Gwyneth Paltrow: Goop vagina steaming uproar was good way to make money

Gwyneth Paltrow ‘s website
Goop website publishes articles from non-traditional
healers.
Jamie McCarthy / Getty
Images

• Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop is infamous
  for recommending treatments that are later debunked by medical
  professionals.
• Past treatments have included using stickers that
  “promote healing” and steaming your vagina to balance hormone
  levels.
• Doctors have said the treatments can range from
  ineffective to downright dangerous.
• But a new interview with The New York Times, Paltrow
  shows she knows she can profit from controversy.
• Paltrow says that controversy drives traffic to her
  site and “I can monetize those eyeballs.”
• Paltrow also revealed that her Goop magazine venture
  with Condé Nast collapsed partly because she objected to
  anybody fact-checking the articles.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop has long been criticized
by health professionals for offering bad advice that has even
been described as “deceptive” and “illegal” by an advertising
watchdog.

But in
a new interview with The New York Times, Paltrow reveals how
she seeks to monetize the controversy and make cash from the
outrage over her bizarre recommendations.

One article recommended that people steam their vaginas, a
process that has been
widely criticized by gynecologists, who say it could upset
the vagina’s pH balance and lead to dangerous burns.

Other debunked suggestions include jade eggs for your
vagina that “recharge ”
from moonlight, or stickers for your skin that “promote
healing .”

In one article, Goop interviewed a “naturopathic physician
and homeopath” who suggested drinking nothing but raw goats milk
for eight days as a way to get rid of parasites. Experts say

there is no evidence the drink has health benefits.

But The New York Times interview shows how aware she is of
how she can benefit from these kinds of controversies. Its
profile recounted a talk she gave to students at Harvard where
she celebrated the “cultural firestorms” caused by Goop’s bad
advice.

Per the NYT:

At Harvard, G.P. called these moments “cultural
firestorms.” “I can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the
students.

Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to
corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we
call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them
into cash.

It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “It’s a cultural
firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” The room was silent.
She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “VAGINA!
VAGINA! VAGINA!” as if she were yodeling.

Criticism of Paltrow’s website have been
constant. A non-profit group called
Truth in Advertising has claimed that the website made more than
50 illegal health claims before August 2017, describing some
as “deceptive” and “illegal.”

Goop has become a big
business.
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
for goop

Dr Jen Gunter, an obstetrician and gynecologist posts
almost monthly critiques of the website’s claims on her personal
blog.

But numbers Paltrow provided to The New York Times show that, as
of June, there were 2.4 million unique visitors to Goop’s
website.

Paltrow described criticism of Goop
as “deeply unfair” in a podcast in August 2017. She claimed
that the website was just giving information, and not advice.

She told The New York Times that the website has now employed an
in-house fact checker, which she described as a “necessary
growing pain.”