Would you pay £1,200 to go to Gwynnie’s bonkers wellbeing show?
ABALMY afternoon in Los Angeles and I’m sitting on a stool in a small, dark tent on an industrial complex.
I am sweating, because it’s quite hot in this tent, but I’m trying to hold still for a camera, which is inches from my face.
‘You have to stay steady for ten seconds, otherwise it’ll be blurry,’ instructs Christina Lonsdale, a U.s. photographer who takes pictures of auras using a camera that illuminates the normally invisible electromagnetic field around our bodies.
‘I’m not a psychic, I’m not a healer, I’m an artist,’ she says once we’re outside the tent in the LA sunshine, waiting for the polaroid to develop so that I can see what colour my aura is. I tell Christina I’m worried my aura will be black.
‘Oh no, look,’ she says, revealing the photograph. There is an orange bubble around my head — which, apparently, means I’m creative and independent — and a purple cloud next to my ear. This means I’m unconventional.
‘Do you see there’s no colour around here?’ says Christina, pointing around my chest and towards my heart. I nod.
‘That’s where there’s no energy. If there’s no colour, no energy.’ ‘Oh,’ I reply. ‘ Maybe it’s because you’re British. You’re probably quite reserved,’ she says.
Welcome to the first ever Wellness summit thrown by Goop, Gwyneth paltrow’s infamous lifestyle site. It’s the website that
recommends therapies including vaginal steaming ( which has ‘ real healing qualities’, according to Gwyneth) and the ancient Chinese practice of cupping (where heated cups are placed on to the skin to increase blood flow).
It’s the website that Gwyneth launched from her kitchen table in London in 2008. It’s the website that is now a global phenomenon, with its own beauty products, clothing line, books and even kitchen equipment. A spice rack of bottles including harissa, vanilla bean powder and cinnamon sticks is on sale inside the conference hall for $175 (£137).
‘Isn’t it cute?’ asks a perky saleswoman hovering nearby. she’s one of dozens of enthusiastic staff on duty wearing white T-shirts that say: ‘In goop health’.
The
one- day summit was announced by Gwyneth in April. The 500 tickets quickly sold out, despite the fact the cheapest (dubbed ‘ Lapis’ after the semi-precious stone) cost $500 (£400) and the most expensive (‘Clear Quartz’) $1,500 (£1,200).
Apart from the chance to mingle with Gwyneth herself — the top-tier ticket holders getting their own exclusive cocktail party and intimate lunch with the star — the programme promised an ‘intensive but fun’ day of talks from Goop experts and ‘ keynote’ speakers, including actress Cameron Diaz and TV star Nicole richie.
There would be talks on ‘everything from gut imbalances to sexual health’, all sorts of wacky treatments to try out and a $200 goody bag at the end.
I was excited but nervous to join the ‘Goopies’, as they call themselves. Would I suddenly become obsessed with crystals and green juice? Would I develop a passion for steaming my intimate parts? There was only one way to find out.
By 8.45am on saturday, there was already a queue snaking around the grey industrial building in which the conference was held. The queue was mostly made up of thin, blonde thirtysomethings in full make-up and expensive-looking gym kit.
The line surged forwards and we were put into separate queues, depending on our ticket tier. I had a Lapis ticket, so I was handed the day’s timetable and a beaded bracelet with a Lapis-coloured tassel on it.
We had an hour to mingle and have breakfast in the venue, before Gwyneth (or ‘GP’ as the timetable billed her) kicked off proceedings.
Through the gate was a courtyard with tables, chairs and big white sofas dotted around it. The vibe was Ibiza beach bar meets Wyevale Garden Centres.
I walked to a bar nearby offering three different colours of juice. A sign told me they were Brain Juice (blue), Beauty Juice (orange) and sex Juice (maroon).
The sex Juice, said the sign, was a ‘ blend of lusty superherbs that help combat the effects of stress to ignite your creative energy, in and out of the bedroom’.
‘ Good morning,’ said a smiley blonde in a Goop T- shirt. ‘ Which would you like to try?’
‘I think the sex Juice, if it’s for energy,’ I replied. It was going to be a long day.
‘Great choice,’ she said, ‘I love a glass of sex Juice in the morning.’ she poured me a plastic cup of the purple juice, made with watermelon and ‘alkaline’ water. It tasted like watermelon mixed with a spoonful of soil.
Beside the juice bar was a doughnut stall. Doughnuts! That didn’t seem very Goop. Ah. They were vegan, gluten- free doughnuts. sad doughnuts. still, I ate a cinnamon one and a chocolate one. Just in case the sex Juice didn’t give me enough energy.
Inside were further stalls, offering free smoothies, macrobiotic salmon wraps and ‘bulletproof’ coffee made with butter and a special ‘ brain octane’ oil, which promised to make me even more energetic. so I had one of those, too.
Later, at the cocktail party for certain ticket holders, would be collagen martinis. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I like my martini with an olive in it.
OThers
had their hair blowdried with James Dyson’s state-ofthe-art hairdryers (also free), and inspected shelves stocked with the Goop beauty range (not free). A $ 140 (£ 110) night cream promised to leave me with ‘the famous Goop glow’. I was momentarily distracted by the small, pink, egg-shaped crystal on another shelf. Made from rose quartz and costing $55, you insert it into your private parts to improve muscle tone and hormone balance.
