DISINFORMED: Gwyneth Paltrow is a scammer

Published May 14, 2021, 7:11 PM

Last week, Australian women spoke up after the beauty and wellness retailer Mecca announced Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow as the keynote speaker for their wellness event Mecca Life.


Women rightly called out Gwyneth Paltrow’s particular brand of harmful misinformation that targets women.


Paltrow profits off of peddling lies about women’s bodies. It’s not empowering - it’s harmful.

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You're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd, So I usually try to avoid calling out specific bad actors who spread myths and disinformation because I think of it as a systemic problem. It isn't usually about one specific person spreading bad information, and I want to make sure we keep the focus on the people and institutions with power who could actually do something about it, like tech leaders and policymakers. But that said, I have someone who I kind of think of as my misinformation white whale that I just had to talk about today, and that person is Gwyneth Paltrow. So here's what's going down. Mecca is kind of like Australia's Sephora. It's a huge retailer that sells beauty and wellness products. But all was not well last week when they announced that Gwyneth Paltrow would be the keynote speaker for their virtual summit Mecca Life. Mecca customers were not pleased, and many of them took to social media to let the brand know. Paltrow and goog pedal enormous amounts of misinformation and make money by praying on women's insecurities. Surgeon and author Nicki Stamp wrote on the events Facebook page, every time we endorse his behavior, we allow it to continue. Mecca has always been a champion for women, So now, when women are at risk, will you step up to the plate and cancel this terrible event or will you let Australian women be further exposed to her nonsense. Mecca is not backing down. Beauty and wellness mean different things to different people. Our schedule of events to launch Mecca Life has been carefully curated to offer something new, interesting and innovative for everyone, they said in a statement online. Mecca turned off the comments on their social media posts, which is always how you know stuff that's gotten really tense. Now, even though I loved her as Margot Tannenbaum from The Royal Tannon Bombs, what what if Paltrow was doing is really gross and we hardly ever point out how gross it actually is. Because she's rich and famous with her wellness brand Goop, Paltrow has preyed on women's insecurities to make money by peddling so called cures that are dubious at best and dangerous at worse. Here's a very short list of some of the nonsense she's peddled on her site. She said that fasting and herbs could help alleviate the symptoms of COVID, and eventually the National Health Service had to ask her to stop spreading COVID misinformation. A piece on Goop says that Gwyneth swears by a practice called grounding or earthing, which is basically just walking around barefoot outside to cure depression, which I find so offensive and I think anybody who's ever suffered her many kind of mental health issue probably would too. She promotes the healing powers of national steaming, which gynecologist Dr Jen Gunter, one of my favorite medical misinformation slayers, points out in her book The Vagina Bible has No Benefit, promotes a serious misunderstanding of anatomy and physiology, and has the potential to harm. So in short, it's a scape him. Not only that, but it could actually hurt your vagina. A woman in Canada had to be treated for second degree burns to her cervix and national membranes after trying to steam her own v Please do not do that to your vagina out and never forget that when it first got into the wellness world, by selling jade eggs for people to shove up their vaginas for a whopping seventy dollars a pop under the completely untrue claim that doing so could help balance your hormones. And this is really my thing. As you can probably see from When's obsession with our vaginas, her brand is clearly about convincing women that something is wrong with our bodies. And Goop is a for profit company, meaning she makes money off of trying to convince us that we need to do whatever nonsense thing or buy whatever nonsense products she's selling to fix it. It's not just dangerous, it's also wildly anti feminist. Your body is fine, Your vagina is fine, trust me, it does not need to be steamed. And don't get me wrong, this is not about me not liking woo woo wellness stuff. Honestly, I wish I could say I was too cool to be taken by useless tincture as I see on Instagram ads like I put mushroom Anthogin's in my tea every morning to boost my focus. Does it work? Probably not. But there's a big difference between being open to alternative wellness treatments and straight up profiting off of misinformation, and that's what Gwyneth Paltrow is doing. In addition to her editorial website Goop and selling merchandise, Gwen has a Netflix show called The Goop Lab and an all inclusive luxury cruise called Goop at Sea, which promises guests the opportunity to engage with Gwyneth Paltrow and Q and A's with their very best healers. And I don't know how much it costs, but I can just tell by looking at the website it's probably not cheap. So Gwen has turned to misinformation into a huge empire. But women deserve better than having someone pedal lies about our bodies to make a quick buck. And honestly, I am so happy to see so many women in Australia making their voices heard and say they don't want to support a brand like Mecca that would associate with someone who is basically just a very well dressed scammer. If a brand is okay with the kind of bs that Gwenna SELLI that brand should not be considered reputable. We deserve better than someone making money off align to us and calling an empowerment just because Gwyneth Paltrow was an A list celebrity who exudes a kind of unattainable yet effortless glow. Doesn't mean that she's still not just a scammer. And I hope what we're seeing in Australia means today is today that people stop tolerating it and start calling it out for what it is. Great news, Tan, goodie, fam. We won a Shorty Award for Best Podcast Mini Series. Major shout outs to my amazing and producers. Sorry Jonathan and Mike, And not to get too sappy, but I want to genuinely thank you, Yes you person listening in the car, or listening in the gym, or listening on the trainer or whatever. Thank you to everyone who listens, subscribed, told a friend, left a review, sent me an email, tweeted at me, or just said this is an okay podcast, silently to themselves as they listened. All of it. All of it means so much to me. It is so important that we center women and marginalize people's experiences when we talk about the Internet. And it has been a blast doing it with all of you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it, and I really thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from you at Hello at tangoi dot com. Disinformed is brought to you by There Are No Girls on the Internet. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tary Harrison is our supervising producer, and engineer. Michael Lamato is our contributing producer. I'm your host Bridget Toad. For more great podcasts, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. A

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