Tag: Goop

  • Help prevent shame spirals

    California’s consumer protection office sued Goop for making bullshit claims about putting  jade and rose quartz eggs in one’s vagina. Goop settled. Goop has to pay a not nearly large enough sum of money.

    Goop claimed its jade and rose quartz eggs, which are inserted vaginally, could balance hormones and regulate menstrual cycles, among other things.

    Based on exactly what, one wonders. Just a little daydream? A hunch? A poetic feeling for the wisdom of nature?

    Goop said in a statement that while it “believes there is an honest disagreement about these claims, the company wanted to settle this matter quickly and amicably. This settlement does not indicate any liability on Goop’s part”.

    Both the jade and rose quartz eggs, which are sold for $66 and $55 respectively, are still for sale, but Goop is prohibited from making further health claims that are not backed up by science.

    Stuff has more details:

    The Jade Egg (US$66), as currently displayed on Goop’s website, says it is “used by women to increase sexual energy”, while the Rose Quartz Egg (US$55) is “associated with positive energy and love”.

    Sneaky. People can “use” anything for anything, and anything can be “associated with” anything. The claims are meaningless but they will doubtless trick many into buying the stuff.

    Inner Judge Flower Essence Blend (US$22), also currently sold out on the site, can be taken on the tongue, added to water and used externally “to help prevent ‘shame spirals’ downward toward depressive states,” the site says.

    Ya that makes sense. You put a nice smell on your arm then you sniff it and you feel smell-goody instead of shame. Science!

    Via Rob at Miscellany Room

  • But it’s fun, and there’s real merit in that

    Dr Jen Gunter is pissed, and she’s right to be. Why is she? Because now, after all this time, GOOP is going back into the archives and sorting posts into factual and hahaha just for laughs.

    GOOP is retroactively labelling “wellness” posts so women can figure out what was pure bullshit, what was just the hypothesis of a naturopath, and what might actually be factual. I haven’t come up with one that is labelled as factual yet.

    According to Racked, the categories are as follows (GOOP’s words, not mine):

    For Your Enjoyment: There probably aren’t going to be peer-reviewed studies about this concept, but it’s fun, and there’s real merit in that.

    Ancient Modality: This practice is nearly as old as time — many find value in it, even if modern-day research hasn’t caught up yet (it’s possible the practice will never attract its attention).

    Ugh, what is that even supposed to mean? Many find value in it – many find value in robbing banks, too, but so what? It sounds like Trump – “many people say” some bullshit he wants you to believe.

    Speculative but Promising: There’s momentum behind this concept, though it needs more research to elucidate exactly what’s at work.

    Momentum? Again, what does that mean? The “momentum” could be all from deluded idiots.

    Supported by Science: There’s sound science for the value of this concept and the promise of more evidence to come soon that may prove its impact.

    The promise of more evidence to come soon – the check is in the mail.

    Rigorously Tested: The validity of this concept is pretty much undisputed within the world of M.D.’s, D.O.’s, N.D.’s, and Ph.D.’s.

    I gather there aren’t many of those. In any case, the point is, Gunter among others has been pointing out much of GOOP is bullshit, often harmful bullshit, and Gwyneth Paltrow has been denying it and saying harsh things…and now she says some of it was just for fun? Well gee I hope not too many women made themselves sick or spent more than they could afford on flapdoodle.

    Gunter gives several examples of bullshit she called bullshit, that GOOP insisted was not bullshit, and now says oh ha ha it was just for fun.

    How about the jade egg? GOOP said I was “strangely confident” for pointing out A) the jade eggthusiast didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about regarding the pelvic floor muscles and B) a porous rock could introduce oxygen into the vagina which has been proven to be a critical step in development of toxic shock syndrome.

    What is science when you have an “ancient therapy?” I’d also like to point of that GOOP has never actually offered proof that is an ancient therapy, but facts are irrelevant.  Maybe there will be a rating scale for ancient therapies next year?

    Regardless, being “ancient” doesn’t mean it has value. In “ancient” times people believed in evil humors and that tuberculosis was caused by vampires. I like my therapies post-germ theory.

    Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 12.26.49 PM.png

    Lots of people just don’t know to be suspicious of empty compliments like “said to harness the power of energy work and crystal healing” and “Shiva Rose raves about the results.” Lots of people don’t pause to ask “yes but do jade eggs actually harness anything and if so what and what does it do?” and “yes but did Shiva Rose actually get results and if so what kind?” They just read the soothing meandering nothings and go out and buy that jade egg and then stick it up’em.

    Read the whole post to get all the examples.

