Gwyneth Paltrow — the Oscar winning actress who walked away from Hollywood to advocate for vaginal steaming, not to mention $950 shot glasses and saving one’s marriage through more blowjobs and less arguing — is the subject of a wide-ranging new profile in the New York Times. Actually, the range is not so wide, since she’s only promoting her lifestyle company, GOOP, which grew from a newsletter into a “wellness” company that’s reportedly worth $250 million. Yet what comes out of Paltrow’s mouth runs the gamut as usual.
Along the way, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner gets swept up in the GOOPness (and deceptive marketing claims) of it all, yet she recalls by the end that what surrounds Paltrow (along with her aura) is “ridiculous.” To that end, here are the 10 most bonkers excerpts from the profile, including what the former actress told an audience of Harvard Business School students:
It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “It’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!” as if she were yodeling.
When Paltrow gets thirsty, she enjoys an unadulterated gulp of electrons:
“It’s intense, man,” she said. She reached behind her to her bookshelf, which held about a dozen blue bottles of something called Real Water, which is not stripped of “valuable electrons,” which supposedly creates free radicals something something from the body’s cells. “It’s insane, and then I have to do a lot on the day, and I really don’t like speaking in public, and I have to keep getting up in front of a crowd.”
Paltrow responds to accusations that the GOOP brand is “elitist”:
“It’s crucial to me that we remain aspirational. Not in price point, because content is always free.” The things they were making — the clothing, yes, but also the creams and oils — couldn’t be made cheaply. “Our stuff is beautiful,” she said. “The ingredients are beautiful. You can’t get that at a lower price point. You can’t make these things mass-market.”
Chris Martin knows the drill and preemptively shuts himself down:
Chris Martin walked in and sat down at the kitchen island and introduced himself. He saw my tape recorder and immediately told me that though I seemed nice and trustworthy, he had no interest in being part of my article, so please keep anything he says out of it.
However, Brad Falchuk is fine with the GOOP spotlight, and he graciously responded to congrats on their engagement while Paltrow had a “spasm”:
“Thank you,” he said, standing behind her, his arms around her waist and his face buried in her neck. She registered his snuggle and returned it with a return-snuggle body spasm without stopping her cooking actions.
Paltrow on people ridiculing her “conscious uncoupling” with Martin:
“I think that was an instance where it really hit me that an insouciance with language from me is different than from somebody else.”
Paltrow’s daughter loves The Office, and mom has input, of course:
“I started watching ‘The Office,’ and I find it so funny,” Apple said.
“The English one?” G.P. asked.
“No, the U.S. one.”
“You have to see the English one.”
Meanwhile, Paltrow has a bizarre way of greeting her son:
A very good-looking young boy appeared. “Hi, lover,” G.P. said. The boy, whom I recognized as her youngest child, Moses, immediately came to my side, made socially appropriate eye contact and shook my hand.
Paltrow also isn’t aware of New York magazine’s GOOP mockery:
Bloggers at New York magazine’s The Cut regularly mock Goop’s gift guides (to which G.P. said, “I don’t know what The Cut is”).
And finally, Paltrow prefers to call her “butler” something else:
“No, he’s a house manager,” she said. She doesn’t know what she’d do without him. “He’s the best. He’s from Chicago. He’s so incredible. He helps me with everything.”
(Via New York Times)