But I didn’t have long to muse on that because we were suddenly summoned in to the theatre as rapper Kanye West’s stronger boomed out from the speakers. And then, Gwynnie was on the stage. Blonde hair waving over her shoulders, in a floor-length red and white maxi dress, it was as if a cult leader had transmogrified before us.
‘Good morning,’ she said, beaming out at her disciples to whoops and cheers, before telling us her ‘journey to wellness’ started in 1997, when her father got cancer. ‘ It really planted a seed for me. Why do we all not feel well? Why is there so much cancer? Why are we all so tired?’
We only had Gwynnie briefly before she introduced Dr habib sadeghi. The IranianAmerican has been dubbed Gwyneth’s ‘ love guru’ , supposedly responsible for the ‘conscious uncoupling’ phrase that Gwyneth and her ex, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, used in 2014 to announce their separation.
Dr sadeghi talked for an
‘I am an animal,’ 500 women shouted at the stage: it was like being on a posh version of The Jeremy Kyle Show
hour about health and cancer with the zeal of a televangelist, bouncing backwards and forwards on stage discussing toxic metals and ‘pelvic floor congestion’. ‘The body is brilliant. BRILLIANT,’ he shouted at us, to cheers and more whooping.
There were a five further panel discussions. Highlights included a talk by psychotherapists Dr Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, who encouraged an audience member to come on stage and discuss a problem.
An American with red hair called Cathy bounded up in her workout kit.
She and her partner were living separately because they’d had a disagreement about furniture. This was making her unhappy.
We, the audience, were encouraged by the therapists to dig deep for our animal instincts to will Cathy the support she needed to talk to her partner about this. They instructed us all to shout ‘I am an animal’ on the count of three.
‘I AM AN ANIMAL,’ shouted 500 people at the stage. It felt slightly like a posh version of The Jeremy Kyle Show. Gwyneth, sitting cross-legged on the stage, looked impressed at the volume. ‘Wow, you don’t f*** with this crowd,’ she said, laughing.
There followed a panel about motherhood, during which three doctors discussed modern parenting. ‘How have we arrived in a society where we don’t honour motherhood?’ asked Dr Oscar Serrallach, author of a book called Mothermorphosis, about post-natal ‘depletion’.
UNMISSABLE was the panel talk titled The Three Way, which, according to my programme, would be ‘a dialogue about orgasm equality’. Panellists included Nicole Daedone, author of a book called Slow Sex: The Art And Craft Of The Female Orgasm; Jenni Konner, co-writer and a director of the hit TV series Girls; and a Belgian psychotherapist called esther Perel, who said society remains conflicted about sexuality. ‘We sanctify eet,’ she said in her accented english, ‘ then we make eet thees thing that ees totally dirty.’ Blonde women around me nodded solemnly.
Given the extreme Californian psycho-talk inside the theatre, a break over lunch was welcome.
So it was outside into the sunshine, where various free treatments continued. I spent five minutes at an ‘oxygen bar’, where pure oxygen was blown up my nostrils via a cannula to protect me from bacteria and environmental toxins.
Calming? Possibly. And perhaps useful if you have a cold. ‘I think I can, like, breathe easier,’ said a young American woman beside me unhooking her cannula.
I queued up for a vitamin B12 injection, ‘for a quick energy boost, vital for building a healthy neuromuscular system and creating oxygen- carrying red blood cells.’ My arm felt heavy afterwards, like I’d had a flu jab.
In the Zen Zone, I talked to a saleswoman from a company that makes cannabis pens, vape cigarettes through which you inhale cannabis to alleviate conditions including MS and arthritis. California voted to legalise marijuana in November last year, but I wasn’t allowed to try or buy a cannabis pen without a Californian medical card.
elsewhere, a shaman did crystal readings, manicurists using non-toxic varnish painted fingernails and everyone ate salmon sashimi and drank coconut water and yet more juice. So much juice. I have never felt so hydrated in all my life. ‘I’m tired of drinking stuff,’ I overheard one woman say to a friend; ‘Can we go eat something?’
Then it was back into the theatre to round off the day with the keynote panel, Balls In The Air. The speakers were all female: Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie, fashion designer Tory Burch and Victoria’s Secret model (and Orlando Bloom’s ex) Miranda Kerr. Gwyneth chaired the hourlong talk, during which panellists earnestly discussed how they juggled work, motherhood, marriage and friendships.
I would suggest it’s a bit easier to juggle all these things if you are a multi-millionaire actress or model, but snarkiness like that isn’t encouraged in the Goop family. So I kept my mouth shut as Miranda Kerr revealed how she had turned to leech therapy and leech facials, carrying the leeches home and releasing them into her koi pond afterwards.
It was left to Gwyneth to close proceedings with a short speech. ‘Thank you all from the bottom of my heart,’ she said to the audience. ‘I hope you all take away something valuable from today.’
More cheering. The crowd was delirious, on a high not from the cannabis pens, but from the entire summit.
Sure, most of us may roll our eyes at the eye-watering expense and the seemingly bonkers treatments — but they’d seen their idol up close, spent a day trying out treatments and met like-minded Goopies.
And no doubt a fair few have already signed up for the next one in New York in January.
On the way out, I was handed my $200 goody bag, containing various invaluable products, including non-toxic condoms, bergamot deodorant and Gwyneth’s book, Goop Clean Beauty, which instructs its readers how to repair the body ‘inside and out’.
Happily, there was no juice in the bag — because what I really wanted was an enormous glass of Californian Chardonnay.