checking in to Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica for a two-night stay, followed by an afternoon wellness workshop with Peter Crone (of the film documentary Heal), a VIP workout session and more. $1,000 all-access passes give ticket-holders entry to workshops and activities at the event site, which has yet to be announced. Tickets can be purchased now at Goop.com.

Kicking off with a fireside chat between Paltrow and New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love), the day will continue with a multitude of activations, which include trying out Julianne Hough’s dance-method workout, mind-focused talks on building boundaries with Instagram’s favorite spiritual writer Lalah Delia, intuition workshops, a skin-care class, and experiencing Somadome meditation pods, 24-karat ear seeds healing, exploring the Goop retail shop and more.

$4500? $1000? To rich for my blood, thanks. :o

[GeneChing]

I couldn't even watch Gwyneth in Endgame (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71016-Avengers-Endgame). The fact that she's making so much bank off GOOP completely compromises her as an actor for me.


MAY 20, 2019 5:47PM PT
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Summit Proves Hollywood Retirement Is Working for Her (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-summit-1203221787/)
By MATT DONNELLY
Senior Film Writer
@MattDonnelly

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/in-goop-health-summit-gwyneth-paltrow-.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF GOOP

Across the country on Saturday, movie theaters sold over $12 million in tickets to “Avengers: Endgame,” helping it amass $771 million in the U.S. since its release in April.

On the same day, in a stunning urban greenhouse complex in DTLA, the film’s supporting star Gwyneth Paltrow counted tickets of her own — pricey, perk-loaded passes to the third annual Los Angeles In Goop Health Summit.

Paltrow’s 11-year-old lifestyle and wellness empire is her sole full time job, the Oscar winner confirmed to Variety in February, as she’s resigned her Marvel Universe gig as Iron Man’s better half Pepper Potts.

Instead of giving sound bites about getting red carpet ready or reflecting on Marvel’s remarkable 22-film run, Paltrow sipped a collagen-infused punch and nibbled a quinoa breakfast porridge before hundreds of pristine Goop devotees. This was just before a healing sound bath came ahead of opening remarks, set to the vibrations of plants transmitted through proprietary tech.

An entire campus of experiences awaited the summit, like a workshop on cultivating happiness with optimism doctor (trademarked, by the way) Deepika Chopra in a space called the intuition studio. The food studio held advice from Goop health editors and the company’s new podcast host, chef Seamus Mullen. The beauty studio provided stations that taught attendees how to properly massage the face to contour the cheekbone, stimulate the scalp for hair growth and volume, and use aromatherapy to balance genetic and autoimmune conditions.

If this is Paltrow’s new set, she’s a mix between executive producer, studio head and well-placed megastar cameo. She also has a sense of humor about it.

“Don’t worry, the group vaginal steam is optional,” she joked in her opening remarks before unleashing the overwhelmingly female population on the summit. Anchored at the top of the entire space was Goop Hall, a retail epicenter where users could buy everything from her eponymous sportswear line to sex dust to restored farm tables. Food was everywhere: organic crudites from Lady and Larder; Kreation wellness shots in glass bottles; Pitfire Pizza made with vegan cashew mozzarella. We saw one chicken breast, served over a kale caesar salad with cabbage and heirloom tomato.

Traces of her old life were present, like her recruiting of Kevin Smith to share his heart attack ordeal on a breakout panel with Mullen and his “Goopfellas” podcast co-host Dr. Will Cole. Between f-bombs, Smith said he shed serious weight through diet and the help of his daughter, actress Harley Quinn Smith. Veganism ultimately did the trick, after many false starts like the potato diet (which is exactly what you think it is).

“The first day was amazing, I ate like nine potatoes. But then I realized I actually hate potatoes, I liked the butter and salt that made mashed potatoes.” Through dramatic portion control, he took off 70 pounds and added years to his life, he said.

Transformation is a key component of Goop’s sales pitch — and it was thoroughly explored in the “evening fireside” conversation that closed the event. Paltrow convened a panel of Hollywood women including Taraji P. Henson, Olivia Wilde, Jessica Alba and former talk show host Busy Philipps for a conversation about pivoting.

“When I look at you all, I think of you as trailblazers. Women who are brave enough to take their initial career, turn it into a platform and do things that change the world,” Paltrow said.

Philipps discussed sharing her personal abortion experience on E!’s since-ended “Busy Tonight,” and tapping into an unacknowledged community of women. Alba expounded on the necessities that led to her toxin-free range of baby, household and beauty products via The Honest Company, while Henson explored the deep sitgma-removing work and “conversation starting” she has done around mental health and the black community through a foundation named for her father Boris Henson. Wilde shared her journey to her upcoming feature directorial debut, “Booksmart,” a rarity for women in Hollywood.

“I had a lot of insecurity about not having gone to film school. I thought, without going to film school, how do I have the right? This happens to be a uniquely female trait. Men don’t think a lot about whether they have the right,” Wilde told the crowd.

“[I realized] my film school has been shadowing these great directors I’ve had a chance to work for. So I got over that,” she said.

After evening cocktails (botanical vodka, courtesy of Ketel One), guests shuffled out past a giant refrigerator stocked with kombucha, boxed alkaline water and matcha lemonade. Beneath the Goop logo was a sign urging: “Help yourself.” As if the day was about anything else.

[GeneChing]

Put Away The Jade Eggs And Garlic: This Doctor's 'Vagina Bible' Separates Fact From Fiction (https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/08/29/vagina-bible-jen-gunter)
46:44
Play
August 29, 2019

https://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2019/08/Jen-Gunter-Headshot-3-Photo-Credit-Jason-LeCras-1000x1275.jpg
In her new book, "The Vagina Bible," OB-GYN and New York Times columnist Dr. Jen Gunter separates myth from medicine about women’s bodies. (Courtesy Jason LeCras)

Editor's note: A gentle warning to listeners across the country, this hour will address mature subject matter.

OB-GYN and New York Times columnist Dr. Jen Gunter advises her patients — and her hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers — to put away the jade eggs, the garlic, and to stop listening to Gwyneth Paltrow. In her funny, fact-based book, Gunter separates myth from medicine about women’s bodies.

Guest
Dr. Jen Gunter, obstetrician and gynecologist. Author of "The Vagina Bible" and columnist for The New York Times. (@DrJenGunter)

From The Reading List
Excerpt from "The Vagina Bible" by Jen Gunter

Introduction

Get highlights, extras and notes from the hosts sent to your inbox each week with On Point's newsletter. Subscribe here.

I HAVE A VAGENDA: for every woman to be empowered with accurate information about the vagina and vulva.

One of the core tenets of medicine is informed consent. We doctors provide information about risks and benefits and then, armed with that information, our patients make choices that work for their bodies. This only works when the information is accurate and unbiased. Finding this kind of data can be challenging, as we have quickly passed through the age of information and seem to be stalled in the age of misinformation.

Snake oil and the lure of a quick fix have been around for a long time, and so false, fantastical medical claims are nothing new. However, sorting myth from medicine is getting harder and harder.

In addition to social media feeds that constantly display medical mes saging of variable quality, there are the demands of a headline-driven news cycle that constantly requires new content-even when it doesn't exist. With women's bodies, there are even more forces of misdirection at work. Pseudoscience and those who peddle it are invested in misinformation, but so is the patriarchy.

Obsessions with reproductive tract purity and cleansing date back to a time when a woman's worth was measured by her virginity and how many children she might bear. A vagina and uterus were currency. Playing on these fears awakens something visceral. It's no wonder the words “pure,” "natural,” and “clean” are used so often to market products to women.

Members of the media and celebrity influencers tap into these fears with articles about and products to prevent vaginal mayhem, as if the vagina (which evolved to stretch and tear to deliver a baby long before suture material was invented) is somehow so fragile that it is constantly in a state of near catastrophe.

Why The Vagina Bible instead of The Vagina and Vulva Bible? Because that is how we collectively talk about the lower reproductive tract (the vagina and vulva). Medically, the vagina is only the inside, but language evolves and words take on new meaning. For example, "catfish" and "text" both have additional meanings that I could never have imagined when I was growing up. “Gut” is from the Old English for the intestinal tract, usu ally meaning the lower part (from the stomach on down) but not always. It's actually a very imprecise term; yet it has been embraced by the medical community and is even the name of a leading journal dedicated to the study of the alimentary (digestive) tract, the liver, biliary tree, and pancreas.

I have been in medicine for thirty-three years, and I've been a gynecologist for twenty-four of them. I've listened to a lot of women, and I know the questions they ask as well as the ones they want to ask but don't quite know how.

The Vagina Bible is everything I want women to know about their vulvas and vaginas. It is my answer to every woman who has listened to me pass on information in the office or online and then wondered, “How did I not know this?”

You can read the book in order from front to back or visit specific chapters or even sections as they speak to you. It's all good! I hope over the years many pages will become worn as you go back to double-check what a doctor told you in the office, to research a product that makes wild claims about improving vaginas and vulvas, or help a friend or sexual partner out with an anatomy lesson.

Misinforming women about their bodies serves no one. And I'm here to help end it.

From the book THE VAGINA BIBLE by Jen Gunter. Copyright © 2019 by Jen Gunter. Excerpted with permission by Kensington Publishing Corp.

New York Times: "Your Vagina Is Terrific (and Everyone Else’s Opinions Still Are Not)" — "When I was in my 20s and already a doctor, I still let my sexual partners believe they were the experts in female anatomy, despite the fact that I was studying to be an OB/GYN. These men would tell me things that were untrue and I would count ceiling tiles while they fumbled around in the wrong ZIP code, if you know what I mean.

"Instead of correcting them, I just nodded and faked my share of orgasms because I prioritized men feeling comfortable over my own sexual pleasure.

"It’s enraging that faking orgasms to satisfy a man’s sexual script has not been confined to the trash heap of bad history. Studies tell us that up to 67 percent of women who have experienced penile-vaginal intercourse have faked orgasms. All for reasons painfully familiar to me: not wanting to hurt my male partner’s feelings, knowing I won’t be listened to, feeding his ego or simply wanting the sex to end.

"We rarely talk openly about what’s required for a woman to have a good sexual experience, and so many heterosexual women learn the mechanics of sex and female orgasms from movies (most of which are written, directed and produced by ... men). What I like to call the three-strokes-of-penetration-bite-your-lip-arch-the-back-and-moan routine."

Washington Post: "Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop touted the ‘benefits’ of putting a jade egg in your vagina. Now it must pay." — "We need to talk about Gwyneth Paltrow's vaginal eggs. Again.

