Hello, and welcome to another mellow, extremely shallow episode of Questions You Never Thought Mattered, Until They Mattered, a guided meditation focused on opening the minds and hearts of our readers through visual storytelling as their eyes are berated by the words spewed out over the next several pages. Today’s episode focuses on something most people know little to nothing about, including the very founder herself… Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP company.

         Close your eyes, but do it metaphorically so you can still read this passage. Maybe on second thought close those eyes, so I can open them to the possibilities of a brand new you. A you that’s fresher, hipper, and more youthful than your peers. You see Karen at your 50 year reunion, and she’ll be begging you for your secrets. And what are your secrets, you may ask? The things you hold near and dear to your heart? Well, let’s start from the bottom up shall we.

         Starting with your legs, Gwyneth Paltrow gently massages them, then looking into your eyes. She takes off your shoes, but respectfully decides to leave on the rest of your clothes. You ponder for a few seconds why this extremely white lady is looking at you like a politician looks at the minorities, acknowledging yet slightly uncomfortable. Unshackling your littlest digits from their leathery confines (you might even call them your shoes), she beckons you to waltz around the floor of the room. The room itself is not important, it merely is. It exists in this luscious world alongside us, caught in the underpinnings of causality and termination. Standing up on your feet, you do what all humans since Homo Erectus have done best and just walk. Maybe you’re feeling a little adventurous and decide to prance, tap, samba, salsa, or whatever you want to call your inadequate concept of dance. Or perhaps you’re a conservative, choosing to stick to the archaic forms of running or skipping.

As your heel makes contact with the ground, you hear Mother Earth call out to you. Her voice is filled with reason, and teeming with wisdom. She calls you back to hear kingdom, asking where have you been this entire time. “This entire time?” you wonder in stupor. She wraps herself around your feet and moans in lustful pleasure. She explains that she’s missed your feet…the shoes on your feet kept you from reconnecting with your roots, your heritage. You look to Gwyneth, and she now appears with a chalkboard. On it are inscribed the words, “Earthing.” Earthing…what an interesting word. It’s not even recognized in Microsoft Word, so what power does Gwyneth Paltrow hold over the English language that even Word cannot express? You and Mother Earth turn in earnest, feet brimming with energy as the board turns around: earthing is the idea that bare-footedness allows the free electrons in the negatively charged ground to neutralize free radicals in the body.

“Wow!” you must be chuckling to yourself. You are now free of whatever the fuck free radicals are, even if you have no clue what they even do for your system. But gosh darn it, if being free from it isn’t the most powerful feeling in the world. You’ve completed your initial dive into the GOOP World.

         Mother Earth says goodbye, and bids you farewell before slipping into the Earth. Gwyneth takes your hand, and you take hers. You trust her with your life because she’s just the same as you. A tear drips from her eye as she recounts her sorrowful tale, a real modern-day Jesus. Inches from death, Gwyneth recounts the struggle of learning she had an imbalance of metals in her body… from all the metal she’s been eating as well as an inflamed system, a vaguely medical sounding term that is enough to soothe your doubts for now. Unwilling to let modern medicine throw her away like a piece of trash by solving all her problems logically, Gwyneth knew at all costs, she wanted to feel alive. She grips your hand, telling you how her doctor, Alejandro Junger, gave her the medical advice of a lifetime: quinoa and lettuce. You squint your eyes at her… quinoa and lettuce? She notices you scratching your head, and immediately silences all your fears. Without even a single word, she senses your unease, and guides your eyes to her face. An ageless beauty… you assume that means it’s quinoa and lettuce for the rest of your life, because if it works for Gwyneth it’s good enough for you.

         But wait, Gwyneth slaps you across the face, there’s more. Gazing into her eyes, you see a brief glimpse into uniformity, the oneness of the entire universe, but it’s too vast to comprehend. The only thing comprehensible is a small glimmer, a “nugget” of information if you will. The image is of a piece of lettuce. The words “SALT CLUSTER” appear over the lettuce, hypnotizing you with its fancy verbiage and allure. What is this salt cluster? What does it do? Re-entering reality, you beg Gwyneth to tell you the meaning of this vision. You need her, you love her… you’ll pay lots of money to be like her. She speaks for the first time, “Lettuce ‘tis but a frivolous comestible in this voracious world of insolent people. In order to fully digest the ultimate magnificence of these lactuca sativa, you must discover secret salt clusters within the lettuce. Only then will the convergence of liver and lactuca become whole, and toxins shall be exorcised accordingly.” You pause for the second time in this meditation, mainly to shower praise upon Gwyneth. What does it mean? You have no idea but it sounds good. You like your liver, and you certainly know you don’t like toxins. Perhaps this lettuce thing isn’t such a terrible idea.

