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Thread: Gwyneth & Goop

  1. #16
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    Continued from previous post


    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
    Gene Ching
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  2. #17
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    Continued from previous post


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  3. #18
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    $145,000 Jade Egg

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

    Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Pays $145,000 Over Jade Vaginal-Egg Claims
    By Christopher Palmeri and Lucas Shaw
    September 4, 2018, 5:04 PM PDT


    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
    Jade Egg
    Gene Ching
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  4. #19
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    Gotta admit it - when it comes to sales, GOOP has balls

    Gwyneth Paltrow's seasonal gift guide includes solid gold rolling papers and an entire Spanish village
    Sara Hendricks Nov. 19, 2018, 11:20 AM


    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 Hermčs 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.


    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 Hermčs 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).


    The Hermes surfboard sells for $7,700. Hermes


    The banana lamp sells for $340. Gessato


    Goop sells the papers for $55. Shine


    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.
    Gene Ching
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  5. #20
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    ‘You have this job because I’ve done yoga before.’


    Marc Jacobs slipdress, $695, marcjacobs​.com LACHLAN BAILEY FOR WSJ. MAGAZINE, STYLING BY GEORGE CORTINA

    Gwyneth Paltrow Wants to Convert You
    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.


    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.


    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
    Gene Ching
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  6. #21
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    Continued from previous post


    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 ragů. “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.


    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
    Gene Ching
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  7. #22
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    Continued from previous post


    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.”


    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
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  8. #23
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    cute title

    cracking up...

    03 FEBRUARY 2019
    Cracking the truth on vaginal eggs
    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.


    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 from this whole jade egg kerfuffle.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  9. #24
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    She's a delightful and sexy ignoramus. I'll give her that.
    Kung Fu is good for you.

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Jamieson View Post
    She's a delightful and sexy ignoramus. I'll give her that.
    That stuff sells! Images Illusion Hollywood affiliation (on some levels) etc all work within the marketing and capitalistic world of imagination and self congratulatory praise

  11. #26
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    Ibogaine

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

    Gwyneth Paltrow Says Psychedelics Are The Next Wellness Craze — & She's Not Wrong
    CORY STIEG
    MARCH 6, 2019, 12:15 PM


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  12. #27
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    imposter

    How Gwyneth Paltrow got over her impostor syndrome and embraced being a CEO
    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.


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  13. #28
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    Image is definitely Everything! It goes a long way.
    As a sometime yoga doer 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

  14. #29
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    In Goop Health Summit

    Jessica Alba, Olivia Wilde, Busy Philipps to Headline Gwyneth Paltrow's In Goop Health Summit
    2:57 PM PDT 4/4/2019 by Ericka Franklin


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  15. #30
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    Summit

    I couldn't even watch Gwyneth in 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

    By MATT DONNELLY
    Senior Film Writer
    @MattDonnelly


    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.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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