"For the uninitiated, these are the egg-shaped jade or quartz stones sold through Goop, Paltrow's new-age wellness company and lifestyle brand. Per Goop, women are supposed to insert said eggs into their vaginas — and keep them there for varying periods of time, sometimes overnight — to 'get better connected to the power within.'

"For $66, one can buy a dark nephrite jade egg, which allegedly brings increased sexual energy and pleasure. Or, for $55, there is the 'heart-activating' rose quartz egg, for those who want more positive energy and love. Until recently, a page on Goop's website promised that the eggs would 'increase vaginal muscle tone, hormonal balance, and feminine energy in general.'

"Those claims were, well, a stretch, with no grounding in real science, according to a consumer protection lawsuit filed by state prosecutors representing 10 California counties. On Wednesday, state officials and Goop announced that they had settled the suit, with Paltrow's company agreeing to pay $145,000 in civil penalties.

"Specifically, the suit called out Goop's jade egg, its rose quartz egg and its 'Inner Judge Flower Essence Blend' as products 'whose advertised medical claims were not supported by competent and reliable science,' according to the Santa Clara County district attorney's office. For example, the flower essence blend had been marketed as a blend of essential oils that could ward off depression.

"And the jade eggs? They had developed a reputation — and a backlash — of their own."
Grace Tatter produced this hour for broadcast.

This program aired on August 29, 2019.

THREADS
Jade Egg (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg)
Gwyneth & Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)

[David Jamieson]

Gwyneth is a ridiculously good looking person.

[GeneChing]

"O.G. Goop" Marianne Williamson Will Join Gwyneth Paltrow at San Francisco Summit (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/marianne-williamson-join-gwyneth-paltrow-at-goop-summit-san-francisco-1245271)
1:09 PM PDT 10/3/2019 by Ingrid Schmidt , Nadia Neophytou

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2019/10/gwyneth_paltrow_-_marianne_williamson_-_getty_-_split_-_h_2019_.jpg
ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images; Jesse Grant/Getty Images
Goop CEO Gwyneth Paltrow and author/presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.

"In many ways, Marianne Williamson is O.G. Goop," Goop CCO Elise Loehnen told The Hollywood Reporter, while another spokesperson added that Paltrow is a "huge fan" but isn't "making any political endorsements."

It is finally happening. By far the Goop-iest 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, author Marianne Williamson (a self-described "***** for God") and actress/Goop CEO Gwyneth Paltrow (whose company has referred to Williamson as a "spiritual legend") are having a public meeting of the minds next month.

On Thursday, Goop announced that Paltrow and chief content officer Elise Loehnen will be hosting a fireside chat with Williamson on Nov. 16 as the highlight of the first In Goop Health Summit to be held in San Francisco, accompanied by the opening of a permanent San Francisco brick-and-mortar Goop Lab store.

While Williamson is currently running near the bottom of the pack in the polls, and has yet to secure a place in the upcoming Oct. 15 and November debates, maybe her pairing with Paltrow will help her gain traction. What better antidote to the country’s spiritual deterioration than Goop-ification to go hand in hand with Williamson’s philosophies, as outlined in her book, Politics of Love?

While Paltrow would not comment to The Hollywood Reporter on her political leanings or on her forthcoming chat with Williamson, a Goop spokesperson told THR that "Goop/GP aren’t making any political endorsements," adding that "GP is a huge fan, so this is an extension of that."

Loehnen told THR: "In many ways, Marianne Williamson is O.G. Goop: She’s been beating a spiritual trail for decades and leading a global discourse on how we’re all connected to each other, to the planet, and to the universal force of love. She is venerated not only for her clarity around the courageness required to move societies forward, but her willingness to step into the middle of difficult and triggering conversations and blast the fog of fear away to reveal the higher, though not always easier, path."

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/2019/10/img_3781-embed_2019.jpg
Courtesy of Goop
Goop chief content officer Elise Loehnen and Marianne Williamson.

Last July, Goop released a Podcast with Williamson, titled “Who Are You In Crisis?” And the introduction on the site says, "Williamson urges for compassionate resistance, real maturity, and a greater understanding of the dichotomy that is built into the DNA of America. Her insight into crises — and the people she sees us becoming on the other side of it — lights a fire."

As at previous summits, there will be a mix of panels and workshops that explore the philosophies and products touted by Paltrow’s wellness company, including a retail hall with a "wellness boutique" and "clean beauty apothecary." Workshops and activities will be held in six spaces themed Think, Glow, Move, Restore, Feel and Reinvent. The day will zero in on "issue-focused talks with leading doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs and boundary-pushing celebrities," according to a press statement, as well as wellness sessions, from dreamwork to trampoline bounce classes.

Some of the pros confirmed so far include palliative care specialist (and Oprah favorite) BJ Miller and Paltrow’s facialist Anastasia Achillos. Sophia Bush will join the likes of mindfulness and compassion expert Shauna Shapiro and the environmental author Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of John F. Kennedy.

Tickets for the day-long symposium, $1,000, are available starting today at goop.com.

After hosting a number of pop-ups in the past couple of years in the Bay Area (where the company is reported to have its fourth-most engaged market), Paltrow’s lifestyle brand will open the doors of a permanent Goop Lab at 2121 Fillmore Street in November, around the same time as the Goop summit. New York-based architecture and design firm Ronen Lev is designing the 1,500-square-foot space, which will be the company's fifth permanent location, joining Los Angeles, New York, London and a space at Montecito's Rosewood Miramar Beach hotel.

Bay Area shoppers can expect the curated boutique to be stocked with luxury products (a mix of Goop branded merchandise and other labels) including clothing, accessories, beauty items, gifts and homewares.


INGRID SCHMIDT
Ingrid.Schmidt@thr.com
IngridSchmidt_

NADIA NEOPHYTOU
THRnews@thr.com
@thr

O.G. Goop. :p

$1000 is way to rich for my blood. :o

I wonder if there are press passes. I'd interview Gwyneth in a heartbeat. We could discuss Jade Eggs (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg). :D

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow Is Not Going to Read This Story (https://www.elle.com/culture/a29337797/gwyneth-paltrow-the-politician-interview-2019/)
BY MOLLY LANGMUIR
OCT 9, 2019

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/elm110119wlcovers0010logo-1570473593.jpg
Jacket, $5,350, swimsuit, $1,550, bracelets,$1,900 each, all, Chanel. Her own rings.
ZOEY GROSSMAN

All of this started with Gwyneth Paltrow hearing from Brad Falchuk—the producer, writer, and director who is also, as of last fall, her husband—that she’d influenced a character in a Netflix series he was working on. “Then it went to, ‘I’ve written this part for you. Would you consider doing it?’” she says. Many actresses would have leaped at the chance. The show, The Politician, was created by Ryan Murphy, with whom Falchuk often collaborates (they cocreated Glee and American Horror Story), and is a dark comedy about class, privilege, and flawed, self-interested people who nonetheless try their best to do good. More specifically, it focuses on a young man, Payton (Ben Platt), driven by a strain of ambition so potent it could fuel a rocket ship; the first season follows his campaign to become high school president, which is part one of his plan to inhabit the White House. Paltrow was being asked to play his mother. “I said, ‘No,’” she says. “‘You know there’s no way I can do it.’”

In 1999, Paltrow won an Academy Award for her role in Shakespeare in Love, and soon after became one of the biggest movie stars in the world. But she began to pull back from Hollywood once she became a mother in 2004 (she now has two children—a daughter, Apple, and son, Moses—with Coldplay singer Chris Martin, from whom she famously “consciously uncoupled” in 2014). In recent years, she has focused most of her attention on her wellness company, Goop, which began in 2008 as a newsletter she sent from her kitchen and is now a vast enterprise. The company has faced controversy—a piece suggesting women could benefit from placing a jade egg in their vagina, for example, prompted disapproving statements from gynecologists (Goop now tags certain posts “Fascinating and Inexplicable”)—but it’s been a huge financial success. As of 2018, it was worth $250 million, and Paltrow suggests it’s subsequently expanded beyond that. “That’s an old number,” she says. Is it higher or lower? “Of course it’s higher,” she says. “Thank goodness. Oh my God.”

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/elm110119wlgwyneth0008logo-1570473593.jpg
Bodysuit, G. Label. Necklace, Tiffany & Co.
ZOEY GROSSMAN

Since 2015, other than a brief cameo on a TV show, Paltrow has only appeared onscreen as Pepper Potts, the romantic foil to Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man in Marvel’s ever-expanding universe. Her difficulty keeping track of which Marvel movies she’s in has been a much-repeated joke on the internet, though Paltrow doesn’t seem to be aware of this. “I never read stuff,” she says. “But it is confusing because there are so many Marvel movies, and to be honest, I haven’t seen very many of them. It’s really stupid and I’m sorry, but I’m a 47-year-old mother.”

Regarding The Politician, though, Falchuk and Murphy were persistent—“Like a dog with a bone,” Paltrow says. The production agreed to work around her schedule, and it helped that Falchuk cut some of her lines.“She’d show me a giant chunk of her dialogue and be like, ‘I have a board meeting in two days. Please don’t make me do this,’” he says. (Platt describes the rapport between Paltrow and Falchuk, who met on the set of Glee back in 2010, as being like “Cinderella and Prince Charming.” Paltrow does say Falchuk bossed her around; when I mention this to him, he says, “Well, that’s my job. And I think she liked it.”) “She was like, ‘Of course, I got roped into it,’” says Paltrow’s friend Cameron Diaz, leaning hard into the r. “It’s very funny. But she can do 4 million things at once.” (On set, Paltrow often met with Goop staffers in her downtime.)

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/elm110119wlgwyneth0004logo-1570473593.jpg
Suspender trousers, Giorgio Armani. Bracelets, rings, all Cartier
ZOEY GROSSMAN

Paltrow first appears about halfway through the first episode, wearing an emerald-green caftan and 10 million dollars’ worth of jewelry, and dropping tidbits of advice that could be straight out of a self-help book. In another scene, after Payton has been hospitalized, she places crystals by his head and brings in a healer. Her character can seem, in other words, like a satirical take on the public perception of Paltrow; that she’s viewed this way amuses and frustrates people close to her. “Anybody who thinks that someone as successful as Gwyneth has just been floating around in caftans all day is just being rude,” says her friend Kate Hudson, who adds, “I’m way more like that than Gwyneth—I really do throw crystals around.”

