On her new Netflix show “Sex, Love, and Goop”, Gwyneth Paltrow leads a small circle of couples who have come to the experts in order to solve their unique sexual problem. In a spacious, bright, well-decorated room, Paltrow speaks with each couple, and then her co-host, the famed sexologist and counselor Michaela Baum. Paltrow wears a cashmere suit, she is skinny, and her skin is perfect. First we meet Damon and Erica, a young married couple. They will be going with Jaiya to solve their sexual mismatch. We learn that Damon wants to have sex all the time but Erica doesn’t. It’s because she doesn’t want to, we learn. She doesn’t want to because the sex is terrible. Jaiya is going to make it great.
Paltrow is the face of Goop, a lifestyle brand I didn’t think I had to explain until my dear friend Alice said she’d never heard of it. Paltrow is simultaneously behind and in front of everything Goop. She hosts the show but takes a backseat to the therapies. She models much the clothing and jewelry of her “G. label,” a brand of mid-priced basics, where she quotes herself in the description of a skirt:
“You can dress up this skirt with heels and a tie-neck blouse. You can couple it with a casual tank or tee and sneakers. You can even wear it in the summer, zipped over a one-piece suit with sandals. It’s so, so versatile.”
Jaiya, matched in order to solve Damon and Erica’s mismatch, begins their journey by having Damon blindfold her and touch her with various objects: a feather, a wolverine claw, chains. They learn that the sexual experience can be more than missionary, or whatever, it can encompass an element of the unknown or of suspense, or of what Jaiya calls the “energetic.” I have never seen something like this on T.V., or ever. Goop is new-age, groundbreaking.
Goop, in the cultural consciousness, is equal parts Marianne Williamson and Net-a-Porter. It walks the line between empowerment and shame, self-care and capitalism, promising therapies and snake oil. One of the exercises many of the women do in the show is to stare at their naked bodies in the mirror, pointing out what they like or don’t like, all the while their therapist explains how what they do or don’t like could be shaped by culture messaging, or the male gaze. I take inspiration to this, in addition to its hypocrisy, because I know from looking them up in college that Goop.com has tens of cleanses you can do after the holidays and juices you can try, among other forms of starvation. And that the article on the blog entitled “Getting Naked and Finding Joy in Your Body” is just a list of things you should buy.
The Goop lifestyle is one that remains aspirational for me, and I still want to attain it. It seems so relaxed and healthy, not to mention that I would be wealthy. I want to wear cashmere and eat green soups and try a jade roller for fun. In this way, Goop is successful. By promoting interesting and new ideas they can sell something you’ve never seen before, something wellness-y and better for you than “normal” things, clothes, or sex.
goop is bringing new life to the snake oil business; they've interested a whole new generation in an industry which (IMO) had become stagnant and stuck in its ways.
True innovation!