Might Gwyneth Paltrow have been right all along? While Goop, her $252-million lifestyle empire, has ended up on the wrong end of a gazillion jokes about the insane shit on which bored, pampered, rich women will spend money — jade eggs? Spirulina popcorn? Candles that smell like her vagina? — much of the tactics and tweaks and healing hacks Paltrow endorsed to haute ridicule a few years ago are now absolutely part of the mainstream. Think about it: Gwyneth was plugging intermittent fasting, refined sugar evasion, a good gut microbiome and reducing inflammation years before Tim Spector, the professor of genetic epidemiology who has us all signed up to his Zoe program, slapping glucose monitors on our upper arms and fermenting our own kimchi. Why is it OK if Spector says it but laughable if Paltrow does? Why?
Heaven knows, my own wellness endeavors are heavily Paltrow-influenced. For starters: was “wellness” even a thing before Goop? And now? I train (Gwyneth trains), I dry brush (Gwyneth dry brushes), I’m obsessed by my gut (Gwyneth is … oh, you’ve got this now), I moderate my anxiety with conscious breathing, I tend to my pelvic floor, at the beginning of this year I ditched refined sugars, and what else? Oh yeah — I meditate too, have done since Covid’s lockdown madness, which is when Paltrow took it up.