But Falchuk and Paltrow both insist that skewering these projections wasn’t their intention. “The way [my character is] as a mother is most closely based on me,” Paltrow says. “He was also borrowing from other aspects of my life.” One plot point, for example, involves wealthy parents paying for their children to get into the Ivy League (oddly enough, it was written before the college admissions scandal emerged this past March). “I’m familiar with that world,” she explains.

The Politician is concerned with ambition—what it means to be driven by it, how it can distort you. Paltrow says that as an actress, she never felt that ambitious, though this was as much for systemic reasons as it was for personal ones. “In the ’90s, when I was coming up, it was a very male-dominated field,” she says. “You used to hear, ‘That actress is so ambitious,’ like it was a dirty word.” (Paltrow was an early and essential source on Harvey Weinstein for the New York Times.) But now, with Goop, “my ambition has been unleashed,” she admits.

That Paltrow is more concerned with business these days than with acting would never be apparent from her turn in The Politician, though. “The reaction of most people in our lives who have seen the show is, ‘Screw you for not doing this more,’” Falchuk says. “Seeing her quiet elegance and how she can command a room was a reminder that she is a bona fide screen presence,” Platt says. “She exudes light.”

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/elm110119fobcover-gwyneth-1570567227.jpg
Dress by Ralph Lauren Collection. Earrings and bracelets by Tiffany & Co. Her own rings.
ZOEY GROSSMAN

Styled by Charles Varenne. Hair by Anh Co Tran at The Wall Group; makeup by Jillian Dempsey at SWA. Manicure by Ashlie Johnson at The Wall Group; produced by Michelle Hynek at Crawford & Co Productions.

This article appears in the November 2019 issue of ELLE, on newsstands October 22.



MOLLY LANGMUIR
Molly Langmuir is a staff writer for ELLE.


Gwyneth is a ridiculously good looking person.
This repost is for you David. Especially that third B&W pic. Always looking out for ya, old friend. ;)

[GeneChing]

JANUARY 10TH, 2020
Gywneth Paltrow Is Selling A Candle That Smells Like Her Vagina (https://www.dailywire.com/news/gywneth-paltro-is-selling-a-candle-that-smells-like-her-vagina?fbclid=IwAR0n5z3wFeBg1f7NvIe4FF8_TbZ-ad_fra6MwiYBvohfPWTqQRMkRMcwmMo)
By Amanda Prestigiacomo
DailyWire.com

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/01/Screen-Shot-2020-01-10-at-4.03.47-PM.png?auto=format&fit=crop&ixlib=react-8.6.4&h=546&w=970&q=75&dpr=1
Rich Fury/Getty Images for Girlboss

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow is selling a candle that smells like her vagina at $75 a pop for her lifestyle and wellness company Goop. The name of the candle is none other than, you guessed it, “This Smells Like My Vagina.”

Paltrow first came across a scent that she said reminded her of the smell of her own vagina, she claims. The scent was then finalized for the “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle, which reportedly sold out within hours of its test run.

“This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP — the two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, ‘Uhhh … this smells like a vagina,'” Goop outlined.

The smell then “evolved into a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent,” according to the company.

“That turned out to be perfect as a candle — we did a test run … and it sold out within hours,” Goop bragged. “It’s a blend of geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed that puts us in mind of fantasy, seduction, and a sophisticated warmth.”

Goop, clearly, is not a traditional brand. In 2018, for example, the wellness company settled a six-figure lawsuit surrounding their “vagina eggs,” which were promoted to help regulate females’ hormones and negate menstrual cramps.

“It turns out, contrary to Goop’s advice, shoving a large egg made out of a porous mineral into the recesses of your lady-regions may not be the best treatment for conditions like endometriosis,” The Daily Wire reported. “Apparently, Goop knew — or, according to a complaint filed by the California consumer protection office, Goop should have known before they marketed this product, as well as a ‘flower essence’ they claimed treated depression, to consumers on their website.”

“The health and money of Santa Clara County residents should never be put at risk by misleading advertising,” the attorney for the California consumer protection office said in a statement. “We will vigilantly protect consumers against companies that promise health benefits without the support of good science … or any science.”

Paltrow again made headlines for her “progressive” ways last month, this time for gifting herself a ******** for Christmas.

The Daily Wire reported on the ad:


After Gwyneth shakes herself up a couple of Martinis, the narrator says “someone’s double-fisting” as she struts through the kitchen with her libations.

“The holidays are work, so don’t be afraid to ask for help with lighting, and food, and style, and hair, and hair, and hair,” the narrator cheekily continues. “Find your favorite look, or eleven of them. Look fabulous in each one, and get super high… In your heels, of course.”

The ad then takes a salacious turn by reminding people to treat themselves to a little self-service, but only after doing “something for others.”

“Do something for others but don’t forget about No. 1,” the narrator says as Paltrow pulls a ******** from a Christmas stocking and keeps it for herself. “Yes, that is a ********.”

The ad finishes with the narrator wishing everyone a “happy holidays from G. Label.”

This would make a great joke gift tho...if it wasn't $75. For a candle. Gwyneth wtf?


THREADS
Gwyneth & Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
Jade Egg (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67255-Jade-Egg)

[GeneChing]

https://images.theconversation.com/files/309506/original/file-20200110-97149-1gq4ogn.jpg
The Goop Lab launches Jan. 24, 2020: it will likely be full of magical thinking and unproven health stories — making it a huge conflict of interest for Gwyneth Paltrow. (Shutterstock)


Gwyneth Paltrow’s new Goop Lab is an infomercial for her pseudoscience business (https://theconversation.com/gwyneth-paltrows-new-goop-lab-is-an-infomercial-for-her-pseudoscience-business-129674)
January 12, 2020 8.36am EST
Author
Timothy Caulfield
Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy; Professor, Faculty of Law and School of Public Health; and Research Director, Health Law Institute, University of Alberta

Disclosure statement
Timothy Caulfield receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Genome Canada, and the Canada Research Chairs Program. He is affiliated with Peacock Alley Entertainment and Speakers' Spotlight. Caulfield also had a show, "A User's Guide to Cheating Death", that was on Netflix.

Partners
University of Alberta
University of Alberta provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.
University of Alberta provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR.

CC BY ND
We believe in the free flow of information
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Last week, Netflix dropped the trailer for Gwyneth Paltrow’s new show The Goop Lab. It is a six-episode docuseries launching on Jan. 24 that, according to the trailers, focuses on approaches to wellness that are “out there,” “unregulated” and “dangerous.” (Read: science-free.)

The backlash by health-care professionals and science advocates was immediate and widespread. And for good reason. As noted by my friend, obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter in Bustle magazine, the trailer is classic Goop: “Some fine information presented alongside unscientific, unproven, potentially harmful therapies….”

We know the spread of this kind of health misinformation can have a significant and detrimental impact on a range of health behaviours and beliefs. This is the age of misinformation and this show seems likely to add to the noise and public confusion about how to live a healthy lifestyle.

But what has been largely overlooked in the initial wave of critiques is the conflict-of-interest issue. The producers of this show — that is, Gwyneth Paltrow and her company Goop — benefit directly from not only the show being popular but also from the legitimization of pseudoscience. This show is, basically, an infomercial for the Goop brand, which is built around science-free products and ideas.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MunlAm7IGsE
The Goop Lab trailer on Netflix. The show drops Jan. 24, 2020.

Marketing pseudoscience

To be fair, I have yet to see a full episode. But given the content of the trailer and Goop’s history of pushing harmful nonsense, there is little reason to be optimistic about the role of science in the series. Regardless, the mere existence of the series will allow Paltrow and Goop to build the brand, which is currently estimated to be worth US$250 million.

The show serves as an opportunity to market the kind of magical thinking and pseudoscience that will help to sell Goop’s products. It would be like Netflix streaming a show called The Coca-Cola Beverage Lab or the The Starbucks Coffee Adventure.

One of the things that attracts people to the alternative health practices pushed by entities like Goop is frustration with the impact of private industry and the profit motive — particularly in the context of the pharmaceutical industry — on the conventional health-care system.

This concern about the impact of industry is understandable. There is a vast literature highlighting industry misbehaviour and the adverse consequences of Big Pharma’s influence on research, clinical practice and clinical guidelines. Awareness of these issues has contributed to a decrease in trust in the medical profession and even to harmful trends like vaccination hesitancy.

For the advocates of alternative approaches to wellness, conventional medicine is often positioned as irrevocably compromised and corrupt. And many have come to believe even extreme versions of this narrative.

A 2014 survey found 37 per cent of Americans believe (and another 31 per cent think it could be true) that the “Food and Drug Administration is deliberately preventing the public from getting natural cures for cancer and other diseases because of pressure from drug companies.” Goop has also enabled these kinds of extreme perspectives.

https://images.theconversation.com/files/309507/original/file-20200110-97183-1wn6lax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1
The Goop Lab stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Elise Loehne. (Netflix)

Alternative medicine is an industry

The implication, of course, is that alternative approaches are somehow untainted or, at least, less tainted by vested interests and are, therefore, the better choice. But this “clean hands” framing is patently false.

First, we need to recognize that alternative medicine is also a huge industry. The worldwide “wellness” market, which is largely composed of unproven and “alternative” modalities, has been estimated to be worth over US$4 trillion.

The sale of herbal medicine and supplements are also multi-billion dollar industries. Given the size of these markets, it would be naive to believe that alternative medicine is somehow missing the twisting profit-motive incentives that have created problems for conventional health care.

Second, the alternative health community is also rife with conflicts and biases. To cite just a few examples, naturopaths profit from the in-office sale of products and have partnered with the vitamin industry to expand the reach of their practice.

In addition, alternative medicine research has been influenced by various systemic biases. And we shouldn’t forget that many of the most commonly used alternative products, most notably supplements and herbal remedies, are often made by the very pharmaceutical industry that alternative wellness devotees are seeking to avoid.

Third, motivated reasoning plays a big role here. When an individual or a company has built a profession or a business model around a particular worldview, this commitment will have an impact on how the relevant evidence is interpreted, used and presented to the public.

If you are a practising homeopath, for instance, it would be tremendously difficult to accept what the evidence says about the remedies you offer. Indeed, accepting the science would mean you would lose your livelihood and professional identity.

More needs to be done to combat the adverse impact that conflicts of interest issues can have on bio-medical research and clinical practice. But we also need to recognize that profound conflicts of interest exist in the alternative health and wellness domain. We should not give those involved with this industry — including Paltrow and Goop — a pass.