         But now you ache in pain. Agh! The horror, you remember the last time you’ve been so loving towards someone else, but he broke your heart. Gwyneth hears your plea, and she puts her arm around your shoulder. She assures you everything will work out just fine in the end. But how does she know this? Out of thin air, a bra appears in her hand, and she strikes a match. Now you’re really wondering: how is she going to light the match. In one swift motion, she strikes your eye with the match. “Geez Louise, Gwyneth, what the fuck is wrong with you? This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!” you scream at her, clawing at your damaged pupils. But as you put your finger to parse over your eyelid, your analysis comes up empty handed. Your eyeballs are completely fine. OF COURSE! Gwyneth was simply using the light in your eyes as the spark of change. What a beautiful, amazing person she is… absolutely capable of no wrongdoing. In agreement you gaze as the bra burns to the ground, the smoke lifting and vaporizing into the air. The memory of your ex fades into the background, and disappears. What was his name again? His hair color? His… existence. You can barely even recount the notion that any sort of meaningful relationship existed. It just was. No longer will you be plagued by the woes of loss in love; Gwyneth’s magical materialism to the rescue! A healer, and a listener… such is Gwyneth’s many divine qualities. And thank god you got rid of that bra, because, as you know too well, you can’t spell breast cancer without bras. Doctors might be able to, it’s called cancer cells, but you’re not into people who can’t spell words. Gwyneth can spell, and that’s just supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

         With past heartaches detached, and your hunger satiated, you continue to wander around aimlessly in the room for 40 seconds, until the question hits you: what about your thirstiness? Why are you so thirsty for something right now? The GOAT Gwyneth Paltrow once again appears, robed in literally nothing to remind you again of how her remedies have gifted her insanely unrealistic body expectations that can be projected onto yourself. As she makes contact with Mother Earth once more, you notice the glint of a small, metal pail in her right hand. Smiling wider than your average smile, you scream in joy to find out (REJOICE!) it is GOAT’s milk. Not Gwyneth’s milk, that’s to be sold for a modest $500 dollars in next year’s “Got Milk? Got Money?” campaign, but the milk of an actual goat. Who needs a cow, when you’ve got a goat? Gwyneth motions you to take a drink from the promised chalice of immortality, and you drink. Here’s to no more “parasites”. Say goodbye to those fiendish yeast that have been bothering you in your bread.

         You recount that they might not really have bothered you that much… you do eat a lot of bread. But then you remember how hard Gwyneth worked to get this bread, and you decide to drive those little shits in your body to extinction. Down with those yeasty beasts you decide! But what other parasites lurk within me? Gwyneth answers slowly, taking long, calculated breaths to avoid thinking about the answer too much, “Yes, ‘twas only yesterday that thou foundst thyself infected with the aching of a ripened homo-sapien-sapien, mainly manifesting in the culmination of the flatulence parasite and the picking-your-nose parasite. They shall be exterminated within the next temporal sphere of influence.” In shock and awe, you begin to pick your nose, wondering if what she says is true. At first you believed that picking your nose or scratching your butt was a conscious choice. But NO! It’s those pesky parasites, living within you and controlling YOUR precious body. The government has fed you lies about yourself! Gwyneth tells it to you like it IS: that all your problems are not actually your problems, but a biological failsafe designed to prevent you from becoming your best you! Why didn’t this angel from the heavens run for president in 2016? Gwyneth shakes her head, the humble queen refuses to take credit for her own work; she motions for her trusty naturopath to come over to take a bow. You nearly pass out from exhaustion. It’s the legendary naturopathic doctor, who’s so intelligent that her zero years of medical school trumps nearly every doctor’s 6-8 years of specialization on learning about the human anatomy! You grab her hand earnestly, and kiss her palms. She exclaims she hasn’t washed hands in days, and you explain that you don’t care: any smart person knows parasites don’t come from standing water, feces, or sewage water, but from low energy field vibrations and heavy metal (not the music genre). If you give out good vibes, you get good vibes in return. And that is the true value criterion of life.

