Dear Gwyneth Paltrow, Did the District Attorney Bring Their A game?

Dear Gwyneth Paltrow,

Once upon a time (okay, last year) you said that anyone who was going to fuck with you had better bring their A game. This, I was led to believe, was a response to concerns that I and others had raised about the quality of the advice and value of the products that you sell on GOOP.

However, hearing about the $145,000 settlement that GOOP was required to pay because you lied about the benefits of jade eggs, quartz eggs and an essential oil spray brought those words rushing back.

Did the government bring its A game and did you reply with yours?

I know the money is likely less than your annual budget for vagina steaming and pocket change for a company that claims to be worth $250 million, then again you and your company claimed jade eggs are recharged with energy from the moon and can “balance” hormones and that raw goat’s milk is a cure for nonexistent parasites. Hopefully, you backed up your financial claims with more hard data than your claims about the efficacy of a jade egg practice or the rectal administration of coffee.

But I digress.

I wondered if the lawsuit was a surprise for you or if your medium had warned you about it so you could be prepared? After all, she is a research medium. Or do your mediums just bring medical diagnoses and love back from the great beyond and not legal advice? But seriously, if a ghost can diagnose a person when the medical profession fails shouldn’t they also know when a District Attorney is building a case against you?

The money with the settlement doesn’t seem to me to be the big point, the real meat of the deal is that GOOP is prohibited from “making any claims regarding the efficacy or effects” of any of the products that you sell that are not backed by
“competent and reliable scientific evidence.”

I’m going to stock up on popcorn today.

When I called you out for these same unscientific claims you called me strangely confident. You also said,

There is so much that we do not know. It is unfortunate that there are some who seem to believe that they already know it all, who prejudge information before they have even taken the time to read or understand it..

Did you tell the DA they were strangely confident, insufferable know-it-alls as well?

Did you tell the lawyers that they hadn’t taken the time to read and really understand the deep thoughts on jade eggs and lunar energy written by a jade eggthusiast and woman who has a certificate in healing from an institute that she founded? What is a medical degree and a residency and a fellowship anyway against such knowledge?

I wonder if you accused me of not taking “the time to read or understand” — basically of being underprepared and ill-researched — because that is what you do at GOOP. You package shit, make up some new age words, and market, market, market, market. Very Trumpian for you to project your own faults onto me.

It probably shocks you to know, mostly because I suspect no one at GOOP has ever read more than the first paragraph of anything I have written, but I have researched every piece of your medical fuckery. I even contacted the Museum of Military Medicine in the U.K. and a historian who specializes in military medicine to fact check your choice bullshit on coffee enemas.

Look sister, you can feign shock or claim you were just having a conversation, or cry that you are misunderstood just like Galileo, but you can only say the dog ate your homework so many times before you have to start showing some proof. As a nerd I’ve seen all the excuses in class.

When you claim that bras cause breast cancer, or that coffee enemas are a thing, or that supplements can cure the totally fucking non existent patriarchal bullshit that is post natal depletion, or that jade eggs balance hormones, or that tampons have toxins you are a predator. You are weaponizing fears for page clicks and profit.

You claim that medicine is ignoring women, and while it is true there are many gaps in medicine you are not filling them, you are exploiting them by offering expensive bullshit and fake ideas about health and passing it off as care and conversations. And if women have concerns, well, they can call 1-844-WTF-GOOP between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. EST.

No person interested in helping women brags that their number is WTF.

Now I know the people who have the power to hold you accountable read what I write. Hopefully they will also be looking at the supplements sold by the various functional medicine doctors and naturopaths you so love to quote.

I’m going to keep on plugging away when I see garbage medicine (sorry, conversations) on your website. I do this because no woman ever profited from misinformation about her health.

Scratch that, there are some women who profit. You and your gal pals at GOOP.

Until next time,
Dr. Jen Gunter MD, FRCS(C), FACOG, DABPM, ABPMR (pain)
P.S. Have at it with the furniture venture, just don’t come up with a bespoke wooden vagina steaming throne. If you do, I can count on the Internet to tell me.

 

***To the people angry that I am not allowing your comments about jade eggs being an “ancient” therapy that is “5,000 years old. Prove it and I will post your comments. That is how science works. If it was as well-known as you claim in Ancient China I look forward to reading your references.   xoxo Jen ***