We let go of Netflix but if I still had it, I'd watch this. ;)

[GeneChing]

I'm embarrasingly curious now, but I no longer have Netflix. :o



Goop’s Horrible Netflix Show Accidentally Makes a Case Against Social Media Censorship (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v743zd/goops-horrible-netflix-show-accidentally-makes-a-case-against-social-media-censorship)
By misidentifying parts of the anatomy she claims to be an expert on, actress and self-appointed lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow demonstrates the damage caused by censoring women’s bodies.
By Jillian C. York
Feb 13 2020, 5:00am

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5e4301b3ef2d760097c9b7c2/lede/1581453993567-Screen-Shot-2020-02-11-at-34614-PM.png
NETFLIX

When Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Goop Lab premiered on Netflix last month, the collective eye-roll on social media was palpable.

Goop—Paltrow’s “wellness and lifestyle company”—has been rightly panned by critics over the years for promoting pseudoscientific claims and wellness devices that range from the absurd to the overtly harmful. The Goop Lab is no exception; one Washington Post op-ed called the series “horrible,” while the Guardian gave it 1/5 stars in a review.

Despite this, my curiosity got the best of me one night and I tuned in to watch the most talked-about episode: the one in which Paltrow misidentifies the scope of the vagina, revealing that she’s not particularly informed about the anatomy she so often claims expertise on. The episode, entitled “The Pleasure Is Ours,” is centered on the work of 90 year-old sex educator Betty Dodson, famous for her workshops in which she teaches women how to effectively masturbate to orgasm.

The episode, which comes with a disclaimer, is not quite what I expected. Rather than peddling jade eggs, it sells the viewer on Dodson’s methods (which have, for what it’s worth, been the subject of empirical research). And perhaps most surprisingly, the episode is quite graphic: Dodson’s colleague Carlin Ross demonstrates the technique, her vulva shown on screen as she masturbates, along with several others in a slideshow meant to depict diversity.

What was surprising about this was Netflix’s willingness to show, in close-up detail, a part of the body that is—with precious few exceptions— verboten in Silicon Valley. As I’ve written in the past, social media platforms appear to have taken their cues about morality and governance from other forms of media. Just as the American film industry is “self-regulated” by the notoriously prudish Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Facebook’s own policies ban nearly all depictions of the nude human body—regardless of the fact that it’s constitutionally-protected expression.

Facebook and its properties, such as Instagram, have a propensity to go overboard when enforcing these policies. Take, for example, The Vulva Gallery—like the sex episode of Goop Lab, the Instagram account seeks to normalize the vulva by posting illustrated images based on user-submitted photos. Illustrations are permitted by Instagram’s Community Standards, but that didn’t prevent the account from getting banned at one point—no doubt a mis-application of the rules, an unfortunately uncommon phenomenon.

In fact, the over-banning of sexual content is so common that there are numerous articles highlighting accounts that seek to challenge and circumvent the rules. While social media platforms often claim that bans on nudity are meant to protect users from porn and non-consensual exploitative imagery (often called “revenge porn”), we should be questioning the harms that this black-and-white approach to nudity and human sexuality is causing to our society—and to women in particular.

As The Goop Lab episode makes clear, many women (including Paltrow) don’t know a whole lot about their own anatomy. In most societies, we’re taught that our nether regions are something shameful, to keep covered up, at least until we’re wed. While I clearly remember a high school sex ed demonstration that involved putting a condom on a banana, I can’t recall seeing any images of women’s nude bodies. Many women report seeing another vulva for the first time in mainstream porn, where only certain body types (and hair removal practices) are commonly shown.

That’s what makes this episode so important—and one of the reasons the pervasive social media ban on depictions of the human body is so damaging. But it’s not the only reason; platform bans on the human body disproportionately affect women. Facebook’s community guidelines, for example, allow depictions of topless men but ban women from appearing shirtless. Not only does this discriminatory practice reinforce damaging ideas about the female body as inherently sexual, it’s also rooted in an outdated binary perception of gender.

No one has illustrated the latter point better than Courtney Demone, a trans woman who challenged Instagram’s rules by posting topless photos of herself as she transitioned a few years ago and documented the process for Mashable. Demone’s piece draws parallels between the street harassment she was subject to as her appearance became more traditionally feminine and the loss of the privilege to be topless that she experiences, which she describes as a “clear example of the sexism that comes with living in a female body”.

Interestingly, as executive producer Shauna Minoprio told the LA Times, Goop execs chose to shoot the masturbation scene without asking permission—not unlike the many women who regularly challenge social media’s prudish rules by posting their nudes anyway.

In sexist Silicon Valley, that may just be the only way to move the needle forward.

[GeneChing]

Just gonna put this out there right now...Gwyneth should go into politics next. She's got the cash for the American oligarchy.


FEBRUARY 18, 2020 5:56PM PT
‘The Goop Lab’: Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Producing Unscripted TV, Her All-Star Staff and Online Haters (https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/gwyneth-paltrow-the-goop-lab-1203506864/)
By MATT DONNELLY
Senior Film Writer
@MattDonnelly

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/goop_104.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: ADAM ROSE/NETFLIX

Between a high-profile press tour, a vortex of online negativity and a raging conversation around female genitalia, it is likely you are aware that Gwyneth Paltrow launched a docuseries on Netflix in late January.

“The Goop Lab,” announced exclusively by Variety last year, is a six-episode manifestation of Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop and its many content verticals, built around a central thesis that the Oscar winner described as “optimization of self.”

Response has played out across the normal spectrum on which Paltrow and Goop are received: adoration from like-minded seekers, interest from fashion and film fans, and invective from trolls and pockets of the medical community. During a recent conversation at Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles, Paltrow had an easy smile for all of it. She’s been here before.

“I will never understand the level of fascination and projection. But we don’t want to not change the conversation just to please everybody,” Paltrow said. “We do what we do in total integrity, and we love what we do. It doesn’t even matter, really, that some are trying to get attention for writing about us.”

Indeed, in the days following Variety’s initial report last February, headlines declared the partnership between Paltrow and the streaming giant “a win for pseudo-science.” The almost-retired performer and CEO chalks it up to clickbait.

“That kind of media, a lot of it is dying. The business model is failing, and they’re turning to the tabloidization to get the clicks. So it works, when they write about me, apparently. Because they keep doing,” she said. Paltrow added she would be open to the criticism “if it was something I could learn from.” But when it comes to Goop-friendly topics like energy healing?

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/goop_106.jpg

“[It] might not be backed with double-blind studies, but its been happening for thousands of years,” she said.

A lot of Goop’s experimentation involves already-familiar practices, as illustrated on the series and explored in-depth on Goop.com. Jumping into a freezing ocean to prolong life and stave off anxiety? Experimenting with psychedelics to ease PTSD? Acupuncture, for the love? Goop is not responsible for introducing any of these notions into the consciousness. What’s new here, at least for Paltrow, is the way she approached the medium — as an unscripted television producer, not a movie star.

“It’s so bizarre, and so different. Normally someone hands me something and tells me what I’m playing. This was from our imaginations and what inspires us, and what we hope to learn more about. It’s been a pretty cool experience,” Paltrow said. “The most difficult part was honing down what the six subjects were going to be. The trick was the process of distilling down our content and have all the topics be different enough.”

Outside of scripted features and television, Paltrow’s credits are limited. She has appeared in documentaries about makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin and designer Valentino Garavani, and more than a decade ago popped up on a PBS series about Spanish cooking.

“I’ve never done anything unscripted — like, how does this work? How does it feel good? How does it not be …” Paltrow asked, searching for the words.

Like “Jersey Shore,” we wondered?

“Right. What is this world? What is the construct?” she said. “The most difficult part was honing down what the six episode subjects were going to be. We wanted it to appeal to lots of different people. You can get really specific on a subject, and then it might not be as appealing.”

For the past five years, Paltrow has done a delicate dance with how much she will allow herself to be Goop’s preeminent spokeswoman. She has repeatedly said that her ideal version of scale would be to grow Goop past the point of her own image. Currently valued at $250 million with several rounds of venture capital investment, her high-wire act is working.

“For the show, I asked, ‘How can I be in it, but not too in it?’ It was important for me that Goop staffers be the stars of the show. We have such incredible people at the company. I thought there would be so much more impact to meet and love them, and watch them go through those things,” she said.

Go through it, they do. Goop employees explore their private parts and sexual hangups, insecurities around aging, parental traumas, and other topics that Goop chief content officer Elise Loehnen jokingly said amounted to “an HR nightmare.”

Netflix has yet to announce a possible renewal of “The Goop Lab,” but streaming or not, Goop will be there asking the questions, Paltrow said.

“What I think is great is that we are a brand that people feel strongly about,” she concluded. “One way or the other.”

[GeneChing]

What is up with female celebs making products that smell like their vagina (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop&p=1317158#post1317158)? Will we need an indie thread on this?


Erykah Badu’s $50 vagina-scented incense sells out in minutes (https://thegrio.com/2020/02/24/erykah-badus-50-vagina-scented-incense-sells-out-in-minutes/)
The singer is proud of the urban legend surrounding her vagina and decided to use it as the base for her new product
By Blue Telusma -February 24, 2020

When Erykah Badu announced that she would be selling vagina scented incense, a lot of people raised their brows. But now that her product is a certified hit, she and her yoni inspired offering are laughing all the way to the bank.

At the beginning of the month, it was reported that one of the products that the four-time Grammy Award-winning Neo-Soul singer would be featuring in her online marketplace, Badu World Market, would be an incense scent based on her genitals.

“There’s an urban legend that my p—y changes men,” she said in a cover story for 10 Magazine. “The men that I fall in love with, and fall in love with me, change jobs and lives.”

The singer, who will be 49 years of age on the 26th, is proud of the urban legend surrounding her vagina and decided to use it as the base for her new product.

“I took lots of pairs of my panties, cut them up into little pieces and burned them,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Even the ash is part of it.”



Okayplayer
✔
@okayplayer
Replying to @okayplayer @fatbellybella
UPDATE: Erykah Badu (@fatbellybella) has just restocked “Badu ***** Premium Incense."

The shop calls it "the hottest ***** on the market." 😳 http://bit.ly/2SWvVmw

View image on Twitter
42
2:09 PM - Feb 20, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy
21 people are talking about this
When asked why she felt it necessary to share something so personal, she said without a shred of self-consciousness, “The people deserve it!”

Apparently consumers agree because when her “Premium Incense” went on pre-sale on February 20th, it sold out in 19 minutes.