         Now is the time where things start to get “Goopier” as some will say, where Gwyneth Paltrow tows your toes towards the throes of throws lining her foes, both to and fro. You climb into her bed, and she directs your gaze towards her harem of men that she has at her command. She asks one to comfort you, but you hesitate. You’re uncomfortable with your sexual prowess, it’s been a while since you’ve last had that meaningful, physical touch. But you’re with Gwyneth now, and it’s all going to be okay. She reaches into the unending chasm that is her vagina to pull out a snake, in a fashion eerily similar to the limitless storage potential of Dora’s backpack… You see the snake, a literary symbol of Satan, and point to it, shouting, “DEMON BEGONE!” Gwyneth chortles heartily, she thrives off of your stupidity and ignorance. You lean back in your imaginary chair and laugh too: snakes aren’t Satan, you’d have to be an idiot to believe that. Yup, snakes aren’t Satan, but they definitely can see your soul. Gwyneth holds the snake, a king cobra, up to your eye-level. You stare into the void of blackness, and the snake analyzes you from the top to bottom. It uses specialized IR sensors located in its nostrils to isolate your inner self and see you for who you are. Who needs other people to be recognized when a snake’s got their back? After all, it has been said by the Goopian gods that the snake is the oldest living organism on the planet, surviving the extinction level event that wiped out the dinosaurs. All those crazy lizard people might be onto something, but you’re not idiotic enough to believe them: it’s not a lizard, it’s a snake! Gwyneth snakes her way around your body, and drops the snakes with you. You hold the snake’s hand and they hold yours. You dance in merriment, joining hands in a beautiful reconciliation of mutual understanding. The snake enters you, and you enter the snake. The smexy little reptile purifies your soul, and you shed your cowardly skin, feeling refreshed like CG Roxanne’s Crystal Geyser water straight from the source (after they dumped arsenic into several other lakes of course). The snake rushes back to Gwyneth’s vaginal cavity, the day is done.

         You feel exhilarated as the physical sensation of the adrenaline rushing into your veins sweeps over your body like a tsunami. But with all that dancing, you hear a little creak in your neck. You reach your hands to feel the joints, and you realize your thyroid is throbbing. Oh, it’s throbbing like hell! It throbs like the heart does when it sputters upon seeing love. It throbs with the heat of a million suns before it explodes. Yet you know, at the bottom of your heart, that Gwyneth is there with the solution. Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow can stop that supernova. You beseech her to tell you the secret concerning your thicc thyroid throbbing, and she bellows to the heavens for another assistant.

         A man disembarks the stairs of heaven, draped in his mother’s curtains and smelling reminiscent of a basement that was flooded for exactly 3 hours and no more. He introduces himself to you as a medical medium, or someone who’s born with an innate ability to communicate with high-level spirits to gain access to medical insight eons ahead of the time. You nod your head in agreement… this is the type of experts we need in the world. Suddenly, you notice a look of concern in his eyes. His smile erodes into a frown, and he aggressively grabs your left palm to read it. “Oh no! It seems you have the Epstein-Barr virus. All your thyroid problems are caused by this thing. Here’s some iodine, drink up.” The iodine looks surprisingly like Kool-Aid, but that thought  quickly sinks to the back of your mind. EPSTEIN-BARR VIRUS! As in Jeffrey Epstein and US Attorney General William Barr! That definitely needs to be eliminated, because you know Epstein certainly didn’t kill himself, and Barr’s not going to take anyone to trial. You take the iodine, swirling it around like a fine wine, because if the rest of society won’t let you enjoy your $500 bottle of iodine, at least Gwyneth will provide a citadel. Lifting the cup to your lips, you take a sip. The taste is opulent, divine, and extraordinary. You’re transported to heaven… but wait, it seems you’re already there.

         All this liquid has gotten your bowels into a funk, and you realize you must relieve yourself of this insufferable burden. Poor Gwyneth, as a human being who must never piss, she’ll be alarmed to hear of your affliction. Women don’t poop. Certainly not Gwyneth, she is perfect in every regard. You shyly beckon Gwyneth Paltrow to direct you to the nearest bathroom. In all her benevolence, she is surprisingly mature and points you in the right direction. Before you part with her for these brief moments, she hands you a squirt bottle with coffee. “Thank you!” you say, unsure of what to do with the coffee. Do you drink it? Is that such a good idea when you have to piss? Gwyneth makes a hole with her hands, and motions to the squirt bottle. Up your asshole? Yes naïve one, she wants you to squirt coffee up your asshole. Why? As Gwyneth Paltrow’s head medical director once said, “Google mucoid plaque.” And since when has Google ever given poor medical advice? Opening the door to the bathroom, you clench your ass and let the coffee fly. It stings! It burns! It hurts! But you laugh through the pain. You’re suffering just like Gwyneth. Suffering just like that poor, insanely wealthy, genetically gifted, Gwyneth. Why else does she sting herself with bees every day? In fact, why are you complaining about your pain right now? Make like a shit and push that thought out, you have no right to complain in light of Gwyneth’s odyssey. Relieved both physically and mentally, albeit a little damaged, you hobble over to another amorphous room. Once more, Gwyneth pops her head into view. She cares about you. She wants to help you.

