Ahh, Goop. The wonderful Gwyneth Paltrow-led wellness platform which has at various points instructed women to steam clean their uteruses, find their ‘leanest liveable weight’ and – famously – to insert magical rocks into their vaginas has faced some well-deserved criticism in the past. Well, it looks like they’re addressing those concerns with their dubious health advice using one weird trick which doctors HATE: a fact checker!
In a long and quite fascinating profile in the New York Times, the struggles Goop has faced with backlash to its wellness advice is explored. Turns out that the real issues came when Goop partnered with Condé Nast for a quarterly magazine, and the rigorous editorial standards in the magazine world clashed somewhat with Goop’s existing strategy of just making shit up. As the NYT puts it, publishing the insane ramblings of Goop’s resident ‘healers’ simply “didn’t pass Condé Nast standards”.
That partnership is now over, but the effects remain, and Goop is trying to clean up its act – and, quite possibly, refrain from advising women to cram powerful energy eggs up their choofs. Here’s the NYT:
After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, G.P. made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from Condé Nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a Ph.D. in nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former Stanford professor. And in September, Goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.P. chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”
Please, pray for the Goop fact checker as they attempt to work out whether aligning with cosmic energies using some kind of face cream can cure depression, or whatever the hell it is they put on that website.
Good news for women who listen to the advice of Paltrow and her collection of merry healers, but bad news for those of us who love content, and love reading the insane and flagrantly false shit Goop publishes. It’s a double-edged sword!
It’s worth checking out the NY Times pieces in full. A good and wild read.