“Well guys, thank you for making our debut of ‘Badussy’ […] sell out in a matter of 19 minutes,” the singer said Thursday while visibly beaming in an Instagram video.

[GeneChing]

Wearing a mask, Gwyneth Paltrow cracks a coronavirus joke: ‘I’ve already been in this movie’ (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-02-26/gwyneth-paltrow-kate-hudson-face-mask-coronavirus)

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7497ec0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2048x1363+0+0/resize/840x559!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F44%2Fce%2F06566b66f2 03693b971ce323e8a3%2Fla-oe-goldberg-ebola-crisis-management-2014101-001
Gwyneth Paltrow played patient zero of a viral epidemic in “Contagion.”(Claudette Barius / Warner Bros.)
By CHRISTIE D’ZURILLASTAFF WRITER
FEB. 26, 2020 12:02 PM

Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson are among those locking it down in the air when it comes to the coronavirus. At least they think they are.

“En route to Paris. Paranoid? Prudent? Panicked? Placid? Pandemic? Propaganda? Paltrow’s just going to go ahead and sleep with this thing on the plane,” the Goop founder said on Instagram, where she posted a picture of herself on a flight wearing an appropriately stylish Airinum+Nemen mask.

“I’ve already been in this movie,” she said. “Stay safe. Don’t shake hands. Wash hands frequently.”

Paltrow was joking about her role in “Contagion,” the 2011 Steven Soderbergh film where she played a Midwestern woman who stops for a fling on her way from a business trip in Hong Kong, only to die soon after she gets home, much to movie-husband Matt Damon’s dismay. Her patient-zero affliction quickly turns into a global pandemic.


gwynethpaltrow
Verified (https://www.instagram.com/p/B9BxGPqFfpw/?utm_source=ig_embed)
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gwynethpaltrow's profile picture
gwynethpaltrow
Verified
En route to Paris. Paranoid? Prudent? Panicked? Placid? Pandemic? Propaganda? Paltrow’s just going to go ahead and sleep with this thing on the plane. I’ve already been in this movie. Stay safe. Don’t shake hands. Wash hands frequently. 😷

Hudson, meanwhile, posted a shot of herself in what appears to be a surgical mask, tagging her picture with the caption, “Travel. 2020.”

Commenters were quick to note that her mask wouldn’t do much good when it came to protecting her from coronavirus. Frequent soap-and-water hand-washing, experts say, is a better preventative measure.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the role of such face masks is “patient source control,” to prevent contamination of the surrounding area when a person who has contracted the virus coughs or sneezes.


katehudson
Verified
• (https://www.instagram.com/p/B9AcCXAnVoH/?utm_source=ig_embed)

https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/e35/s1080x1080/83682872_195274531680123_7253178010943462932_n.jpg ?_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=AIiqxxm0MCkAX8V237r&oh=053c4614fcf1768fa9830cf8a481ef50&oe=5E815D42
katehudson's profile picture
katehudson
Verified
Travel. 2020. #😳

Paltrow’s mask, however, was the equivalent of an N95-filtering facepiece respirator, the medical version of which, the CDC says, is recommended for healthcare professionals and could wind up in short supply in a pandemic.

Paltrow’s reusable, $99 limited edition Urban Air Mask 2.0 is currently sold out, along with everything else on the Airinum website, but the company has a wait list going. According to its maker, the mask “combines Scandinavian minimalist design with Italian textile and dyeing research,” neither of which has anything to do with virus transmission.

(Incidentally, the respirator appears to match the actress’ eye mask, which might be the same black silk one that’s available on the Goop website for $50.)

More seriously, the CDC has chimed in via Instagram as well.

“While #CDC considers #COVID19 a serious situation and is taking preparedness measures, the immediate health risk in the U.S. is thought to be low, based on what we know,” the government agency said. “Everyone should always take simple daily precautions to help prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses. Learn more at www.cdc.gov.”


cdcgov
Verified (https://www.instagram.com/p/B86j151l3Ze/?utm_source=ig_embed)
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https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/fr/e15/s1080x1080/84345601_685955738818801_9135672238442432465_n.jpg ?_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=6IcwfnIhCxgAX_cYPUH&oh=73f0e9db1c4f43e7242d1919c8394ef0&oe=5E88D2ED
cdcgov's profile picture
cdcgov
Verified
While #CDC considers #COVID19 a serious situation and is taking preparedness measures, the immediate health risk in the U.S. is thought to be low, based on what we know. Everyone should always take simple daily precautions to help prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses. Learn more at www.cdc.gov. #publichealth #coronavirus


Christie D’Zurilla
Christie D’Zurilla covers breaking entertainment news. A USC graduate, she joined the Los Angeles Times in 2003 and has 30 years of journalism experience in Southern California.

THREADS
Gwyneth & Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
COVID-19 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)

[GeneChing]

Naomi Campbell Found This Meditative Workout to Be Surprisingly Hard (https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/fitness/naomi-campbell-found-this-meditative-workout-to-be-surprisingly-hard/ar-BB1cJ8HJ)

Naomi Campbell has always been one to look for variety in her workouts. You'll find her crushing high-intensity TRX training and boxing in one sweat sesh and low-impact resistance band exercises in the next. But she recently found a passion for a more meditative form of exercise: Tai Chi.

https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1cJ8HD.img?h=834&w=1248&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=921&y=636Provided by Shape Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images
In the latest episode of her weekly YouTube series No Filter with Naomi, the supermodel chatted with Gwyneth Paltrow about all things health and wellness, including what their fitness routines have looked like lately.

Similar to Campbell, the Goop guru said she likes to mix things up in her workout routine. Paltrow said her main goal with fitness these days is to "process things" mentally as she moves, whether that's through yoga, walking, hiking, or even dancing. "[Exericse is] part of my mental and spiritual wellness as much as my physical wellness," she told Campbell. (FYI: Here's why you might not want to do the same workout every day.)

Campbell seems to share a similar philosophy on the connection between mental and physical health. She told Paltrow that she recently got into Tai Chi — a practice that's all about harnessing your spiritual and mental energy — after a 2019 trip to Hangzhou, China.

During the trip, Campbell explained, she couldn't sleep due to "terrible jet lag" and soon found herself waking up early to go to a nearby park where women were practicing Tai Chi. The fashion icon said she decided to join in, even though she'd never tried the martial arts practice before.

"I know I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna just go and move with them," she recalled. "I see these women have such vitality, and they're older women. I wanna get out there and get some of what they've got going."

"I really enjoyed Tai Chi," added Campbell. "I thought it was gonna be easy, but it's so disciplined. You've got to hold everything, it's got to be slow-moving. But I loved it — mentally, I loved it." (Here are some other martial arts practices to add to your fitness routine.)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJufHZy6kTU
Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)
In case you're not that familiar with Tai Chi, the centuries-old practice is all about connecting your movement to your mind. And while it might not look as intense as your typical HIIT sesh at first glance, you'll quickly see why Campbell found it surprisingly challenging.

In Tai Chi, "you're really paying attention to how the pieces of your body connect efficiently," Peter Wayne, Ph.D., director of the Tree of Life Tai Chi Center and associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, previously told Shape. "In that sense, it's a nice addition to other exercises, because that awareness may prevent injury."

Though there are several different styles of Tai Chi, in a typical U.S.-based class, you'll likely go through long, slow sequences of movement, working on balance and strength as you harness your internal energy and remain focused on your breath.

Research suggests that a regular Tai Chi practice can not only provide psychological benefits — including a reduction in stress, anxiety, and depression — but that it's also great for bone health and can even help reduce osteoarthritis pain. (Yoga has some major bone-boosting benefits, too.)

Even if you don't get to practice Tai Chi with a group of strangers in a park anytime soon, both Campbell and Paltrow are all about treading unfamiliar territory when it comes to fitness — which is an especially important mindset to have in an era of working out in your living room.

"The most important lesson there is just to know yourself and know what you're capable of and not," said Paltrow. "If you wanna do different things, you should just explore whatever, as long as you're feeling like you're doing something that's working for you."

Threads
Celebrities-studying-Tai-Chi (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70323-Celebrities-studying-Tai-Chi)
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘vagina’ candle reportedly explodes in UK woman’s home (https://nypost.com/2021/01/18/gwyneth-paltrows-vagina-candle-ignites-in-uk-home-report/amp/)
By Yaron Steinbuch

January 18, 2021 | 2:37pm


Gwyneth Paltrow's This Smells Like My Vagina” candle did more damage than expected when it reportedly burst into flames and exploded in a UK woman's home.
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/exploding-goop-candle-05.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=978
Theo Wargo/WireImage
This Gwyneth Paltrow candle didn’t pass the smell test, according to a report.

A “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle that the actress peddles on Goop exploded into flames in the living room of a UK woman who won the odoriferous product in a quiz, the Sun reported.

“The candle exploded and emitted huge flames, with bits flying everywhere,” Jody Thompson, 50, told the outlet.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The whole thing was ablaze and it was too hot to touch. There was an inferno in the room,” the media consultant from Kilburn, North London, added.

Thompson, who lives with her partner, David Snow, said they threw the flaming candle out the front door.

“It could have burned the place down. It was scary at the time, but funny looking back that Gwyneth’s vagina candle exploded in my living room,” she said.

Scent notes include geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed, according to her online store.

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/exploding-goop-candle-06.jpeg
A Gwyneth Paltrow “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle reportedly ignited in a UK woman’s home. The scent of the actual explosion was not reported.
Goop
“This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP,” reads the website. “The two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, “Uhhh..this smells like a vagina’ — but evolved into a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent. (That turned out to be perfect as a candle.)”

A Goop spokeswoman told The Post in a statement that Thompson’s candle wasn’t purchased through the outlet so “we aren’t able to verify its authenticity.”

“However, the factory that manufactures the goop x Heretic candles is certified by The National Candle Association of America, which regulates that candles meet stipulated safety guidelines and ASTM and CPSC fire safety protocols,” Noora Raj Brown said in an email.

“As a precaution, we’ve alerted the manufacturer to the woman’s issue and have also reached out to her to send her some goop products to help pass the days in quarantine,” she added.
There's a vid of Gwyneth talking about her candle. :eek:

[GeneChing]

'goop ********' just doesn't sound right...


OMG
Gwyneth Paltrow Jokes About Passing ‘the Time’ in Quarantine by Creating Goop ********, Teases It’s ‘All the Buzz’ (https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/gwyneth-paltrow-jokes-about-why-she-created-a-goop-********/)
By Johnni Macke February 15, 2021

Good vibrations! Gwyneth Paltrow joked about why she created the Goop ******** this year, before poking fun at herself in the name of product promotion.