         Just let her in.

         Now darkness encompasses the skies, it is time to retire to the bed.  But alas! There’s many dangers that lurk at night, the most pressing of which is psychic vampires. That’s right, they don’t suck your blood, they suck your thoughts! Oh dear lord, you must seek refuge with your savior Gwyneth. Sprinting to her room out of fear, you prostrate yourself at her feet and throw her your money. Your life is more valuable than your money, and Gwyneth knows it too. Without hesitation, the smell of rosemary, juniper, and lavender sweep the room. At first you wonder in what world is Gwyneth is using essential oils that are costly and expensive rather than garlic to fight off vampires, but then you come to the obvious conclusion because garlic only works on those make-believe vampires, real vampires require real solutions. And what a solution it is. Gwyneth begins to sing a lullaby, and the water begins to sway to the melody, much like the Bellagio fountains of Las Vegas. How is this black magic fuckery possible, aside from the obvious speaker lying right below the water’s surface? Gwyneth pats your head and speaks the gospel, “Sonically tuned water bitch.” How water gets “tuned” like a piano escapes your sphere of understanding, but you maintain your resolve You don’t want to look like you don’t know your science in front of Gwyneth! You feel embarrassed and humiliated: why didn’t they teach you this in school? The education system has failed you, but thank goodness Gwyneth is there to re-educate you. Just make sure not to breathe, you might just realize the true cost of that spray. Radiating positive energy from all pores of your body, you feel more protected than ever. A voice pops into your head, “You have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe from the toilet.” BEGONE THOUGHT! And it vanishes; you wear that four-ply emblem across the soles of your shoe as a banner against negativity and vampiricism, because it’s only the best for Gwyneth and her customers.

         As you drift into sleep, you see a vision of Gwyneth’s life flash before your eyes. Oh no! It’s a flashback:

“And I think that’s the point,” she says. “Women are not lemmings. Just because we are raising a question doesn’t mean that we’re expecting somebody to follow our advice. We believe women are intuitive enough and intelligent enough to hear both sides of a lot of things and make a decision for themselves that’s resonant for them.” – Gwyneth Paltrow at the 2018 Goop Health Summit

         What does it mean… lemmings? You let the narrator get this one:

         “In 1958, Disney experimented with one of its premier nature documentaries called White Wilderness. In it, the filmmakers captured rare footage of a group of lemmings committing “group suicide” by jumping off a cliff into the frigid water with no reason other than removing themselves from the uphill battle that is life. In a shocking twist of events, it turns out Disney filmmakers were purposely using a rotating turntable to forcefully push the lemmings to their death.” – The Narrator (in a deep, sombre tenor)

         You mutter to yourself, “A big company fueled by corporate greed taking advantage of the masses using sketchily defined science to suck my bank account dry and drive me to my death… this is the reason nobody trusts those damn vaccines!” You pray to Sigmund Freud in relief for Gwyneth’s intercession on the behalf of women everywhere. She’s empowering you, you feel stronger, grander, and more intelligent than ever before. She’d tell you if her products were whack, wouldn’t she? Yes, because that’s the kind of generous person that Gwyneth is.

         At last, the sun awakes your eyes from their dormant slumber, and you rise to your bare feet, reconnecting with the Earth below you, remembering your sensual encounter with Mother Earth. However, on this particular morning, you feel something is off. You feel less womanly, maybe due to a hormone balance. But who knows for sure right, you can’t all get your hormones checked like Gwyneth twice a week. And hey, it just might be the iodine from yesterday upsetting the stomach, but Gwyneth would never do such a dreadfully frightening thing. You make up your mind: it is a hormone imbalance. Pacing up and down the foot of your bed, your mind begins to swell with worries. Will you turn into a vampire? A man? Will your thyroids explode? Will those free electrons create negative vibes around you? No you fool, because Gwyneth is there. The door flings open to reveal Gwyneth in the flesh, your best day ever just got extended! She hands you a cactus, telling you to prick your hand on the needle. As you touch the cactus, you feel a sense of hormonal balance being restored to your body. Your estrogen has miraculously returned to levels of normalcy, and the excess testosterone has been dispelled. Renewed with life, you look to Gwyneth for an explanation, and she responds, as per usual, with science backed up by ones of years of experimentation. The plant, she carefully explains, rejuvenates your hormones by…And without even hearing the answer, you accept her facts. At least she’s telling you like it is.

