Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is here
Shop selling actress’ controversial lifestyle brand opens today in San Francisco
The famous vagina jade eggs are here, as are other beautiful, high-end things you would of expect to be carried in Gwyneth Paltrow’s new store in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood — her Goop life- style brand “come to life.”
The Goop Lab boutique, in a narrow, well-lit, space on Fillmore Street, opens Friday and embodies the qualities writers often attach to the Oscar-winning-movie starturned-wellness-mogul: Sleek, elegant, privileged, luminous.
One visitor to Thursday’s special preview for members of the press, social media influencers and others marveled at the boutique’s clean, modern and “well-curated” display of clothing, kitchenware, skin care, nutrition supplements and sexual health products.
The latter category includes the smooth and shiny jade eggs, which come in a box with minimalist, naturalpaper packaging. The eggs are best known for being the focus of controversy over what many complained were unsubstantiated health claims made about them and other products that were sold on Goop’s popular e-commerce site.
The Bay Area store is the company’s third brick- andmortar store worldwide, after Los Angeles, New York and London. Goop’s claim to a permanent foothold here makes sense, given that San Francisco makes up Goop’s fourth largest market in terms of readership.
But there’s more of Goopworld coming to the Bay Area this weekend. On Saturday, Paltrow will conduct a Q& A with spiritual leader and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson at the “In Goop Health” summit at Richmond’s Craneway Pavilion.
Summit participants, who paid $1,000 to $2,500 for admission, can spend the day getting a mind- body “reset,” by listening to talks by other doctors, scientists and “thought leaders,” who also include James Doty, a Stanford neurosurgery professor and founder of the school’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. They can also stop by beauty stations and take in “restorative workshops.”
Goop’s arrival in the Bay Area also comes a year after the company moved to quiet the controversy about the jade eggs and other pseudoscientific claims made in some of the site’s advice columns. The site had said that inserting the eggs into one’s vagina could balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles and prevent uterine prolapse.
Such claims inspired a scathing 2018 New York Times Magazine profile, complaints by physicians and consumer groups and a lawsuit by 10 California district attorneys who make up the state’s Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force.
In that profile, Paltrow appeared to revel in the controversy, famously quipping to a class at Harvard Business School, “I can monetize those eyeballs.”
But shortly after the profile ran, Paltrow and Goop settled the lawsuit. The settlement formally bars Goop from making claims about any products’ effectiveness without requisite scientific evidence.
In a recent conversation with New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Paltrow admitted that she made “mistakes early on that we don’t make anymore.”
Noora Raj Brown, Goop’s senior vice president of communications, said the company has worked “amicably”
with the task force and created a team with legal and regulatory backgrounds to vet all product claims.
The settlement still allows Goop to sell certain products, including the jade eggs. It just needs to watch the “verbiage” used to describe them, Brown said, explaining that the company applies “a strict product vetting process to ensure we are the gold standard in transparency and trust.”
Ever since Paltrow started Goop in 2008 as a newsletter to share her favorite recipes, shopping discoveries and health and fitness advice, the company has attracted lovers and haters.
The fans admire Paltrow’s style, though critics say that some may hope that dressing like her, or using her $125 Microderm Instant Glow Exfoliator, will make their lives as fulfilled and fabulous as they imagine hers to be.
Of course, dressing and living like Paltrow is expensive, with a simple black cardigan at the store going for $595 and a tank top for yoga going for $195. Paltrow is unapologetic about the brand’s price point, telling Sorkin that Goop is an “aspirational brand” and its ethos is about surrounding oneself with beautiful things.
“I think it’s good to aspire,” Paltrow said. “I do believe in beautiful things and the human spirit. I’m talking about things that work and that make you feel good, or that make you feel you’re part of a certain community.”
She added, “I hope as we grow, we’ll be able to democratize wellness.”
Others appreciate Paltrow and Goop’s desire to be “trailblazers” when it comes to what she has called “creating conversations around women’s health” — an area that she and defenders say has long gotten the short shrift from conventional Western medicine.
“Female sexuality is an incendiary topic for certain people,” Paltrow told Sorkin. “I just think it scares people when women have their autonomy over sexual health.” In this regard, Paltrow said, “We are not scared of controversy.”
Jen Gunter, a San Francisco gynecologist, blogger and author of “The Vagina Bible,” became one of Goop’s most vocal critics when she started criticizing the site several years ago for promoting vaginal steaming and warning that underwire bras cause cancer. In a post that went viral, Gunter also blasted the site’s health claims about the jade eggs.
Gunter continues to take issue with Paltrow for saying she’s never been in the business of giving advice but only wants to start “conversations” — all in order to empower women.
“It’s not feminism to give women disinformation about their bodies, to promote disinformation about health,” said Gunter, who also has described Goop as a “cult” that uses the “lure of celebrity” to sell products.
Laura Smith, the legal director for Truth in Advertising, the nonprofit that first filed claims with the California district attorneys over the “deceptive” language Goop used to describe its products, said the company overall had made strides in removing “disease- treatment” claims from its site.
However, Smith took issue when shown a photo of the directions that come with the jade eggs.
“The use of the phrase ‘ fans say’ does not change Goop’s legal responsibility” under Federal Trade Commission regulations, Smith said. “That is to say, Goop is still required to have adequate substantiation for the health claims that follow the phrase.”