This past week, actress-turned-lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow announced she would be stepping away from Goop and acknowledged that her involvement may be holding back the aspirational lifestyle site she founded in 2008. According to reports, the actress plans to eventually distance her famous face and name from the venture, believing the brand will do better without her.
“In order to build the brand I want to build, its scalability is limited if I connect to it,” she said at the 2016 Sage Summit in Chicago. “So I always think: ‘How can I grow the brand? How can I separate myself from the brand?’ And I think it’s going to be more its own brand.” Further, she said, “My dream is that one day no one will remember that I had anything to do with it.”
Fat chance, GP.
This is the same woman who regularly makes remarks that drive the general populace into a blind fury. Remember when she implied that being a film star was more difficult than being a 9-to-5 working mom? Her $200 smoothie recipe? Or perhaps you ran out and bought her $450,000 worth of spring wardrobe “essentials.” Personally I enjoyed her tales of a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden—“a luxury, I know, but it’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made.”
The pinnacle of her tone deafness came when she was involved in a social experiment to highlight the plight of American families forced to survive on food stamps, and she spent her allotted $29 (£18.40) per week on limes and avocados.
The fact that the name Goop is based on her initials and her childhood nickname makes the idea of her distancing herself a silly one. Furthermore, this new revelation is a complete reversal from comments she made just a few months ago.
On the Today show in March, Gwyneth announced she was taking a break from acting to focus solely on Goop. “We took some investment last year, so as soon as we had other people’s money, I realized I really better focus on this completely,” she explained. “I’ll return to acting probably, but probably not right now.”
Could this change of mind have anything to do with the fact that she is regularly voted the ‘most disliked celebrity’ across virtually every social media portal? Clearly rankled, reacting to this unsavory fact recently at Cannes Lions advertising festival, Gwyneth, (referring to her topping a 2013 tabloid survey of the Most Hated Celebrities) complained: “I was like, ‘I’m the most hated celebrity? More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do?'”
Let me answer that for you, Gwyneth. It’s easy really. To quote the former Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer, you were born on third base —and yet you regularly praise yourself for hitting a triple. To be clear, it’s not the privilege that people resent, it’s the refusal to acknowledge that it wasn’t just hard work that got you there.
That and the fact that you believe you are perfectly positioned to advise the rest of us on real life matters. “All I can do is be my authentic self,” Paltrow defended herself during a conversation with BBC News’ Stephen Sackur. Referring to the perception that she was born with unfair advantages, she said: “That inspires a lot of resentment. My parents did well, and I was able to go to a fantastic school…The minute I left my college to try to pursue acting, my father was really supportive. But he said, ‘you know, you are completely on your own.’ He never gave me anything…So, the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn’t work for what I have is just not accurate.”
In an interview with Popeater, Paltrow went further, addressing just why she believes she has so many critics by saying: “I think my work ethic is the reason why I’m successful. I think that a lot of people don’t want to put in effort and it’s easier to not change, not do something good for you… [They’re just] pissed off at someone else doing that. Everything in my life that’s good is because I worked my ass off to get it and to maintain it.”
Sure she worked hard in her 20s, culminating in her tearfully winning a Best Actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love at the age of 28 by which time she had appeared in nearly 20 films.
But perhaps Paltrow more accurately meant, “I worked my ass off AFTER my Uncle Morty (that would be the slightly connected Steven Spielberg) gave me my first film role and my boyfriend Brad Pitt catapulted me into the celebrity stratosphere.”
Goop has been polarizing from the very beginning, much in the same way its founder can be. But it’s a fundamental reason why people are paying attention–like me, they love to hate her. But being constantly on the defensive has got to be more than a little bit exhausting. It’s understandable that she may want to cool it a bit.
After all, she’s newly divorced from Coldplay’s Chris Martin and in a seemingly happy relationship with American Horror Story co-creator Brad Falchuk. She recently snapped up yet another mansion (near the beach in Santa Barbara) and is financially so secure she never, ever has to work again.
And to be fair, in recognizing that people’s polarizing perceptions of her may be holding back her brand, it may be the greatest sign of self awareness I’ve ever seen from her.
It also has to be said that despite everything, those who know her personally really like her. As a long-time showbiz writer I have heard from literally dozens of people who have spent a lot of time (or even lived) with her and they all say the same thing: She’s funny, friendly, loyal, generous, extremely thoughtful and kind.
She also has a lot of girlfriends for a Hollywood star, including friends she’s had since childhood—even the mothers from her kids’ school are crazy about her. So clearly this is not (her old friend) Madonna we’re talking about.
If she could somehow manage to show the rest of us what they all see, I suspect she might be exactly the asset Goop is looking for.
If Goop sponsored the GOP convention I think it would make me like Gwyneth Paltrow more. It would be fun.
— John Bilancini (@JohnBilancini) July 20, 2016