         Luckily, Gwyneth realizes it’s time to eat breakfast. In the heat of the moment, you contemplate what choices are out there for breakfast. Even with your gut screaming “quinoa and lettuce” you make the bold, daring decision to go for eggs. Gwyneth’s eyes lit up, and she pulls you to the fridge and takes out a large round egg. You analyze the peculiar object; it looks to be made of jade. Gwyneth motions to her vagina, and you start seeing red flags go all over the place. Your red blood cells scream for mercy, your period is telling you to stop like the punctuation mark, and your brain is livestreaming all the logical fallacies of your decision. But who cares about logic and reason when you’re with THE Gwyneth Paltrow. She must have done all of this, and she’s alive, right? Glaring down at the jade egg, you perform the deed. And it hurts. You look to Gwyneth, searching for any sign of compassion, empathy, and kindness. She simply smiles and waves. Your vagina is singing with pain, practically on the brink of excruciation. Gwyneth’s smile broadens. You fall to the floor, gasping for help, and then it all goes black.

         You don’t pass out, Gwyneth just decided to turn off the light. She likes the drama. Writhing around in pain, you ask her motivations for doing this horrendous deed. She simply responds with a small candle, modestly priced at $75, and stares longingly into your soul. Without any conscious recollection, you see your hand reaching into your wallet and handing her your credit card. What did you just buy anyways? You read the label:

THIS CANDLE SMELLS LIKE MY VAGINA

         Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina smells too? You lean in closer, and sniff the fragrance. Apparently, Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina smells like geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolute. And what else? Oh nothing, just some Damask rose and ambrette seed as well. Where the fuck is Damask? You don’t know, but you know that because it sounds fancy, it must be fancy. Is this what all celebrity vaginas smell like? You realize it says “edition 1” on it, and the pain momentarily recedes to ponder this question. Is there a new wave of vagina scents on their way? Does Gwyneth have more than one vagina? Gwyneth, in all her psychic glory, divines your curiosity and bellows to the perfume’s creator.

         Creator? Gwyneth Paltrow needed someone else to tell her what her vagina smelled like. You make it your mission to meet this legendary aromachologist, and Douglas Little steps out. A look of concern washes over your face. A man, who’s not Gwyneth Paltrow’s husband, is sniffing her vagina? As new questions continue their siege on your fortress of faith, you ward off the intruder. These questions are all irrelevant, because you believe in one absolute and one absolute only: GWYNETH PALTROW. High from the scent of vagina candles, and exhausted from the egg in your vagina, you triumphantly raise your hand in the air and curl it into a fist. What a form of empowerment!

         As you begin to leave this meditation, your will slowly return to the world around you, back to the era of gullibility, impulsiveness, and irrationality. You’ll once more have to walk around with so-called “MDs” who try and tell you the lump on your back is cancer. Once more you’ll have to share the bathroom with other women who don’t shove breakfast items up their vagina. And worst of all, there’s no Gwyneth anymore, she’s no longer by your faithful side. But you assume it’s just a part of faith: not seeing to believe. Because ultimately that’s what GOOP is: not seeing shit, and believing in it.

         Return to the real world now, and let’s leave upon this one final note. In an interview with late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, he showed Gwyneth Paltrow a sample of her “alternative” to milk, camel milk. Barely recognizing her own product, Gwyneth Paltrow decided to sum up her entire brand in one fell swoop: “‘Apparently it’s really from camel… they purport to have more vitamins.’” When asked if she would like to try, she responded with, “Sure, no, I’ve never had it.”

         So, before we head out, humor me with just one concept: if you apparently believe GOOP really does any of the things it purports, then you’ve also likely never had it before, because the founder sure hasn’t.

Works Cited:

Jimmy Kimmel Live. “Gwyneth Paltrow on Moving in with Husband, Spider-Man, The
Politician & Strange GOOP Products.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 3 Oct.
2019. Web. 17 Jan. 2020.

Mandell, Andrea. “Gwyneth Paltrow brings aerial yoga, trans talks and cryofacials to
Goop health conference.” USA Today, Gannett Company, 10 Jun 2018,
         https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/06/10/gwyneth-paltrow-defies-critics-expands-goop-health-summit/688785002/