it was far more explicit than I thought it would be

oh no

there are no jade eggs, if you were wondering

it's a wanking episode with a 90 year old masturbation expert/coach

ohhh no

o_o

oh

i'm not sure if this makes you weak or strong

she was honestly pretty delightful!

o m g

I do think that most hatred of goop these days is kind of a reflexive cultural positioning vs an engagement with any specific content

like it's really just laughing at older white ladies who are richer than us, ha ha they spend their money on silly things

which isn't to say I don't have my own reservations, there's an into sequence every episode where GP herself explains the GOOP philosophy as an "optimization of self" and that's a goal I'm highly skeptical of

yeah like

I feel like goop is definitely a scapegoat

gwyneth paltrow definitely gets more flack for being smug and not vetting products well enough than jim carey gets for being an anti-vaxxer

yeah one of the things on this episode people were making fun of is that GP didn't know the difference between the vagina and the vulva

it makes me uncomf bc most of it is versions of stuff that is either a. functional medicine b. traditional to other cultures but for more money

like it's heard enough for people to even get treatment for pelvic floor pain/disfunction without all of twitter making fun of yoni eggs

i remember there was like an episode of that with psychics that got a lot of heat i guess ??? but like i know people that do that/are involved in that and it's like... ymmv but it's always gonna be a bad time when someone does like a feature episode about that kinda stuff

but the point of the episode was that a lot of (cis) women don't, and that in fact many women are unfamiliar with female anatomy

I haven't gotten to the psychic one yet

the first two episodes are "the goop gang does mushrooms" and some kind of like, magical breathing in the cold

anyway they have pretty good recipes

they do

anyway those episodes weren't as good as the vagina episode

the vagina episode is clearly the best one

i haven't seen any of them i just read like.... an article. which like i get. there's a disclaimer to all of these i guess. mostly i'm not surprised no one knows anything about the female anatomy

how many cis women did i go to school with that didn't realise what all the holes are for iugbeiurbguirb

there is a disclaimer on all the episodes, it's true

anyway the reason the vagina episode is good is because of the 90 yo lady telling gwyneth she has to "run the fuck"

I do sort of wish there was an episode with medical medium guy because that dude is a real kook

I haven’t seen the show yet and don’t know if I will, but I literally left the same comment about it being reflexive and easy to just pick on GOOP for everything as clickbait without thinking about whether the specific thing being picked on was actually harmful or if it was just being picked on because it was an at least slightly silly thing for women

on a feminist account I follow on Facebook

A month or two ago. They were covering the candle and I was like... this is verging on just picking on women for no really good reason

It’s not about consumption, really, or they’d be picking on people buying candles by Tom Ford or Cire Trudon or Diptyque

It’s just about the fact that mocking GOOP regardless of what they’re doing is an easy, lazy target of clicks.

(And there are times when they really deserve to be picked on!)

But I do feel like there are occasions when the mockery takes on some ugly misogynist undertones.

yeah, it's not even that goop is beyond mockery but the mockery is out of proportion to the influence goop weilds

and in fact, goop is aware of this and uses that to promote itself

like the reason that ridic candle sold out so fast is they got so many articles being like "look at this ridic goop thing"

Yeah I was just reading a piece by a surgeon that was talking about the wellness industry being something women go to because medicine has failed us by focusing on men and diminishing our concerns. And it was talking about how many wellness things (not all) are useless at best, harmful at worst, but also how for example endometriosis usually takes

Seven years just for diagnosis which is fucking bullshit and it's no wonder women go elsewhere looking for anything that would help.

(The article mentioned Goop as an example but wasn't tearing it down specifically as much as like. Cryosculpting.)

imo it's multiple things. she's obscenely rich and pushing other people to buy overpriced things that have no proof of working, some of which are actively dangerous, and her site positions itself as an authority when it's just one huge advertisement to buy her stuff

I'll be honest and say I don't think the goop backlash is an example of people making fun of women as an easy target. I think goop is a scam from a rich woman trying to get richer tbh

yeah I kind of agree with that. regardless of who's the face of it goop is basically celebrity endorsed snake oil, and as someone with chronic illness myself I think conning people in similar positions who are desperate to try anything billed as a cure is predatory and sleazy

so it makes sense to me it would get pointed to as an example when discussing that sort of thing, given its visibility

Yeah I think there is some standard issue gross misogyny happening w Goop but also it is just....Actually Gross

Oh, I don't think Goop is beyond criticism

i'd also say that, when we live in an era where the antivax movement was propelling to the point it is now by a celebrity, and now we've got consistent measles outbreaks and people feeding their kids bleach to "cure" autism, i have no sympathy for goop LMFAO

was propelled, my bad

The entire wellness trend is well worth criticizing, and there is a definite goop defender thing where people go "actually if you criticize this that's antifeminism"

