Paltrow’s latest directive is a shot below the belt
Women are, for now, free to make dubious choices about their bodies — like vagina stones
No point in beating around the bush: in these scary times, with so many grave concerns, it’s comforting to know Gwyneth Paltrow is selling stone vagina eggs.
I don’t know what goes on inside the headquarters of Goop, the lifestyle site she founded in 2008.
I’m picturing glass walls and exotic orchids and Warhol sunset prints. It’s early in the new year and Paltrow is perched behind a mahogany desk, staring down at two polished, ovoid rocks as she unbuckles her belt.
“Hello, Quartz,” she says to one, shifting her gaze. “Hello, Jade.”
A svelte underling approaches, cradling a pricey Moon Juice smoothie laced with ethereal dust, but Paltrow shoos her away with her eyes.
Sustenance must wait. It’s yoni time.
A few years earlier, at a party in Malibu, Paltrow was nibbling on goji berries when a guest tiptoed close enough to whisper, “I hate to bother you. But what is yoni?”
Paltrow stared into the horizon. She thought about sharing the Sanskrit etymology or performing a sacred Hindu dance to pantomime the goddess Shakti. Instead, she dropped her chalice of berries and, with a dramatic swoop, grabbed her crotch: “THIS IS YONI.”
Back in the present, Paltrow has emerged as a yoni maven.
As Microsoft is to operating systems, or Chiquita is to bananas, Paltrow is to yoni.
If you were born with a yoni, if you cherish your yoni, if you have disposable income to spoil your yoni rotten, Paltrow has suggestions.
Is her advice advisable? Often not, say medical experts who, every few months, are yanked out of patient appointments or clinical trials to field urgent media queries about Paltrow’s latest yoni directive.
“I’m sorry, what is she telling women to do? Steam-clean their vaginas with mugwort vapour? Fire infrared beams at their vaginas? Mobile lasers? Squat in the shower and power-urinate to fortify pelvic floors? Insert rocks in their vaginas? What?”
After that last one, the consensus this week among health practitioners was, yeah, bad idea.
You know how a sea otter has a chest pouch to carry a small stone that’s used to crack open shellfish? Or how a pelican can take flight with debris in its throat pouch after dive-bombing for menhaden?
Well, spoiler alert, your yoni is not a sea otter or a pelican.
“Doctors Warn Against Gwyneth Paltrow’s Advice on Vaginal Jade Eggs,” reported CBS on Tuesday. “Doctors Condemn Gwyneth Paltrow After the Oscar Winner Advises Women to Sleep with ‘Jade Eggs’ in Their Vagina,” added the Mirror on Wednesday.
“Why Are People Taking Medical Advice From Gwyneth Paltrow,” asked the National Review.
“No, You Should Not Put Jade Eggs in Your Vagina Because Gwyneth Paltrow Tells You To,” noted Gizmodo.
Got it. Though all of this may be moot.
It seems a great many women were intrigued by this “strictly guarded secret of Chinese royalty in antiquity” that promises to boost “chi, orgasms, vaginal muscle tone, hormonal balance and feminine energy in general.”
The Jade Egg ($66 U.S.) and Rose Quartz Egg ($55) are sold out.
These consumers made a choice. And that word — choice — is the key.
If you were to melt down those eggs, would you end up with snake oil? Perhaps. Could this trend lead to epic misunderstandings at the gym or airport screening lines? Maybe. But at a time when too many wretches are lunging to control women’s bodies, Paltrow’s stone eggs may be ridiculous and they may be medically questionable, but they are also powerful symbols.
If anything, we need more yoni niche marketing, more reminders that a woman’s body is hers and hers alone.
That I even need to type those words in 2017 feels like a battering ram to the soul, but here we are. (Oh, and guys, a possible side benefit of yoni commodification may mean companies start hawking products for men: “Hey, you see this new Johnson Warmer from Johnson & Johnson? It looks like a little lambskin catcher’s mitt, but I swear it’s doing wonders for my chakra.”)
Of course, this is not about men. It’s about women. It’s easy to ridicule Paltrow, as I’ve done in the past. But in these scary times, as political leaders and their zombie armies push for new corporeal control, she’s an accidental freedom fighter.
No, really. She is trapped in a gilded parallel universe, sure. But as a general of yoni autonomy, she is also on the front lines of the gender battlefield.
You go, Gwyneth. You sell those crazy vagina eggs. vmenon@thestar.ca