    To Gwyneth Paltrow and GOOP I say you should be ashamed of yourselves. You so proudly touted your site JUST LAST YEAR as being so empowering and intuitive that women could clearly take away the right information for their health and yet here you are having to go back and point out for these same women that most of these posts have no science and many were just a joke.

    Do you think women are lemmings? Because it is totally looking more and more like you have been herding them to a ledge for money, like Disney executives. You do know that lemmings didn’t end up jumping over the cliff on purpose, they were pushed.

    You used your massive international platform to push fake therapies and make-believe on women under the guise of “conversations,” not to empower but to sell products and books. When I pointed out that these ideas and therapies were at best useless and fringe but potentially very harmful you leveraged that same international platform to accuse me of medical myopia and not trusting women. You accused me of ridiculing women.

    Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 12.51.55 PM

    Will Gwyneth Paltrow apologize to Dr Jen Gunter? Let’s not hold our breaths.

  • The questions the “research medium” asked

    Jen Gunter went to a GOOP health event and is here to tell us about it.

    I was initially worried they wouldn’t let me register, but some quick homework told me they had offloaded registration to a 3rd party so I thought it highly unlikely there was a no fly list. I did consider that I was just full of myself and they just didn’t care about me attending, however, along the way I received a tip that the GOOPsters hate me more than gluten, cow’s milk, and McChemicals combined so I think they just never thought I would go. Knowing that and managing to get in made it worth every penny.

    They hate her the way Trump hates Mueller, I guess. How dare she notice what frauds and quacks they are. How dare she have medical knowledge that contradicts their made-up fluffy Healings.

    The event hall was filled with beauty treatments sold as wellness as if a scent or facial cupping could do anything except make you smell or swell. There were B12 injections from an anesthesiologist who looked like an understudy for the show The Doctors. He is apparently both an osteopathic and a medical doctor. Yes, he went to medical school twice. We asked. I watched him give an injection without gloves. Gloves are not required for injections, but it grossed me out, although not as much as the long line of women waiting to pull down their yoga pants and receive a vitamin shot without giving a history or having a physical exam. I spoke with one person who said they were not asked to sign a consent. There was no fucking way I was getting an injection. I’ve read The Stepford Wives.

    “Give her the special jab.”

    Then the fucking carnival rolled into town. There were back to back sessions where we learned that death IS NOT REAL. And it’s great. Laura Lynn Jackson, a “research medium” (see, words don’t matter), told us how she worked with clients to connect them with their loved ones. She strolled the crowd and her spiritual guide, who I assume is named Cash Only, helped her select three random women (the first was related to a GOOP employee, color me shocked).

    Here are the questions the “research medium” asked to prove she was making a connection with relatives from the other side:

    Do you have a plant?
    Did you dad know anyone in the military or have a military connection?
    Does your name or the name of someone you know have an L or an M?
    Do you have a dog?
    Do you have a cat?
    Was your dad a bad communicator?
    Do you like shoes?
    Do you have a website?
    Have your recently bought a purse or thought about buying purse?

    Do you like shoes? That made me howl with laughter. Dr Jen points out how well the questions fit the demographic.

    The “research medium” then took the stage with a neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who died and came back to sell books about heaven, Dr Jay Lombard, a neurologist who could barely get a word in  because Alexander loves the sound of his own voice, and Bryce Dallas Howard.

    Dr. Eben Alexander wrote Proof of Heaven and claims he was dead and saw heaven with his dead brain. Shockingly there are some holes in his story. In reality he did not die he had delirium and a medically induced coma, both of which can give vivid dreams and hallucinations. Yes, he was sick and had a great recovery but he did not die and he did not see heaven.

    This fascination with death was 50% of the day and not in a productive “lets talk about how we die in America” kind of way, but in death is trip reserved for the privileged, like a cross between the movie Flatliners and cultures that believed in human sacrifice where the class born to be sacrificed were brought up to believe death is a goal and an honor. Monetizing death in this way is clearly profitable. The message seems to be I know you are afraid of dying so read my book or cross my palm with cash and I will share you secrets about death that no one else can.

    It’s hilarious but it’s also sickening.

    At times I could not distinguish between the words of the neurosurgeon, the neurologist, or the “research medium,” but I guess it doesn’t matter as they all agreed with each other. Some things they said include the following:

    The brain is a filter that gets in the way of primordial consciousness.
    We don’t need evidence based medicine if we have experiences.
    God has pure healing energy.
    Consciousness is not a noun it is a verb.
    The voice in your head is not your consciousness it is a parlor trick.
    We turn into light energy when we die.
    Language reduces experience. (I almost fell off my chair, WORDS DON’T MATTER).
    We can trust the universe as long as we live in love.
    The placebo effect is getting stronger over time, this scares Big Pharma.
    Spontaneous healing from cancer and infections can happen with love.
    A deep spiritual journey can cure anything.
    The person sitting next to you at any time was sent there by the universe so trust that.