Goop isn't antivax though, and the antivax problem to me is frustrating because the way people argue against it clearly isn't working

no, i know that, but goop is still peddling stuff that doesn't work and in some cases is actively harmful, and i think it's incredibly irresponsible of her to use her platform that way

like yeah, she has cutesy disclaimers, but no one listens to those

eh, I think the vast majority of people who like

buy vagina eggs or whatever

do not actually believe it cures hormonal imbalances

i also think it takes another turn when you consider that the vast majority of people in this country either can't afford insurance or would be dead in the water if their insurance vetoed them for some expensive treatment, so pushing alternative medicine when you have no expertise in that environment is especially gross to me

much like I assume most people who post astrological memes on my timeline do it for fun and not because they truly believe

and sure! the vagina eggs are especially ridiculous, but that's not all that's on her site, and people DO genuinely believe in some of it

just like i'm sorry to tell you that a lot of people genuinely believe in astrology

right, but that's like, a problem with insurance laws, not with gwenyth paltrow, and most of the anger and activism should be spent fighting that issue than reiki practitioners

that i agree with, i guess my point is that she has a platform and imo it is morally irresponsible to use that platform to push overpriced teas that claim to cure you or whatever but don't actually do anything

i'm also for like, mandatory vaccination for public schools, there was a documented measles case right next door to my place of work

I guess I'd agree that it is morally irresponsible, but I'm not sure it's morally responsible to buy comic books, either

i'm also, in a whole other discussion, unsure of what a morally responsible use of a media platform looks like these days

some of the real insidiousness in the goop website are the way the advertisements and the apparent editorial content are one, the apex of lifestyle branding

dangerous not because the readers there don't know that but because it's easy not to think about

but such is the way of things these days

anyway the actual vagina episode of goop is focused on a queer asian woman dealing with her own hangups about personal pleasure from a childhood in shanghai and not gwyneth paltrow

There’s a difference between Goop backlash organically among the public, though, and a media outlet using Goop backlash to drive traffic to its own advertisers. (And I say that as someone who 1. Used to work as a pro blogger for AOL and knows how the business works and 2. Is chronically ill and extremely skeptical of most alt med advice.)

But the problem is that if you point out that not absolutely everything they do merits kneejerk criticism and that it can slide over into misogyny, and the very good point that ridicule-coverage of the less harmful stuff is also free advertising for them, people assume it’s defense.

When what I mean is: who actually benefits from those blow-ups? Site advertisers, GOOP, but nobody else.

(Whereas there IS some benefit from the blow-ups over the more actually potentially harmful stuff they’ve promoted, and from Jen Gunter’s voice becoming a lot louder.)

So, IDK, in summary, everything is corruption and marketing, but hey, The Vagina Bible might interest anybody in here. Or not!

I just think it's kind of creepy how people treat them like anti-vaxxers more than actual anti-vaxxers

yeah, I like jen gunter, she's a delight

I think the anti-vaxxer thing is probably caused partly by the fact that a lot of actual anti-vaxxers among financially comfortable west-coasters are also into some of the stuff they’ve promoted. 🤔

Woo and bad science is a way larger category than just GOOP, but they have high visibility as shorthand for that entire line of thought.

yeah but they're also the Alex Jones crowd

I think one of my big hang-ups has to do with antivaxxing too, which is that a lot of the commentary on it seems to be like "look at the kooky things anti-vaxxers believe, let's catalogue how hilariously wrong they are"

and the point/appeal of that kind of content (I'm not sure that's the word I want to use) is to the people who already think antivaxxers are stupid

it's entertainment for those of us that know antivaxx is dangerous bullshit and also, imo, kind of a nice congratulations to ourselves for not falling for that bullshit

which— this is something I've done and found entertainment from, I'm not going to pretend I'm above it

but it is something that probably convinces no one to not be antivaxx (and indeed probably has the opposite effect) and also might spread antivaxx rhetoric, even if it is "for the purpose of making fun of it"

as someone who has spent a non-negligible amount of time scouring terrible internet forums to post + and make fun of random shit Nazis say, I'm… seriously rethinking that practice this past year or so

and it seems to me some of the criticism of goop is more oriented towards "look at all this crazy stuff i'm/you are too smart to fall for" vs "this pseudoscience is harmful to me/others and here is why"

especially when the criticsm of goop veers toward stuff like the people paltrow supposedly slept with to further her acting career and stuff that is just… straight misogyny. these things take away from better discussions about cultural appropriation & wellness culture, the harms of magical thinking, any number of things, really

yeah, ita

it's totally fair to be mad at goop for the bad wellness advice and other stuff, and it's fair to be mad at antivaxxers, and i literally repost that "ripping up the nazi flag" gif every time i see it

but... it does also spread some of those views even in the course of trying to debunk them (esp when the spread reaches people who have a bad case of bothsidesism and think they need to legitimately humor and research the antivax side, or the nazi side).

it's just not always easy to know how to address those things without unintentionally promoting elements of them.