Goop launched its first ******** on Sunday, February 14, and Paltrow, 48, had a lot to say about the sexy item. After poet Cleo Wade called the actress an “icon” for spending the coronavirus quarantine “creating her own ********,” Paltrow replied via her Instagram Story, writing, “Had to pass the time, you know?”

The Shakespeare in Love actress also jokingly posted a photo of herself from the 1999 Academy Awards, replacing her Oscar with the ********. “Beat you to it … I know how to meme too, guys,” Paltrow captioned the photo on Valentine’s Day. “Head to @goop to see what all the buzz is about.”

https://www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Gwyneth-Paltrow-Creates-Goop-********-Had-to-Pass-the-Time-in-Quarantine.jpg
Gwyneth Paltrow ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

“Omg ��,” Wade, 31, commented on the snap. Drew Barrymore added, “Oh my god I love you.”

Fashion editor Elizabeth Saltzman reacted to the photoshopped image, writing, “Good vibrations!!!❤️❤️❤️ or should I say GOOP VIBRATIONS ������.”

Goop’s announcement of the product included an equally cheeky caption. “We’ve tested a lot of ********s over the years — a job we take seriously, knowing that great ********s lead to great orgasms. Basically, it’s a pleasure,” the company wrote via Instagram. “We’re excited to formally introduce you to our Double-Sided Wand ********.”

According to the website, the sex toy features eight pulsating patterns on both sides of the wand and costs $95.

“Every detail is deliberate and precise, but we’d be lying if we said that using the ******** gives us the sensation we thought it would,” the description reads. “The truth is: It still shocks us. It packs way more power and delivers deeper pleasure than anything we’ve tried before. Although we may have dabbled in hyperbole once or twice, after you give this ******** a whirl, you may accuse us of understatement.”

Paltrow has a history of creating controversial products for Goop, including the This Smells Like My Vagina and This Smells Like My Orgasm candles.

The Iron Man actress, who previously revealed that the candles started as a “joke,” told Us Weekly about the real reason behind her headline-catching scents in September 2020.

“You grew up getting messaging around the feminine care that was heavily scented with synthetic fragrances and all this kind of thing,” Paltrow exclusively told Us. “I just felt it was time to make a bit of a feminist statement around accepting who we are and our femininity. I feel like once people get past the initial shock of it, and you really start to unpack what it means and what it’s saying, it’s pretty cool.”

Oh WTH?! Our forum censors vibrat0r? Cancel culture at work again! :rolleyes:

threads
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
Valentine-s-Day-Harlequin-s-Day (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19873-Valentine-s-Day-Harlequin-s-Day)

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow ripped by health official for new-age advice to treat COVID (https://pagesix.com/2021/02/25/gwyneth-paltrow-slammed-over-new-age-advice-to-treat-covid/)
By Lee BrownFebruary 25, 2021 | 7:48am
https://pagesix.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/02/gwyneth-60.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1236&h=820&crop=1
Stephen Powis, the national medical director of England's National Health Service, said influencers like Gwyneth Paltrow have a "duty of responsibility" to share real science.
Stephen Powis, the medical director of England's National Health Service, said influencers like Gwyneth Paltrow have a "duty of responsibility" to share real science.Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for goop

Gwyneth Paltrow is being ripped by British health officials for pushing unscientific claims that “long COVID” can be treated by fasting, taking regular infrared saunas and eating lots of kimchi.

The 48-year-old actress recently touted her new-age advice on her site Goop after revealing she caught COVID-19 “early on” and was left with “long-tail fatigue and brain fog.”

She said a “functional medicine practitioner” put her on a “keto and plant-based” diet with kimchi and kombucha — and fasting until at least 11 a.m. each day.

Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of England’s National Health Service, slammed the Oscar winner, saying influencers have a “duty of responsibility” to share real science.

“In the last few days I see Gwyneth Paltrow is unfortunately suffering from the effects of COVID. We wish her well, but some of the solutions she’s recommending are really not the solutions we’d recommend in the NHS,” Powis told the BBC.

“We need to take long COVID seriously and apply serious science. All influencers who use social media have a duty of responsibility and a duty of care around that.

https://pagesix.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/02/gwyneth-59.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=2000
Paltrow claimed that fasting, taking regular infrared saunas and eating lots of kimchi can treat COVID-19.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Baby2Baby
“Like the virus, misinformation carries across borders and it mutates and it evolves. So I think YouTube and other social media platforms have a real responsibility and opportunity here.”

Paltrow, who said a test revealed she had “high levels of inflammation in my body,” also said she tries to enjoy an “infrared sauna as often as I can, all in service of healing.”

In 2018, Goop agreed to pay a substantial settlement over unproven claims about the health benefits of the infamous vaginal eggs it was selling. It has also been investigated for pushing unscientific advice.

threads
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
covid (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)

[GeneChing]

MARCH 13, 2021 9:00am PT by Chris Gardner

Gwyneth Paltrow Responds to COVID-Remedy Criticism: "That Becomes Clickbait" (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/rambling-reporter/gwyneth-paltrow-responds-to-covid-remedy-criticism-that-becomes-clickbait)https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goop_products_rambling_h_2021-1615509770-928x523.jpg
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Goop; Courtesy of brand (3); Courtesy of Rodale Books.
Gwyneth Paltrow posted products on goop that helped clean up her diet, this after experiencing “long-tail fatigue and brain fog” post-COVID.

The actress featured regimens and products for feeling better, which the U.K. National Health Service’s Stephen Powis has decried: "We need to take long COVID seriously and apply serious science."
Gwyneth Paltrow played patient zero in Contagion, Steven Soderbergh's 2011 viral thriller that, in some ways, foreshadowed aspects of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. But here's a storyline nobody saw coming: Paltrow revealed in a Goop blog post that she battled coronavirus "early on" and it left her with "some long-tail fatigue and brain fog."

Though there were rumblings that Paltrow held off on confirming her illness due to Contagion comparisons, she tells The Hollywood Reporter that's not true. "I got it so early that there weren't COVID tests available," she told THR of the illness, which she previously said she likely contracted on a trip to Paris. "We couldn't even get tested for a long time, and by the time we were able to get antibody tests and all of that, there were much graver, more important things going on in the world. I didn't really feel the need to bring it up, but it was interesting."

When she posted the news on Goop, it came accompanied by a list of products that Paltrow promoted as key to feeling better including a mostly keto and plant-based "but flexible" diet and no sugar or alcohol along with infrared sauna treatments. She praised functional medicine practitioner Dr. Will Cole and his book Intuitive Fasting, Madge's vegan daikon kimchi, Seedlip's nonalcoholic cocktail line and vitamin D3 supplements. "At goop, we always love to talk about the capacity for the body to heal itself when you give it the right conditions to do that," wrote Paltrow.

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/issue_10contagion_gwyneth_paltrow_embed_rambling_h _2021-1615511290-compressed.jpg
Warner Bros./Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Paltrow in 'Contagion'
But her recommendations caught the eye Stephen Powis, national medical director of England's National Health Service, who says her wellness pitches are "really not the solutions we'd recommend." He added: "We need to take long COVID seriously and apply serious science. All influencers who use social media have a duty of responsibility and a duty of care around that."

Asked whether criticisms like Powis' reach Paltrow, she said, "Sometimes, but it's usually that I always find it's for their own amplification. We really are not to say at goop that we have never made mistakes because of course we have in the past, but we're very much in integrity and we're careful about what we say. We always feel like we understand why a lot of that [criticism] becomes clickbait for people."

As for how she's feeling now, during an interview to support her partnership as the global face of anti-wrinkle injection line Xeomin, Paltrow said she's feeling good and "getting there."

"I also think that nine months in quarantine with having pasta and cake and alcohol seven days a week probably didn't help. So, I've been on a really great clean eating routine and then teetotalling for a couple of months now, and that always really helps with anything that's going on in the body."

A version of this story first appeared in the March 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine


threads
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
covid (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)

[GeneChing]

...next thing you know, GOOP will be touting this as a Covid cure...


Hurry, This $50 Celeb Fave Face-Cupping Kit Is Back in Stock! (https://www.eonline.com/news/1249135/hurry-this-s50-celeb-fave-face-cupping-kit-is-back-in-stock)
January Jones and investor Gwyneth Paltrow are both fans of WTHN's treatment, which has so out four times so far.
By MARENAH DOBIN MAR 17, 2021 5:00 AMTAGS
https://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2021216/rs_1024x759-210316111943-1024-gwyneth-paltrow-january-jones-face-cupping.jpg?fit=around%7C1024:759&output-quality=90&crop=1024:759;center,top
Shutterstock; E! Illustration

We love these products, and we hope you do too. E! has affiliate relationships, so we may get a small share of the revenue from your purchases. Items are sold by the retailer, not E!.

One of the best ways to treat yourself is through some self-care. And if you can feel like a celebrity in the process, that's even better. Gwyneth Paltrow has invested in the wellness company WTHN, which sells rose quartz eye masks and skincare tools, including the extremely popular face cupping kit.

She's not the only celeb who's into this treatment though. January Jones used the cupping kit in an Instagram Story.

WTHN's face cupping kit is only $50. Nab yours before it sells out...again.

WTHN Face Cupping Kit
WTHN recommends face cupping two to three times a week, but if you want to ease into it, once a week can make a major difference.
$50
https://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2021216/rs_761x1024-210316112201-634-January-Jones-cupping.jpg?fit=around%7C761:1024&output-quality=90&crop=761:1024;center,top
Instagram
What's the fuss all about? WTHN describes the technique as "nature's facelift, but better."

Aside from tightening facial muscles, cupping can increase collagen and elastin, promote circulation, minimize wrinkles and it can help reduce aches and pains from muscle tension.

January isn't the only one raving about WTHN's face cupping kit. One reviewer praised the product for helping with "TMJ and tight jaw muscles," gushing that it's "the best quality I could have imagined!" Another customer said it is "easy to use and the results are incredible." No wonder it sold out four times already.

Looking to depuff your skin? Check out this $17 ice roller that Zoë Kravitz and Brie Larson's makeup artist uses during glam sessions.

threads
Cupping (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69590-Cupping)
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)

[GeneChing]

...hold the phone. Quinoa whiskey?


