Oh Goop. It’s been about 10 years since Gwyneth Paltrow’s ~wellness~ brand was born into this world, and Goop continues to expand their infamously pricey empire across platforms.
The brand continues to succeed in spite of being treated as somewhat of a joke. From ridiculously lavish and random holiday gift guides, to literally having to pay damages for making false health claims about vaginal jade eggs and being called out for name-checking NASA technology in a completely BS ‘bio-charged healing stickers’ giveaway, Goop has been a wild ride to witness.
And soon we’re going to have more of this ‘unique’ content, because Goop is getting its own Netflix docuseries.
Sports schmorts and politics schmolitics! At least we can find solace in the announcement that 2019 will yield some original #GOOP content. #POOP https://t.co/jfsiV24eQH
— dina martina (@dinamartina) February 4, 2019
According to an exclusive with Variety, Goop’s chief content officer Elise Loehnen explains that they realised their audience are Netflix viewers, and “some of the more strategic, bigger stories we want to tell require a TV budget.”
Variety reports that,
“Loehnen’s content team of about 20 will work on shaping the series with Netflix, which she said seeks to dial up the aesthetics and quality of storytelling surrounding issues like mental, physical and sexual health — and address larger thematic questions the Goop audience has about leading optimal lives.”
This is, of course, a noble endeavour, but it’s hard to trust that Goop is the right company to lead that kind of discussion.
Good to see Gwyneth capitalizing on how our health care system has largely failed women forcing us to invest in the “wellness industry” and also create unattainable beauty standards in which we must be beautiful on the inside and the outside. https://t.co/lyYZ4tEk2y
— Joanna Piacenza (@jpiacenza) February 4, 2019
Goop promotes an ‘optimum’ lifestyle that is comically bourgeois. That rolled in with the factual inaccuracies of things like the jade egg health suggestion make a Goop health docuseries seem more like an exercise in curiousity than a helpful resource in its own right.
The Netflix series is due to come out later this year in our Spring so we’ll just have to wait and see whether their approach to tackling health is worth watching.