Is Netflix’s the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow just more wacky pseudoscience and junk vagina wellness? 3 red flags from the past that say, probably
Goop’s editorial and e-commerce platform is valued at US$250 million barely 12 years after starting off as a newsletter featuring recipes for banana nut muffin and turkey ragú
Energy healing. Exorcism. Psychedelics. Cold therapy. Psychic mediums. Orgasms.
Netflix’s new series the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow promises to deliver all of these, with the trailer presenting a montage of folks trying out wellness ideas that “may seem out there or too scary”. It’s par for the course when it comes to Paltrow and her “conversation-changing” brand goop. In a seemingly self-referential jab at the company’s controversial reputation, the Oscar-winning actress even quips in the video: “What the f*ck are you doing to people?”
Twelve years since it debuted with a newsletter featuring recipes for banana nut muffin and turkey ragú, goop is now an editorial and e-commerce platform valued at US$250 million. With the goop lab, it will have an ever-wider reach. To fans, this is good news.
To mild sceptics, it’s another source of funny, if out-of-touch material. To long-time critics, it means exposing more people to goop’s brand of pseudoscience – a dangerous thing, given the following controversial wellness trends that goop has sparked and the trouble they caused.
‘Leanest liveable weight’ debacle
A 2018 goop interview with Traci Mann, a professor of social and health psychology at the University of Minnesota, came under fire for its underhanded promotion of thinness by introducing the phrase “leanest liveable weight,” which is “the weight at the low end of your ‘set range’, [the] genetically determined range of weight that your body generally keeps you in, despite your efforts to escape it”.
Mann admitted there’s no scientific formula for defining a person’s set weight range, but went on to promote her book Secrets From the Eating Lab where she outlines 12 strategies to help readers reach and maintain their leanest liveable weight.
This raised red flags for nutritionists and doctors. While the goop feature was titled “Busting Diet Myths”, the words “leanest” and “liveable” confuse the message. “For example, the idea is that I can be 140 pounds [63.5kg] or 160 pounds and be perfectly healthy, but I should really aim to be 140 pounds, even though I’m just as healthy at 160 pounds … So skinnier is better, right?” registered dietitian Abby Langer wrote on her blog. “The fact that this person says that bodies can be healthy at any size but then appears to glorify thinness is a f*cktangle of messaging that’s incredibly confusing and feels backhanded and disingenuous.”
