We are in some serious Goop now. I am a big Netflix fan, and while they have had some of my favorite shows, they often have serious misses. The Goop Lab is not so much a miss as a total medicine show infomercial con job.
I remember when porn star Jenna Jameson made her retirement speech at the AVN awards and said “I will never spread my legs for this industry again.” Never a fan of Jameson, I thought, okay, you are giving up the one thing you are good at. I only say that because she had a lot of fans. I never understood her appeal. Gwyneth Paltrow is the woman behind Goop, and she has said that she is giving up acting to focus on this. Again, I thought, you are giving up the one thing you are good at. The Goop Lab and the whole Goop concept is not something she is good at, unless you find some good in defrauding people and selling them products that can harm their health.
There are better experts than I who have gone after Gwyneth’s Goop, the best being Dr. Jen Gunter, author of the Vagina Bible (See our review here). She explains in a number of blog entires why Goop products can be dangerous to your sexual health.
If you just want a quick reason why Goop should be avoided, consider that one of their latest entries is This Smells Like My Vagina candle. According to the site, it has a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent. I bet. As to whose vagina it smells like, no, it is not meant to smell specifically like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina, even though every vagina smells different, and that can change based on a number of factors. Gwyneth just thought that it smelled like vagina. It is composed of “geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with damask rose and ambrette seed”. I don’t think anyone’s vagina smells like that, and even if they did, a $75 vagina candle makes absolutely no sense.
Gwynneth is big into woo. By that, I mean selling products with no scientific support for their efficaciousness. Goop has made her hundreds of millions of dollars. The products go way beyond just sexual products and include such controversial and potentially dangerous products as detoxers and energy healers.
Their Jade eggs are downright dangerous and could lead to toxic shock, according to experts. That got them sued by the State of California. They also have promoted the questionable vaginal steaming. I have seen no evidence that there is any reason to steam your vagina.
On the plus side, there are only six episodes.
Episode 1 promotes psychedelics for healing despite the serious potential side effects. They go to Jamaica to trip on mushrooms. The only thing I know about this from my time in Jamaica was to never mix the mushrooms with the brownies. A guy did that and was in his bed for 2 days.
Episode 2 deals with cold shocking and breathing techniques. Outside of my expertise but color me skeptical. It is basically hyperventilating, which can be useful in some life threatening emergencies. Here they do a cold plunge and are able to get out because of the Wim Hof Method. I guess they are unfamiliar with polar bear plunges involving people unfamiliar with Wim Hof and his breathing technique. They get out just fine.
Episode 3 is the vagina/orgasm episode. Surprisingly, and probably thanks to the presence of highly respected sex expert Betty Dodson, this is one of the most scientifically sound episodes. I say surprising because Gwyneth has become best known for her Goop vagina pseudoscience, which is why she may have toned things down a bit on this segment. No jade eggs or vaginal steaming is mentioned.
On the plus side, they do promote vulva acceptance (despite the dangerous things they suggest on their site that you do to your vagina). They put on display actual vulvas, depicting the great diversity between different vulvas. She really is a sex expert, worth listening to, and she had to correct Gwyneth who seemed not to know the difference between a vagina and a vulva (although that could have been staged for theatrical effect).
Still, I was disappointed that Dodson used the show to promote her $140 Barbell for kegel exercises., which is a very Goopy price point Yes, kegel exercises do help strengthen muscles and give the vagina better grip strength, but there is absolutely no reason to spend that much money on a device that should cost a fraction of that.
I also liked that they showed an actual female orgasm.
Episode four promotes the dangerous and painful vampire facials. They have been linked to at least two cases of HIV. The procedure does not have FDA approval for cosmetic purposes, and is currently completely unregulated. Other than giving you a bloody face, there is no evidence that it actually makes you look younger. It does not help that Gwyneth looks basically the same after her expensive treatment.
They also wade into the treacherous waters of diet changes and how they effect aging. They focus on the concept of biological age (versus chronological age), which has been controversial for many years. There is no agreed upon method of measuring biological age, so there is also no way to now if a treatment is actually reversing your biological age.
Episode 5 focuses on “energy” healing. This is an unmeasurable and in my view totally imaginary force. I believe that when you remove the placebo effect, the so-called results go away. The only way to really test it is a double blind placebo controlled study. Unfortunately, that is impossible to do with energy healing. One “expert” on the show claimed “If you just change the frequency of vibration of the body itself, it changes the way the cells regrow, it changes the way the sensory system processes.” There is nothing in that sentence that is even remotely scientific. When anyone starts talking about quantum physics and how it can be used for large scale effects such as healing, you know they are full of it. The quantum world is weird and spooky, but those effects only work at the quantum level.
Episode six focuses on psychic energy. I do not see anyone who was on the show winning James Randi’s million dollar reward for a genuine demonstration of psychic abilities under test conditions. There is nothing here that has not been debunked countless times. I could write a very long article on the history of spiritualistic mediums and fraud (with a lot of medium/sitter sexual shenanigans). They bring on medium Laura Lynn Jackson claiming that psychic powers have been proven scientifically by a quadruple-blind study. There are lots of ways that psychics cheat. I would happily test Jackson, with advice from a trained mentalist magician, such as James Randi, but she would fail. They always fail.
The only episode worth watching is the vagina episode. As to buying things from Goop, even products that are effective are scandalously over-priced. I would take my business elsewhere. There is one bit of advice on the show that I would take to the bank. At the beginning of each episode, you are informed: “The following series is designed to entertain and inform – not to provide medical advice. You should always consult your doctor when it comes to your personal health, or before you start any treatment”.