For nearly 10 years, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website has doled out health advice as fact—often from doctors and alternative healers with supposed expertise. We’ve heard all manner of wellness extremes: vaginal steaming, energizing crystals, colorstrology and jade eggs for your yoni. As a journalist, I’ve fact-checked a lot of the claims on Goop. Doctors and dietitians have openly laughed on the other end of the phone when I reviewed whatever Goop’s latest recommendation is—most recently, RD Abby Langer had a lot to say about Goop’s new $90 supplement line.

But GP’s latest soundbite, which she shared last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, honestly takes the (cashew-cheese)cake.

 

“I don’t know what the f-ck we talk about,” she said, with a nervous laugh, after stumbling her way through an answer to a question about “earthing” that host Kimmel had asked her.

It was simple enough: what’s earthing? Apparently, it has something to do with an “electromagnetic thing”… and walking in grass… to be honest, we never got a straight answer out of Paltrow.

But no matter, Kimmel pressed on, this time inquiring about a post on her site touting the stomach-flattening benefits of squatting while you pee. Paltrow crackled. “I don’t know [if it does that],” she said. “I’ve never read that before.”

Really, Gwyneth? I understand as the head of a lifestyle publication she can’t possibly read everything that goes up on her site—she has editors who presumably do that. But her brand has a responsibility to be honest if it’s spouting health advice. Most of what gets shared on Goop is for clicks I’m sure, but where do we draw the line when information from “experts” could actually do harm? What happens when it takes a turn from being funny to dangerous? Will she still be laughing?

Kimmel saved Goop’s infamous jade egg recco for his last bit of gotcha journalism. You can find it in the cosmic health section of Paltrow’s site. It’s an egg-shaped lump of jade that you’re supposed to put in your vagina. The product had everyone talking in early January after GP’s site touted it as the preferred method to do your Kegels while also allowing you to “harness the power of energy work [and] crystal healing.” Made of nephrite jade, Paltrow’s site said the egg also had the “power to cleanse and clear, mak[ing] it ideal for detox, too.” In an open letter, a gynecologist expressed just the opposite: don’t stick a porous egg inside you, she said, there’s risk of “bacterial vaginosis or even the potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome.”

When Kimmel asked Paltrow about the jade egg last night, he didn’t bring up the risk of BV or TSS, but I did notice a few things. Again, the nervous laugh from Paltrow. Then, the odd fact that she couldn’t say “vagina” out loud. And when Kimmel asked how the egg could tone the pelvic floor? “I don’t know,” Paltrow said. “I guess I need to start my jade egg practice.”

She started talking about balancing hormones and the egg’s role in doing that, and I stopped watching.

Enough.

“You’ve never been on this website before, have you?” Kimmel said at one point. “What are you doing in that office?”

That’s the question I wish she would have answered. When you can’t back up your claims with research, don’t put them forward as truths. It’s as simple as that. You really stepped in the goop with this one, GP.

Filed under: flare, lifestyle, pop culture