Gwyneth & Goop

[GeneChing]

JANUARY 10TH, 2020
Gywneth Paltrow Is Selling A Candle That Smells Like Her Vagina
By Amanda Prestigiacomo
DailyWire.com


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
Jade Egg

[GeneChing]

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
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.

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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.


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.


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.

Goop’s 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


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
By MATT DONNELLY
Senior Film Writer
@MattDonnelly


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?



“[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? Will we need an indie thread on this?

Erykah Badu’s $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
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@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

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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.