    Also? Be rich.

    Then we had a two-hour break during which time the people who forked over $2,0000 could have lunch with GP and special guests.

    Two thousand bucks to have lunch with Gwyneth Paltrow. No peasants need apply.

    Read the whole extraordinary thing.

  • How it’s done

    Ars Technica calls the Goop attempt to bully Jen Gunter “a perfectly crafted reference guide for how to sell snake oil.”

    In case you’re unfamiliar—or just need an empowering refresher—Goop is a site directed mostly toward affluent women that peddles pricey products and overuses the word “empower” while dabbling in many forms of pseudoscience and quackery—everything from homeopathy to magic crystals and garden-variety dietary-supplement nonsense.

    And it’s flourishing. It’s making big bucks. It’s even going into publishing.

    This year, the Goop group teamed up with Condé Nast to begin publishing a quarterly print magazine as well as digital content. (Condé Nast also owns Ars, by the way.)

    It’s Prince Charles all over again – using fame to market high-priced bullshit as “healthy” and “healing” – from detox socks to jade eggs up the twat.

    People who know more about the subject than Paltrow does have been writing about why her claims are wrong so finally they took a deep breath and murmured some incantations and issued a Statement.

    As the Internet collectively grabbed popcorn, Paltrow herself tweeted the post, writing, “When they go low, we go high.”

    But Goop didn’t go high. Going high would be providing data to back health claims and dubious products. Going high would be denouncing bad products and consulting with evidence-based doctors on effective remedies—or at least discussing potential harms of unproven ones. Even adding clear warnings on products and practices that lack evidence on effectiveness and safety would be inching upward. In general, going high would be clearly putting the health and well-being of customers ahead of profits.

    Instead, the Goop team went low—basically not changing position. It defended its evidence-free and sometimes potentially harmful products while personally attacking one specific medical blogger, Dr. Jen Gunter, an Ob/Gyn who has knocked back many of Goop’s products and claims.

    I first became aware of Jen Gunter when I was writing about the death of Savita Halappanavar; she wrote a beautifully clear explanation of what happens in an incomplete miscarriage of that kind and thus how horrific Galway University Hospital’s refusal to complete Halappanavar’s was. She’s terrific, and it’s revolting that Paltrow is using movie star celebrity to attack and insult her. (Paltrow didn’t write the statement but it’s her company, she’s responsible.)

    Ars Technica describes some of Goop’s expensive bullshit and reckless advice – the jade egg, the vaginal steam cleaning, the “medicine bag,” the “energy healing” stickers, the line of luxury dietary supplements and vitamins, a mere $90 for a month’s supply.

    Then it goes through the marketing steps revealed in the Statement.

    In its latest post, the Goop team wanders through all the steps. I’ve brought them out and reordered them here for a more coherent interpretation.

    Step 1. Assure the customer that you are there for them and can care for them—especially when no one else is or can, including the heartless, mainstream medical community. As Goop puts it:

    Our primary place is in addressing people, women in particular, who are tired of feeling less-than-great, who are looking for solutions—these women are not hypochondriacs, and they should not be dismissed or marginalized.

    Ya!! Right on! Iz feminism!

    2. Explain that you just have more answers than those stuffy evidence-based doctors because you look at things from a fresh, holistic perspective.

    Western and Eastern modalities doncha know.

    3. Say you don’t know everything; ass covered. 4. Say but at the same time you are The Best, with degrees and all. 5. You are not crazy!!

    6. At this point, note that you are the victim of Meany McCriticFaces, who don’t know what they’re talking about and are just trying to sell stuff and promote their own brands, unlike you, who have the customers’ backs (see step 1).

    There are third parties who critique Goop to leverage that interest and bring attention to themselves. Encouraging discussion of new ideas is certainly one of our goals, but indiscriminate attacks that question the motivation and integrity of the doctors who contribute to the site is not.

    7. Twist the facts to suggest that any critics of you are actually critics of the customer. You’re in this together!

    Some of the coverage that Goop receives suggests that women are lemmings, ready to jump off a cliff whenever one of our doctors discusses checking for EBV, or Candida, or low levels of vitamin D—or, heaven forbid, take a walk barefoot. As women, we chafe at the idea that we are not intelligent enough to read something and take what serves us, and leave what does not. We simply want information; we want autonomy over our health.

    Ya!! Right on! Iz feminism!