Paltrow’s wellness empire

Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t mind being the center of “cultural firestorms,” said Taffy Brodesser-Akner in The New York Times Magazine. She built a business to help women sample her luxurious New Age lifestyle, and now it’s worth $250 million.The company, Goop, sells “aspirational” items—designer clothing, jewelry, beauty products, health supplements—and publishes a website and magazine offering quirky wellness advice and products ranging from an aphrodisiac called “sex bark” to “Body Vibes” to rebalance your vibrational frequency. When critics mock Goop’s claims, Paltrow says, traffic to her site shoots up, and “I can monetize those eyeballs.” Her sunny pursuit of perfection has generated both a devoted clientele and scorn; Star magazine once named Paltrow the world’s most hated celebrity. “I remember being like, really? More than, like, Chris Brown? Wow. It was the same week I was People’s Most Beautiful Woman. Am I hated to the bone or am I the world’s most beautiful?” If her life seems too good, Paltrow says, it’s “because I work so hard at it.” Above all, she wants to help women support one another, and themselves. “That inner critic is so vicious,” she says. “Why do we do that? It’s nuts.”