The new Netflix show to wellness enthusiast-cum-actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s e-commerce and lifestyle brand called Goop; is The Goop Lab. Goop did make yoni eggs famous. People are bored watching the show’s first season show full of beautiful women with perfectly clear skin, muted neutrals, Paltrow’s monotone-melodic speech patterns, and too much wellness.
Each episode shows Goop staffers trying out an outlandish wellness trend with a practitioner, often cutting to Paltrow and Goop CCO Elise Loehnen seated on a pale pink couch in a white room chatting with experts, often someone with a medical degree. The Goop Lab is a perfect fit with the reality-TV Netflix world. Netflix seems to have perfected the hypnotic and muted reality television shows Terrace House, Dating Around, and Tidying Up With Marie Kondo. But Goop is known for dubious pseudo-scientific claims and the infamous Jade Egg led to a 2018 lawsuit against them for unsubstantiated marketing claims. But The Goop Lab is fairly benign, endorsing Netflix’s legal department and Goop’s desire to rehabilitate a rather quacky image and each episode begins with a medical disclaimer.
Ensuring Personal Wellness
Viewers see Goop staff search the world for personal wellness. They consume therapeutic mushrooms in Jamaica, try athlete Wim Hof’s breathing techniques to suppress immune response, panic attacks and withstand extreme cold. New diet fads, a fast cleanser, non-filler facial treatments for longevity, endorsing energy from actress Julianne Hough’s exorcism dance. They learn how to be good in bed and review a diversity of vulvas with intimate educator Betty Dodson and explore intuition and clairvoyance with psychic medium Laura Lynne Jackson. There are tears, airy nonsense, neutral-colored outfits, and assurances about the unreal being proved real! The Goop Lab themes are basic and those who have seen Our Bodies, Ourselves has seen a vulva, reiki energy healing techniques, mainstream yoga, and experimental micro-dosing for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The trouble arises with Goop’s broad strategy and branding exercise built on pseudoscience targeting the latent anxieties of women leading them to buy silly products that don’t work or follow dangerous advice. Goop taps into a desperate search for something to help us heal.
Educating Viewers
The impeachment trial of the POTUS is a cataclysmic event, summing up the punishing news cycle over-drive over four years. It is tempting to disconnect from absurd and disturbing behaviour and often we need to escape from reality. Goop clearly meets this desire, with an individual worldview, and anxieties and traumas under control. This is a healthy empowering attitude to control your physical and mental health. The ethos stresses individual change, neglecting structural inequalities causing anxiety and trauma, but prevents access to healing systems. Real and external stressors exist and are not fixed by calming your nervous system with a breathing exercise. The nation’s crumbling democracy, the increasing hate crimes, climate change effects? Push away all these and concentrate on decreasing our biological age in contrast to the chronological one. The Goop Lab educates viewers about the Goop brand, providing a soothing infomercial for Paltrow’s lifestyle empire, with components symbiotically promoting how to secure the utmost out of life. The new Goop Lab Shop sells a diet Paltrow tried for $249, a hefty price for food denial and special edition merchandise: six simple white T-shirts for $330!
