Duped by Goop? Paltrow is having the last laugh
CULVER CITY, CALIF.— At the In Goop Health summit, the third manifestation of Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle cosmos, a huggy stranger named Brian Donahoe asks if he might jam a finger into our left ear while compressing our right jaw with another. Our face i
a nearly 200-employee juggernaut with branded lines of clothing, makeup, fragrance and vitamins. Its website dispenses advice on beauty, sex and health — and has raised eyebrows with its advocacy of coffee enemas, rose quartz facials and other costly treatments of dubious worth.
But there may be no more vivid sign of Goop’s triumph over the haters than its sold-out conferences. The third and most recent, staged Saturday in a massive event space on L.A.’s Westside, drew 600 wellness pilgrims, each paying at least $650 to attend. There was also a $2,000 VIP level to make attendees feel three times more special — a private lunch on a curtained-off terrace served by fetching actor/waiters and the promise of evermore sightings of GP herself.
In Goop Health is everything you’d expect: expensive and beautiful, floral yet fruity, populated by the exceptionally toned. It is a cashmereswathed, daylong expo of Me Time.
There are discussion panels on Tantra and polarity, postnatal depletion (“depression” is among the banned words here, along with “weight” and “belly”), longevity and the future of cannabis, featuring a mix of YouTube-famous physicians and CEOs, a medium, an intimacy teacher and a mind architect.
Although it is barely addressed at the conference, fear of aging and death are Goop’s economic engine. The aspirational apothecary here includes $90 High School Genes vitamin packs and $35 “The Martini” Emotional Detox Bath Soaks.
Morning begins with a B12 shot to the glutes promoted by a reality-TV-handsome osteopath and anesthesiologist, and a syringe juice shot to the mouth laced with bioactive silver hydrosol, which allegedly does wonders for something. Then it’s on to perfecting our hypnotic visual mantra courtesy of “a bicoastal practitioner of facilitating integrative hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming,” which is followed by a liquidnitrogen cryofacial administered by a reality-TV-lovely dermatologist.
Lululemon sponsors trapeze yoga classes, performed in batlike slings.
The summit attracts an unnaturally high ratio of blondes, ranging in size from 0 to the occasional but rare 8. The uniform is Tesla Casual: black distressed or detailed leggings, designer T-shirts, and European handbags crafted from equal parts leather and hubris.
In this crowd, Paltrow doesn’t stand out; she serves as proto- type. Goop drew plenty of shade upon its 2008 launch, probably because everything in Paltrow’s life appeared to have happened so fast and with minimal effort — famous parents, superior genes, a godfather named Spielberg, an Oscar at 26, a succession of A-list swains (Brad, Ben, Chris). After that consciously uncoupling business, she is now engaged to a behind-the-scenes mogul, TV producer Brad Falchuk.
But here it is a decade later, and Goop has attracted $82 million in outside investment funding. First-quarter revenue is up165 per cent, according to a representative, and the company is projected to generate between $90 million and $120 million this year, although it has not yet become profitable, according to Forbes.
“I buy in that she’s authentic — this is truly what she’s interested in,” says attendee Monica Olsen, a marketing and communications executive from Serenbe, Ga. “She’s helping us be more thoughtful in our choices.”
But Goop and its guru have their detractors. “They’re promoting a lot of magic as medicine. There’s a lot of selling of fear — fear of Big Pharma, fear of Big Medicine, fear of gluten,” says Jen Gunter, an obstetrician and gynecologist in San Francisco who writes frequently about the website’s medical fallacies. “It’s a cult. The lure of celebrity is huge. That’s why they’re used to sell things.”
She adds that “Goop’s promoted as women’s empowerment, but they’re selling this heteronormative men’s beauty ideal. It’s almost an exclusive club that only some people can go to.
Working on your best self is exhausting. By late afternoon, despite the presence of healers and sages, kombucha and bone broth, spirits are flagging.
Paltrow knows this. “Women are tired. They’re trying to suppress so much in their lives,” she tells us. “There is so much in the strength of the vulnerability of our stories.”
Fortunately, In Goop Health has provided a generous supply of couches, where a couple of women nap like kittens.