Gwyneth Paltrow drank whiskey ‘every night’ during COVID-19 lockdown (https://pagesix.com/2021/05/09/gwyneth-paltrow-drank-whiskey-every-night-during-covid-lockdown/?utm_campaign=applenews&utm_medium=inline&utm_source=applenews)
By Jesse O’NeillMay 9, 2021 | 12:28am
https://pagesix.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/05/gwyneth-paltrow-covid-drinking.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024&h=682&crop=1
Gwyneth Paltrow went "totally off the rails" in quarantine.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

The actress, who is well known for her wellness and lifestyle brand Goop, concocted a lot of quinoa whiskey cocktails to help her get through the lockdown, according to The Mirror.

“I was drinking seven nights a week and making pasta and eating bread. I went totally off the rails,” Paltrow, 48, said, according to the article.

“I mean, who drinks multiple drinks seven nights a week? Like that’s not healthy. I love whiskey and I make this fantastic drink called the Buster Paltrow, which I named after my grandfather who loved whiskey sours,” the actress reportedly continued.

“And it’s this great quinoa whiskey from this distillery in Tennessee with maple syrup and lemon juice. It’s just heaven. I would have two of those every night of quarantine.”

Paltrow said she did not get “like, black-out” drunk, but was hankering for cigarettes during her nightly imbibing.

“I miss it,” she said of her former smoking habit, according to the British tabloid.


threads
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
covid (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)
Let-s-talk-Whisky! (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?59392-Let-s-talk-Whisky!)

[GeneChing]

...but it's because I'm insanely jealous of the empire she has built.

And this superbowl ad is hysterical. Good on Gwyneth!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri-rXPw5Cnk

threads
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)
Superbowl (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72262-Superbowl)

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow Pretends to Sell $120 Disposable Diapers to Make a Statement (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/05/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-diaper-prank-taxing-essential-items)
The Goop founder used her platform to raise awareness about the taxing of essential items.
BY EMILY KIRKPATRICK
MAY 12, 2022


Gwyneth Paltrow satirized her own company's penchant for promoting slightly absurd luxury goods in order to make a serious statement about the taxing of essential items.

On Wednesday, Goop posted a very fancy-looking, branded diaper to its Instagram account. The joke product, called “The Diapér,” is a bougie disposable nappy that the brand said it would be launching on Friday and that would retail at $120 for a pack of twelve. The post was captioned, “Meet The Diapér. Our new disposable diaper lined with virgin alpaca wool and fastened with amber gemstones, known for their ancient emotional-cleansing properties.” It also touted that the human waste receptacle would be “infused with a scent of jasmine and bergamot for a revitalized baby.”

Most fans quickly realized that the ad must be a joke as the product seemed a little too outlandish even by Goop's standards. But given that this it the same company that once sold products such as “NASA spacesuit stickers,” “psychic vampire repellent spray,” and yoni eggs that earned them a $145,000 government fine, others weren't quite so sure. But ultimately, the diaper did turn out to be a fake as the PR company behind the Diapér revealed in a press release to Vice's Motherboard that it was a stunt orchestrated between Goop and Baby2Baby, a nonprofit that collects diapers and other essential items to distribute to families in need nationwide.

The statement read, “Tomorrow, Goop CEO Gwyneth Paltrow will reveal on Instagram that ‘The Diapér’ is designed to expose the ridiculousness of taxing diapers like a luxury product.” Following the shock on social media, Paltrow released her own video on Instagram on Wednesday evening, explaining, “Goop launched a luxury disposable diaper at $120 for a pack of 12 and there was a lot of outrage. Good. It was designed to **** us off. Because if treating diapers like a luxury makes you mad, so should taxing them like a luxury.”

The actress continued, “Despite the absolute necessity of diapers, in 33 states they aren’t treated like an essential item. They're taxed like a luxury good. This leaves one in three families struggling to afford them. While eliminating the diaper tax is not a complete solution, it could allow many families to pay for another month's supply.” In the caption, she also noted that the price of the fictional diapers was chosen as that's “what the diaper tax could cost families annually,” pointing out that there are also many struggling right now due to the nationwide baby formula shortage. She urged viewers to donate to Baby2Baby to aid in all of the good work they do, especially in abolishing this tax, using the hashtag #ChangeTheDiaperTax.

I question a lot of Goop here but this is brilliant.

[GeneChing]

...not that I wish GOOP any ill will, but this thread is all over the place.


2 Men Injured After Catching Fire Following Explosion at Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Hamptons Store (https://people.com/style/2-men-catch-fire-after-explosion-at-gwyneth-paltrows-goop-hamptons-store/)
According to police officials, two men were badly burned after a s'mores incident at one of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop stores in Sag Harbor Village on Long Island
July 08, 2022 08:46 PM

https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F20%2F2022%2F07%2F09%2F Gwyneth-Paltrow_01.jpg
LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 08: Gwyneth Paltrow is seen at "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on November 08, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by RB/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
CREDIT: RB/BAUER-GRIFFIN/GC IMAGES
Two men were rushed to the hospital after an explosion at Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop store in Sag Harbor Village, New York.

Sag Harbor Village Chief of Police Austin J. McGuire told PEOPLE the incident occurred at Goop's 4 Bay Street location on June 25 during a small event taking place.

Upon arrival, he said he was informed that stone candle holders were being filled with rubbing alcohol, and eventgoers were using this method to melt marshmallows for s'mores. One of the event managers reportedly had seen this technique used on social media.

However, too much-rubbing alcohol was added to the candle holders before the flames were completely extinguished causing the explosion.

"I've been doing this for 26 years and I've seen a lot, but nothing like this," Chief McGuire told PEOPLE.

"Thankfully there was a fire extinguisher at the location and they were able to extinguish the men, who were outside on a patio," he said, adding that he is sure the result of the injuries sustained would have been far worse if there was not a fire extinguisher on site.

A representative for Goop confirmed to PEOPLE that there "was an accidental fire in connection with a s'mores station at the goop store last Saturday."

"We are wishing a speedy recovery to the two injured parties and are grateful there were no additional injuries. No candles were in use at the time of the accidental fire," the representative said.

The East Hampton police blotter reported, "Police responded to a strange scene at Goop on Saturday evening, where two men had caught fire. They reported that rubbing alcohol had been added to candles, causing a large explosion and flames."

"Police were able to apply ice packs, but one man, who had a large burn on his back and ears, had to be taken by helicopter to Stony Brook University Hospital. The other, who had sustained facial burns, was transported by ambulance to Southampton Hospital."

The actress and entrepreneur founded the lifestyle and wellness brand in 2008. Since then Goop has launched in-house beauty, clothing and home lines along with a number of brick-and-mortar locations.

[GeneChing]

Comedian Jenny Yang’s Food Education Campaign Asks Goop to Rethink MSG Messaging (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/jenny-yang-food-education-campaign-goop-msg-1235214626/)
Yang's latest collaborative food education campaign, held in conjunction with MSG-producing company Ajinomoto, redefines "clean eating" and constructively calls Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness platform, to action.

BY EVAN NICOLE BROWN

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022 5:37PM
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Jenny-Yang-Dinner-With-Goop-MAIN-Publicity-H-2022.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1
Jenny Yang Dinner With Goop COURTESY OF AJINOMOTO CO. INC

Jenny Yang, comedian, writer and actor, is dispelling myths around MSG and “clean eating” with a clever campaign — developed with Ajinomoto, a Japanese multinational food and biotechnology corporation — called #DinnerWithGoop.

The dinner, which was held Sept. 7 at The Gourmandise School in Santa Monica was not attended by Gwyneth Paltrow or any other representatives from her popular wellness platform Goop. Yang extended the invitation in an effort to start a fact-based conversation surrounding “clean eating,” a lifestyle and diet Goop promotes, and how she believes it is ultimately problematic because it propagates the idea that the way many people eat is impure and assigns moral value to food choices.

“Food has been a lifelong passion of mine because it’s so tied with my culture, it’s so tied with identity,” Yang told The Hollywood Reporter Wednesday night. “When I became a comedian and built a following online, talking back to people who would malign ingredients or foods that represented my culture became one of my favorite things to talk about. [Goop] was calling MSG not clean eating when that’s not even backed by scientific evidence … so this was a natural fit for me.”

Yang’s relationship with Ajinomoto (which produces and sells seasonings, including MSG) started in 2020 during the earliest months of the pandemic when the company asked her to be a part of their #TakeOutHate campaign, which was kickstarted because they predicted that the Asian community would get backlash because of the origins of the coronavirus. (Margaret Cho, Harry Shum Jr. and Gail Simmons participated too.)

“If you think about how Asian-American representation happens in this country, people immediately think of food. That’s one of the more prominent formats where we have influence on the culture,” Yang says. “[Goop] put their flag in the sand and said MSG is not clean eating, therefore dirty. There’s a huge history of demonizing MSG for what it represented — it was very much connected to Chinese restaurants and people. There’s a lot of baggage with MSG, and I don’t think they’ve been thinking about this when they call it dirty.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Jenny-Yang-Dinner-With-Goop-Food2-Publicity-EMBED-2022.jpg?w=1000
Jenny Yang Dinner With Goop COURTESY OF AJINOMOTO CO. INC
The dinner last night featured Laos dishes with a California flair from L.A.-based Chef Saeng Douangdara, like rehydrated sticky rice, Lao meatballs and spaghetti, chicken laab rice-paper tacos and Hong Shao Rou braised pork. All of the items had MSG present, but the first course — a lemongrass cold corn soup — was offered in MSG and non-MSG versions, so guests could taste the difference. It was stark. (When monosodium glutamate is present in food, the glutamate binds to the umami — or, the fifth taste — receptor on eaters’ tongues, creating a more savory sensation.)

Dr. Tia Rains, vp of customer engagement and strategic development at Ajinomoto North America, is committed to working on getting more food and culture media to talk about misconceptions around MSG (which has a long history of being perceived as unhealthy, despite science proving it has two-thirds less sodium than table salt) and ingredients associated with certain cultures. “I believe in bringing the truth about food and food ingredients to the public. MSG is safe and can not only be used as a food enhancer but also to reduce sodium anywhere from 30 to 50 percent. My background is in nutrition science, and so, to me, that’s extremely important when 9 out of 10 Americans overconsume the amount of sodium you should be having for a healthy diet,” she said. Adding, “Unfortunately, it’s very prevalent that ultimately what [some platforms are] doing is misleading the American public into diets that are not in their best interest. Anyone who has a health and wellness platform should be echoing the [science’s] sentiment of what makes a healthy diet.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Jenny-Yang-Dinner-With-Goop-Table-Publicity-EMBED-2022.jpg?w=1000
Jenny Yang Dinner With Goop COURTESY OF AJINOMOTO CO. INC
Despite common misperceptions, MSG has been deemed safe by the FDA, the World Health Organization (WHO) and many more reputable health organizations. Common foods that have MSG are parmesan cheese, ranch dressing, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, nutritional yeast, soups, savory snacks and other prepared foods.

