Gwyneth has always been selling what money can't buy
Thus was the birth of Goop, a trailblazing platform in wellness, style and beauty that in less than a decade grew into a sprawling media and e-commerce enterprise. It has, at various times, sold clothing, beauty products, homeware and a meal delivery service, and produced travel guides, cookbooks, a newsletter, a podcast, conferences and a Netflix series.
Built on Paltrow's 'beauty, charm and pedigree,' Goop became 'the authority on what we put in our bodies (supplements), how we treat our bodies (sleep, detoxes and exercise), and what we put on our bodies (serums and creams),' writes journalist Amy Odell in her new book, 'Gwyneth: The Biography,' published by Gallery Books.
Paltrow gave wellness a narrative, and a beautiful, tasteful aesthetic. She repositioned it as a luxury, and showed that it could be monetized beyond charging for facials, massages and beauty products. She spearheaded the transformation of what was known as the 'global spa economy' into Big Wellness, a $6.3 trillion global industry rooted in pseudoscience and specious health claims. Along the way, Odell writes, Paltrow became 'one of the biggest and most polarizing cultural influencers of the 21st century.'
'Gwyneth: The Biography,' by Amy Odell. Tribune News Service
In Gwyneth, which is based on more than 220 interviews with Paltrow's childhood pals, film colleagues, close friends and former Goop employees, Odell shows how Paltrow 'helped bring the wellness movement and alternative medicine into the mainstream — to the horror of doctors and academics,' who regularly debunked Goop's declarations in print and on camera.
For a long time, both Paltrow and Goop were able to slough off the medical community's criticism like so many dead skin cells, because the brand's customers would buy what she was selling no matter what. Paltrow was Goop's superpower: the company's founder, chief executive and ambassador, who claimed to practice what it preached, and embodied all that it promised.
Paltrow connected to her customers and subscribers with her 'straight dope' talk — one of her Goop Gift Guides, for example, was called 'Ridiculous but Awesome,' and she told her 'goopies' that she likes her wrinkles — and assured them that if they bought her message, and the products she hawked on Goop, they could live, and even look, like her. As Odell posits, Paltrow used her fame 'to commodify her taste and lifestyle, and sell it back to us, even though her life is the very definition of something money can't buy.'
At the same time, in the business community, the former It Girl came across as the ultimate zeitgeist channeler, able to swiftly adapt to cultural shifts and bail on initiatives that didn't work.
She refashioned herself as the Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart of the clean living space, creating a new template for celebrity entrepreneurs, such as the Kardashian/Jenners, Rihanna and Hailey Bieber, to follow. With Goop, Odell writes that Paltrow gave 'a master class in commanding the attention economy that now rules culture.' (Her appearance in a video recently as a 'temporary spokesperson' for Astronomer, the company at the center of the Coldplay kiss-cam scandal, only underscores this point.)
But all was not well at the wellness brand. Employing the same dogged reporting she brought to 'Anna: The Biography,' her 2022 bestseller on longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Odell discovers that under the veneer of quiet perfection and rarified taste, Paltrow's erratic, aloof and, at times, wicked behavior created a toxic work environment of epic proportions.
Tribune News Service
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