76 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY3, 2020
Lowbrow, with high production values, “ The Goop Lab” is a soulful kind of sponcon.
ON TELEVISION
MAGICAL THINKING
“ The Goop Lab” on Netflix.
BY DOREEN S T. FÉLIX
ILLUSTRATION BY MALIKA FAVRE
I
n the cover story of the February
issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Gwyneth
Paltrow—photographed wearing a Tom
Ford fuchsia “anatomical breastplate”—
announced, not for the first time, that
she will “literally never” star in a film
again. How could empty days spent
emoting compare to the constant spir-
itual high of building a multipronged,
culturally influential “wellness” empire,
in a sun-choked office in Santa Mon-
ica? Don’t call Paltrow an actor; she is
an entrepreneur. She founded her life-
style company, Goop, in 2008, as a rec-
ommendations newsletter. Reported to
be worth around two hundred and fifty
million dollars, it has spawned a Web
site, multiple stores, a magazine, a pod-
cast, cookbooks—and now a slick six-
episode series, “The Goop Lab,” for
Netflix, that is either the apex or the
nadir of infotainment: irresistibly self-
aware and personality-obsessed.
Paltrow likes to recall some advice
she received in the early days of her ven-
ture: that the most successful Internet
companies have names featuring dou-
ble “o”s. “Goop” is perfect. Cradled by
Paltrow’s initials, it is ditzy, one antic
letter from being dirty, and onomato-
poeic. The double “o” also activates warm
memories of Oprah. As the face of Goop,
Paltrow has a slightly sardonic, cool-girl
authority, but “The Goop Lab” suggests
that she, too, is attempting to inspire
the kind of unwavering trust we have
in Oprah, even when we suspect that
the book or the doctor Oprah recom-
mends is not to be trusted. Paltrow, the
daughter of Hollywood stars, lacks
Oprah’s story, and her race isn’t on her
side. But the woman just sold out of a
seventy-five-dollar candle called This
Smells Like My Vagina—are you not
entertained? She is an interesting guru,
because much of her mythology de-
pends on being hated—for being too
rich, too blond, too happy to promote
the latest trend. Like Kim Kardashian
West, but for a different tribe, Paltrow
does not hide from what Taffy Brodesser-
Akner has called the “cultural ambiva-
lence” she inspires; instead, she has mar-
shalled it.
What does Goop sell? Its physical
inventory may include thousand-dollar
cardigans, purses embroidered with the
names of dead rappers, crystals cut from
pink and green rock, sachets of pulver-
ized herbs that, when steeped, promise
to alleviate an array of ills, but its real
offering is something more ineffable:
what Paltrow calls, on “The Goop Lab,”
“optimization of self.” “We’re here one
time, one life,” she tells her employees
as they sit around a boardroom table in
the series’ opening sequence. “How can
we really, like, milk the shit out of this?”
The rampant spread of wellness culture,
dusted with feminist messaging, answers
real needs sometimes simply by assert-
ing that they’re legitimate. You are over-
worked, your skin is sallow, your humors
are out of whack. Goop, at its core a so-
phisticated advertising apparatus, often
disseminates useful advice; it also has a
way of making any advice look poten-
tially useful. In 2018, ten county prose-
cutors in California sued the company
after a consumer watchdog, Truth in
Advertising, compiled a report detailing
fifty dubious health claims made on the
Goop Web site. The most famous in-
volved eggs made of jade and quartz that
were advertised as preventing uterine
prolapse when inserted into the vagina.
Goop paid a hundred and forty-five
thousand dollars in fines and had to offer
refunds. The promotional images for
“The Goop Lab,” which feature a grin-
ning Paltrow floating in a pink vulva,
are a funny nod to the brand’s contro-
versial status. (A disclaimer prefacing