Yang and other attendees from the dinner allege that since this campaign has been underway, Goop has clandestinely removed articles mentioning MSG or added disclaimers. “I’m always very attuned when someone with power and influence like Goop tries to get in on the conversation by calling something from my culture either good or bad, clean or dirty,” Yang says. “I think the company is smart enough that if they really thought about it, they would correct themselves. We’re not trying to demonize Goop, but we truly are just trying to have a conversation.”

THR reached out to Goop and had not heard back at the time of publication.

Chinese-restaurant-syndrome (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71669-Chinese-restaurant-syndrome)
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=SsQ-uD8N8jk

[GeneChing]

Here’s the dangerous truth about Gwyneth Paltrow’s rectal ozone therapy (https://nypost.com/2023/03/26/heres-the-dangerous-truth-about-gwyneth-paltrows-rectal-ozone-therapy/)
By Jane Herz
March 26, 2023 7:36pm Updated

This Goop guru may not know it all.

Earlier this month, wellness queen Gwyneth Paltrow admitted to doing rectal ozone therapy, but now, doctors are warning against it.

The therapy, which uses medical-grade ozone gas administered through an ozone-generator device, can be inserted in your body in many ways, according to The Cleveland Clinic.

It can be blown up the bum via a catheter, as Paltrow has suggested she does.

Dr Stuart Fischer, who works as an emergency medicine physician in New York, told The Daily Mail that the scientific evidence to back up the practice was “controversial at best.”

“There may be some unknown side effects or unknown benefits,” Dr. Fischer told the outlet. “The efficacy, and the mode or the route are extremely questionable.”

Dr. Fischer has studied alternative medicine, like ozone therapy, throughout his career, according to the outlet.

Ozone is a gas molecule that is made up of three oxygen atoms, according to The American Lung Association. It’s also known as smog, which is dangerous to breathe in.

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008301374.jpg?quality=75&strip=all
Gwyneth Paltrow appeared on a podcast called “The Art of Being Well,” and admitted to using rectal ozone therapy.
TikTok/@dearmedia
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008248795-1.jpg?quality=75&strip=all
Doctors are now warning against using the treatment.
Instagram/@gwynethpaltrow

The therapy claims to have multiple benefits, like reducing “oxidative stress,” giving the immune system a boost, and protect your body from things like bacteria and fungus.

The gas can be blown up your rectum or other body parts, applied to your skin, mixed with your blood, injected into a muscle, or even ingested by drinking a small amount of it in oil or water, according to The Cleveland Clinic.

But don’t get too excited — in 2019, the Food and Drug Administration actually put out a warning against ozone therapy and its usage.

At the time, the FDA stated that, “ozone is a toxic gas with no known useful medical application in specific, adjunctive, or preventive therapy.”

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008344770-1.jpg?quality=75&strip=all
Gwyneth Paltrow has spoken out on Dr Will Cole’s podcast about her diet – and having ozone therapy rectally.
Dear Media

According to The Daily Mail, getting the therapy in your rectum takes up to ten minutes and can be administered more than once a week.

In New York City, there are many places to get ozone therapy administered– The Drip Gym, located in Queens and Great Neck, Long Island, offers it via an IV at $250 per 25-minute session.

If you want to get similar benefits ozone therapy claims to give, the doctor recommended taking other dietary supplements like antioxidants instead.

He explained that this will slow down cell aging, which is what this ozone therapy claims it can do.

“That’s what I would say works, this is relatively well researched, whereas ozone’s benefit is controversial at best,” Dr Fischer said.

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000007455649.jpg?quality=75&strip=all
Paltrow said she doesn’t eat until around noon every day.
Instagram/@kendrascott

Paltrow first made the admission about getting rectal ozone therapy during a March appearance on the “The Art of Being Well” podcast with her doctor, Will Cole.

During the podcast, she was asked what the “weirdest wellness thing” she’d ever done was. A clip of what she said was posted to TikTok, where it went viral.

“I have used ozone therapy, uh, rectally,” Paltrow said in response. “It’s pretty weird. But very — it’s been very helpful.”

During the podcast, she also talked about her “wellness routine,” which included drinking bone broth for lunch and going into her infared sauna for 30 minutes per day.

She later came out and defended the routine via an Instagram story, blaming it on having “long COVID.”

“I have been working to really focus on foods that aren’t inflammatory, [and] it’s been working really well,” the actress explained. .

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/NYPICHPDPICT000008819005.jpg?resize=1227,2048&quality=75&strip=all
She admitted to doing ozone therapy during a March podcast appearance.
dearmedia/tiktok

“This is based on my medical results and extensive testing I’ve done over time,” the 50-year-old added.

She noted that her her routine wasn’t “meant to be advice for anyone else.”

Paltrow is currently standing trial for a 2016 ski-slope crash.
So...anyone here try this?

[GeneChing]

...she knows how to stay in the public eye. :rolleyes:


Gwyneth Paltrow 'is planning a range of chocolates inspired by THAT £75 vagina-scented candle from her Goop brand' (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12222179/Gwyneth-Paltrow-planning-range-chocolates-inspired-vagina-scented-candle.html)
By LAURA FOX FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 04:26 EDT, 22 June 2023 | UPDATED: 18:16 EDT, 22 June 2023

Gwyneth Paltrow is reportedly planning to launch a range of chocolates inspired by the viral vagina-scented candle from her Goop store.

The actress has sent fans into a frenzy in recent years with some unusual additions to her lifestyle brand, with wild gift suggestions including a $219 sex toy and $66 vaginal eggs.

Now, it's being reported that the star is planning to delve into the confectionary world with a range of sweet treats, inspired by the same scent of her iconic 'This Smells Like My Vagina' candle.

According to The Sun, she is planning a range of chocolates called This Tastes Like My Vagina.

The site claim she has filed documents that would allow her to trademark the chocolate brand in the US, so it can be sold worldwide on her Goop website.

But representatives for the star's lifestyle brand have denied the report to MailOnline.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/22/09/72407201-12222179-image-a-95_1687422298114.jpg
That's different! Gwyneth Paltrow is reportedly planning to launch a range of chocolates inspired by the viral vagina-scented candle from her Goop store

Gwyneth famously released her This Smells Like My Vagina candle back in 2020, and admitted the geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar scented candle, originally started as a joke.

The product's description read: 'This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP—the two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, 'Uhhh... this smells like a vagina' - but evolved into a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent.

'(That turned out to be perfect as a candle—we did a test run at an In goop Health, and it sold out within hours.)

'It's a blend of geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed that puts us in mind of fantasy, seduction, and a sophisticated warmth.'

Following her first candle's success, Gwyneth's brand then released a second titled, This Smells Like My Orgasm.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/22/09/23273620-12222179-And_there_was_the_75_vagina_themed_candle_for_sale _in_her_online-a-94_1687422010475.jpg
Wow! The star sparked a viral frenzy in 2020 when she released a candle titled 'This Smells Like My Vagina,' and is now reportedly planning a range of sweet treats based on the scent

Gwyneth Paltrow shares sneak peek at in-flight skincare regimen

The description read: 'A fitting follow-up to that candle — you know the one — this blend is made with tart grapefruit, neroli, and ripe cassis berries blended with gunpowder tea and Turkish rose absolutes for a scent that's sexy, surprising, and wildly addictive.'

Gwyneth - who founded the website in 2008 - is no stranger to sparking controversy on her lifestyle website by previously advising readers to purchase a $15,000 24k gold ******** and vaginal jade eggs.

She has also turned her attention to the world of BDSM, selling a nude underwear set alongside a black whip, which promised to fulfill consumers 'fantasies'.

The lingerie set's product description read: 'Handmade in England, this saddle leather bra is what BDSM fantasies are made of.

'O-ring details, racy demi cups for freeing the nipple, buckles to be undone, this piece--paired with the matching knickers--is prepped for full speed ahead. Layer an easy tee underneath for a more subtle statement.'

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dcaarL326E

Michelle-Yeoh (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?44824-Michelle-Yeoh)
Gwyneth-amp-Goop (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69410-Gwyneth-amp-Goop)

[GeneChing]

Gwyneth Paltrow remains sweatless and perfectly composed while eating spicy wings on ‘Hot Ones’ (https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/entertainment/gwyneth-paltrow-sweatless-hot-wings/index.html)

By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
2 minute read
Updated 3:45 PM EDT, Thu March 21, 2024

https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyimages-1780144633.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_653,w_1160,c_fill/f_webp
Gwyneth Paltrow at the 2023 CFDA Awards in New York City. James Devaney/GC Images/Getty Images
CNN
—
Gwyneth Paltrow appeared on Thursday’s episode of hot wing interview show “Hot Ones,” and naturally, her reaction to consuming the spicy wings was flawless.

The Oscar-winner and Goop founder admitted before she even took her first bite that she was already “full of regret” about participating in this interview concept, saying she likes a little spice in her food but that she didn’t feel “equipped” to be there.

She would quickly prove viewers, and herself, wrong.

Paltrow hardly even broke a sweat while discussing a wide range of topics while ingesting progressively spicier bites of wings, keeping her signature dewy glow fully intact.

Instead, she verbalized her internal struggle, jokingly telling the show’s host Sean Evans that she was losing his trust and that her “breathing is sort of an issue but I’m sure that’ll pass.”

Staying mostly physically composed around the halfway point, some of Paltrow’s answers to Evans’ questions did become a bit unhinged – like when he asked if it’s true that former President Bill Clinton fell asleep during a White House screening of her 1996 film “Emma.”

“He was snoring right in front of me. I was like, wow. I guess this is going to be a real hit movie,” she said, laughing. “But it was (a hit), so… f— you Bill Clinton!”

And when she bit into the wing fully sauced with the notoriously destructive, taste bud-ruining hot sauce appropriately branded as “Da Bomb,” she simply meditated her way through the sensation she described as “incredibly painful.”

“Wow,” the lifestyle mogul said, in her zen state. “The violation is intense.”

Namaste, Gwyneth.
I don't think I could meditate through that and maintain my dewy glow.