‘the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow’ is Definitely Obsessed with Vaginas

Jade vagina eggs, controversial cleanses, and pseudoscience..these are just a few of the things Gwyneth Paltrow‘s lifestyle brand goop is known for. Now the movie star’s polarizing business is hitting Netflix. the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow is a six-part docuseries focusing on the outlandish conversations and potentially dangerous forms of “therapy” sparked by goop. However, if you’ve watched the trailer for the series or even seen the eye-popping key art, you might get a different vibe from the series. That is, the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow cares about your “wellness,” specifically when it comes to vaginas.

Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow wants us talking about vaginas. She wants us examining our vulvas, celebrating our feminine mystiques, and attending therapy sessions that end with us orgasming on a massage table. As far as I can tell, that is the point of the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow, and by god, it may turn out to be its best and only legacy.

When Netflix announced the release date of Paltrow’s long-awaited docuseries yesterday, Twitter pounced on the absurdity of the accompanying poster. The image features a grinning Paltrow in the middle of what can only be described a rosy pink vaginal canal. Sure, it’s a graphic, art deco-y take on the vagina, tinted with the shades of a fussy English country cottage, but it’s a vagina.

Twitter exploded with all sorts of catty commentary on the visuals, with folks sharing the original image along with snide comments about the not-so-subtle subtext. Of course, it didn’t take long for some internet savvy folks, like comedian Emily Heller, to figure out that the brazenly sexual image was circulated on purpose. Paltrow and her team wanted you to make the instant connection between the poster and genitalia. It was a marketing scheme that spelled it out as plain as could be: the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow on Netflix would be conducting experiments on sexual pleasure.

Our only question is: how deep with the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow get into our collective vaginas?

Well, judging from the opening moments of the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow’s trailer, it looks like it’s going to be pretty darn concerned with sex. The first person interviewed is some sort of sex guru who makes sure that people reach climax in her sessions and we even see what appears to be goop’s chief content officer Elise Loehnen experiencing an orgasm on camera. (However, she also says in the trailer that she is undergoing an exorcism, so who’s to really say? Female pleasure or the devil exiting the body? According to medieval witchcraft specialists, they were the same thing!)

Still, there seems to be a definite emphasis on female sexual pleasure in the trailer. There’s also a promise that the show will deal with the questionable therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, extreme acupuncture, and diving into arctic waters, but also, orgasms. The same woman who boasts she can make any old stranger cum encourages Paltrow and Loehnen to examine their own private areas, and we see a women, uh, do just that.

Now, I’m of two minds about the project. On the one hand, I share many concerns that Paltrow and her company are purposely misleading folks by indulging in untested, unproven, and sometimes dangerous techniques. As they admit in the trailer, what they’re doing is “scary” and “unregulated.” It also, I hear, can give you toxic shock syndrome! There’s also a classist element at play. The goop lifestyle is one of utter indulgence. These are hobbies for rich women, which means if they go awry, these people have the means to course correct and potentially cure themselves of their own bonkers misdeeds. So there’s a huge “don’t try this at home” caveat that should come with the show (even if the activities of the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow are already naturally cost prohibitive for most of us). So, like, most of this stuff cannot, should not, and will not be done in most people’s living rooms.

However, there’s something about the show that does encourage me, and yeah, it’s all that over-the-top vagina talk.
If the success of Fifty Shades of Grey is any indication, modern women are woefully sheltered when it comes to raw kink, let alone the joyful pursuit of personal pleasure. If the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow gets women to feel a little less queasy about exploring their own passions in a safe, consensual environment, then good! Sure, single cosmopolitan women have been dishing about sex positions over brunch since the days of Sex and the City, but modern life lacks a mainstream celebrity icon accessible enough to push the narrative forward. Oprah might have taught us about her favorite things and the importance of our spirits, but she didn’t do shit for masturbation. Nor have other lifestyle gurus like Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, Joanna Gains, or, shudder to think, the Pioneer Woman. Someone’s gotta do it!

Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t the best person to destigmatize the vag for middle America, but she certainly is the only public figure confident in 2020 to truly do it. And that might be reason enough to give the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow a cautious chance.

the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow premieres on Netflix on Friday, January 26.

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