Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop
Re(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/opinion/gwyneth-paltrow-astronomer-goop.html)
The purpose of Amy Odell’s article on Gwyneth Paltrow was to explain how her company goop has tested time through vast criticism and competition. She notes key factors like how Paltrow doesn’t “pretend” to be someone she is not, uses criticism to drive sales, and leverages absurd products as marketing. This amounts to a lauding of her abilities and success, someone that is simply “laughing her way to the bank” and has accomplished a lot.
But what if the concern is real. By celebrating her ability to turn backlash into marketing, it overlooks how much of that backlash is rooted in legitimate concern.
Goop fails not by being a great marketer, but by selling horrible, and oftentimes misleading products. Odell acknowledges this, saying that the company sells “coffee enemas, vaginal steaming, a raw goat milk ‘cleanse’” that “experts have warned consumers about.” But then this is followed up by Odell highlighting how the “company grew to encompass a wholesale business… and more.” Odell does this again previously when she mentions how goop sold a “jade ‘yoni’ egg” that claimed to bring health benefits, but was quickly denounced and sued for misleading advertising. Odell highlights not the problem of falsely promoting products but rather that the press from the lawsuit “only boosted sales of the product.”
We don’t laud serial killers on how well they can hide a body. We don’t praise politicans on how well they can hide their insider trading. Why is there a double standard for celebrities, where rather than highlighting their wrongdoing, we must show how they are able to evade criticism and spread bad products to their viewerbase through marketing.
The purpose of Amy Odell’s article on Gwyneth Paltrow was to explain how her company goop has tested time through vast criticism and competition. She notes key factors like how Paltrow doesn’t “pretend” to be someone she is not, uses criticism to drive sales, and leverages absurd products as marketing. This amounts to a lauding of her abilities and success, someone that is simply “laughing her way to the bank” and has accomplished a lot.
But what if the concern is real. By celebrating her ability to turn backlash into marketing, it overlooks how much of that backlash is rooted in legitimate concern.
Goop fails not by being a great marketer, but by selling horrible, and oftentimes misleading products. Odell acknowledges this, saying that the company sells “coffee enemas, vaginal steaming, a raw goat milk ‘cleanse’” that “experts have warned consumers about.” But then this is followed up by Odell highlighting how the “company grew to encompass a wholesale business… and more.” Odell does this again previously when she mentions how goop sold a “jade ‘yoni’ egg” that claimed to bring health benefits, but was quickly denounced and sued for misleading advertising. Odell highlights not the problem of falsely promoting products but rather that the press from the lawsuit “only boosted sales of the product.”
We don’t laud serial killers on how well they can hide a body. We don’t praise politicans on how well they can hide their insider trading. Why is there a double standard for celebrities, where rather than highlighting their wrongdoing, we must show how they are able to evade criticism and spread bad products to their viewerbase through marketing.
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