IS GWYNNIE A HEALTH HAZARD?
“Is your uterus crying out for a spring clean,” asked Dani Garavelli in The Scotsman. “Is your colon in need of irrigation?” Are you plagued by psychic vampires? If you suffer from any of these complaints, then Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s “wellness brand”, is here to help. Madame Paltrow’s “New Age apothecary”
– which now has its own documentary series on Netflix, The
Goop Lab – is going from strength to strength. It will sell you DIY coffee enema machines ($135); psychic vampire repellent ($27); “jade eggs to strengthen your pelvic floor; sex dust to nourish sexual vigour”. The series will guide you through the worlds of vaginal steaming and psychedelic drug therapy. But though we may laugh, there’s nothing very funny about making money out of dubious treatments and “female insecurities”. Last week, NHS England’s chief executive Simon Stevens expressed his concern, slamming Goop for spreading misinformation, saying that some of its products posed a “considerable health risk”.
Honestly, though, does Stevens really think that British people take Paltrow and Goop seriously, asked Barbara Ellen in The Observer. In his speech last week, he made some serious points, railing against the anti-vaccination movement, for example. But Goop sells “fantasy, entertainment, indulgence, diversion”: vampire facials, for instance, in which your blood is drawn and injected into your face to reduce ageing. It’s narcissistic and absurd, but no one’s going to confuse this “expensive quackery” with, say, “a fully functioning A&E department”.
I am “heavily pro” Paltrow, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. “My undying hatred of her shallow world of new-age falafel and vacant crystal capitalism is far outweighed by my sheer admiration for anyone who can persuade other unhappy, scared women in their 40s that they will feel much better if they buy a $244 toothpaste squeezer.” Besides, anyone who believes in anything she promotes deserves all the dodgy coffee enemas they get. As for Stevens, what was he thinking, giving her all that free publicity? It is really not the NHS’s job to tell us we’re better off without sex dust and vampire facials.