While scanning for recent photos of what looks like a weird new face for her, I came across this article about a Goop convention. Sounds like a massive disaster. Can I just point out I still can't stand her.
http://nypost.com/2017/06/11/inside-gwyneth-paltrows-ridiculous-goop-summit/
LOS ANGELES Gwyneth Paltrows inaugural health-and-wellness summit on Saturday kicked off just as youd expect: well-groomed women wearing yoga pants and expensive handbags hooking themselves up to IVs and oxygen tubes in a parking lot, experiences otherwise associated with the glamour of getting triaged at a disaster site.
This is Paltrows peculiar gift or grift and it was on full display at In Goop Health, her day-long event meant to bring her websites most requested and shared wellness content to life. By last week, all 500 tickets, ranging from $500 to $1,500, had sold out; another event is planned for New York City in January.
Attendees were told via email to arrive at 9 a.m. The summit wouldnt actually begin for another hour, which allowed enough time to shop inside a cavernous industrial space for Goop-branded products such as water bottles ($35), hoodies ($100) and a G.-branded flight pack consisting of four thin nesting canvas bags containing some magnesium packets, a sleep mask, earbuds and moisturizer ($198).
Goop
It was the physical manifestation of the day to come: For those willing to spend so much on so little, Paltrow will happily take your money.
She introduced her first speaker, Dr. Habib Sadeghi on Cosmic Flow, by explaining her own interest in wellness or, in her parlance, healing modalities.
It began in 1998, she said, after her beloved father was diagnosed with cancer, and given her brands origin story, it seems naïve at best, craven at worst, for Paltrow to commodify junk science and dangerous information.
Even the affable late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who had Paltrow on his show Tuesday night, couldnt play along, asking about a recent Goop post claiming the scientific benefits of going barefoot.
What is Earthing? he asked.
I dont really know that much about Earthing, Paltrow admitted. Theres this type of electromagnetic thing that were missing and its good to take your shoes off and walk in the grass . . . I dont know what the fk we talk about.
What about the jade eggs ($66) she tells readers to insert in their vaginas?
Is that something you believe in? Kimmel asked.
I dont know! Paltrow said. I never read that before.
Those eggs, of course, were available for sale at her summit.
In the days first lecture, Sadeghi spoke for nearly 90 minutes about integrative photosynthesis, spiritual Wi-Fi, laterality to the body, neuro-vegetative signs and the ontological experience called your life.
He spoke of June 4, 1997, the day Paltrow first reached out, as the most important of his entire life, moreso than his marriage or the birth of his two children. Hes saved every email she ever sent him, and spent half an hour walking the audience through a detailed explanation of Paltrows first bloodwork, her then-recurrent urinary tract infections and an ovarian cyst that, he said, threatened to blow out her back. (One of the enduring mysteries of Paltrows success as a health and wellness guru is her endless stream of medical ailments.)
Sadeghi went off on some interesting tangents. What makes water wet? he asked, more than once. I nearly got a masters in electric chemistry asking that question.
He stated that we still dont know how birds fly, despite the Wright brothers inventing the airplane by observing birds in flight. I am probably one of the most authentic human beings you will ever meet, he said, a pronouncement usually reserved for anyone working a con.
About 50 women, most exasperated, streamed out during his lecture, and its not hard to see why: By middle age, most everyone has had an experience with catastrophic illness, and theres no reconciling Sadeghis nonsense with that.
Finally, after plugging his forthcoming book, Sadeghi wrapped it up. This is not a convention, he said. Its a pilgrimage. We are here to hold the light, the consciousness, for a different way of being.
Next up was a panel on gut health.
Here we were instructed that kale, superfood of the millennium, can be extremely dangerous; that vaginal birth is the new breastfeeding (a delivery system for essential nutrients that will determine your childs fate); that taking one Advil or Aleve is like swallowing a hand grenade; that cancer does not exist among wild animals (it does, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, and at similar rates to humans); and that we Americans are not meant to eat nightshades such as tomatoes and potatoes because everyone immigrated from Europe, Africa, or Asia where there are no nightshades despite the Irish fleeing the Great Potato Famine, tomatoes composing the bulk of the Mediterranean diet for centuries, or France and Belgiums ongoing quarrel over which nation, 300 years ago, invented French fries.
Also, we should use frog venom to treat burns, bad luck and cancer.
Next up was The 10-Minute Facelift with Dr. Julius Few, a room-clearing demonstration in which Few sliced holes in a volunteers face. After explaining that his patient was under a local anesthetic, he pushed a threaded needle through his volunteers left cheekbone to her lower jaw, then reversed course while tugging tight.
