For more than 15 years, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle empire, Goop, has been ever-present in the cultural conversation. Goop has been a newsletter, an e-commerce company, a podcast, a wellness summit, a magazine, and even a show. It has also been the subject of derision.
Its guide to yawning, promotion of an eight day goat milk cleanse, and advice to speak kindly to your water, are just a few examples of its content dragged by the masses. Perhaps most infamously, Goop gave readers frequent, dubious advice about their vaginas. The site advised people to treat yeast infections by only eating one piece of fruit a day.
The Goop store sold a $66 egg-shaped jade or rose quartz stone that could be inserted into the body to “increase vaginal muscle tone.” In 2015, Paltrow advised her audience to “steam” their vaginas. Four years later, she began selling candles called “This Smells Like My Vagina.
” But after a decade-and-a-half, are Goop’s best (and strangest) days behind it? Wellness is no longer a niche topic : In 2022, the industry brought in $5.6 trillion in revenue, according to a report from the Global Wellness Institute . Yet, Goop, a brand that propelled wellness into the mainstream, seems suddenly absent from the cultural conversation.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Paltrow told Moira Forbes at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit, on September 11. “Some years, we’ve doubled in growth. Some years, we are flat.
Some years, we’re down, then we’re back up.�.