Those who remained groaned and gasped. The doctor was unfazed.
I do think Gwyneth and I are alike, in that we think the best things in life are simplest, he said, dabbing up the wounds. This procedure starts at $3,500 and lasts two to three years. Fews quick addendum: Blindness is a potential side effect.
The event was now nearly four hours in, yet there was no break in sight. Instead, we were subjected to another panel discussion: Paltrow interviewing two of her favorite shrinks. Dr. Phil Stutz and Barry Michels explained that we are all mere pawns of something called The Field, which Stutz described as the invisible force that makes things happen that you cant do on your own.
The enemy of The Field, they claim, is Part X: a devil living inside you, a demon. He wants to fk you up any way he can. But by closing our eyes, visualizing what we want and calling on The Universe to deliver it, we can have whatever we want. Its a cynical mash-up of Freuds personality theory, the Jungian shadow self, comparative mythology and The Secret, capped off by Stutz and Michels telling an audience member upset with her boyfriend to wish their problems away.
Attendees receive IV treatments in between sessions and during breaks.Maureen Callahan
Finally, the crowd broke for lunch, with those who paid $1,000 availing themselves of private workouts. The highest tier lunched with Paltrow and select panelists. The proles were relegated to wandering around the warehouse and converted parking lot for two hours, getting solicited by dream interpreters or standing in endless lines for free blowouts or manicures services promptly halted once the panels resumed, no matter that some had spent well over an hour in line.
Sorry, one of the Goop staffers told a disgruntled guest. We can offer you a $20 gift certificate? The attendee walked away.
The 3 oclock panel was The Mother Lode, described as an exploration of the mother wound and ways to re-parent ourselves. Dr. Oscar Serrallach, the lone male on the panel, elicited groans when he compared his work on the mother wound to a reporter in a war zone, [seeing] all this carnage around me. Dr. Robin Berman claimed that the word mother is transgender. Dr. Sherry Sami, wife of Paltrows first speaker, hit the crowds marrow, listing the great stressors of upper-class motherhood: Pre-school interviews, what camps they should go to what kind of nanny is going to bring the right consciousness into their life?
Children are here, Sami continued, to teach their mothers how to be a great digestive enzyme, to help their children metabolize their experiences while leading the mother towards her divinity. Seems a lot for a toddler, but the crowd loved it.
Next was a sex panel featuring therapist and author Esther Perel, sexpert Nicole Daedone, and Jenni Konner, showrunner of HBOs Girls.
I dont know how I got on this panel, Konner said, and she struggled through a painfully earnest discussion of the nourishing approach to orgasm and the value of [the] body. Instead, Konner spoke to the industry-heavy audience about female-centric production crews and the way women work in male-dominated writers rooms.
Konners cohort Lena Dunham, billed as a star attraction, did not appear, and Paltrow offered no explanation or apology a rude omission for anyone whod paid so much in hopes of seeing her.
After a short break, Paltrows trainer and business partner Tracy Anderson a controversial figure whose financial practices and approach to fitness led, in part, to a falling out with Madonna took the stage for a brief, awkward Q&A. She spoke against cross-training (regarded by most physiotherapists as extremely beneficial), boasted that she worked with Microsoft to open her viewers neural pathways so theyd connect with her online presence, then rushed offstage.
As we rounded 5 oclock, the final panel took the stage: Paltrow and her celebrity friends Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie and Miranda Kerr. In the middle sat Tory Burch, the lone true businesswoman, and at times she looked ready to gouge her eyes out.
Cameron Diaz, Miranda Kerr, Tory Burch and Nicole RichieStartraks ; Getty Images
Yet this was the only panel that transfixed the entire crowd, and it was clearly what they came for: the chance to see and hear Paltrow and her peers gush over each others fabulousness, marvel at how each of them does it all (with no nods to nannies, personal assistants, household staff, managers and agents) and reinforce the notion that every woman out there, if only they wish hard enough and buy enough GP-approved product, can be a member of her clique too, an inhabitant of her world and theres no denying that Gwyneth Paltrow is on her own planet.
Its one where those without more pressing concerns can leisurely embark on a journey, face obstacles that help them remake paradigms to create more authentic selves that, in turn, so generously make the world a better, more healing place.
Yet its one with Paltrows trademark snobbery and class consciousness: Although all attendees were promised post-summit drinks Lets face it, Paltrows editorial director Elise Loehnen told Vanity Fair in April, everyones going to need a cocktail at the end of the day those who paid just $500 were hurried out of the venue as a voice came over the loudspeaker, asking everyone else to join Gwyneth and her friends for a cocktail in the garden.
In Paltrows world, you get what you pay for.
