I tried to Goop and it's not that special

After reading a lot of things making fun of the unscience of the Goop-erverse, I decided to finally give it a look for myself.

The first thing I was met with was a sort of confusing array of images in the header. Is this a super sexy sex site, a family-snack-DIY site, a style site, or a pseudo-stolen-spirituality site?

Screenshot of the Header Images on GOOP

Of course, for Ms. Goop, it is all of the above. The true Goop-tastic woman is into all of it.

A quick scan of the site reveals it to be basically exactly the same as every other lifestyle blog out there. They use terms like "skin protocol" instead of "skin-care routine", "fashion moment" instead of "thing to wear", assume you are going to make homemade sushi for your kids' lunch, and include a number of avocado-related tips. This place is 100% un-special, except that occasionally instead of a stock image there is a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow.

I assume that the real problematic aspects to Goop that are just waiting to be made fun of are in the "Be" (spirituality) and "Do" (health and fitness) sections.

There is a sweetly confusing quote that is featured in Be, for an article called Unpoisoning Relationships: "the quality of your relationship actually has very little to do with your level of education, or how psychologically sophisticated you are, or whether you understand whether your parent’s marriage was good or bad."

I guess a very educated, "psychologically sophisticated" person might think they are more likely to have an enlightened and loving relationship, but really? Do people actually think there's a correlation between relationship quality and education? That makes me sad.

Okay, now a little trip down Do lane, to see about the health and wellness side.

In a Q&A on whether non-toxic bug sprays actually work, I learned that you can actually get a poison-free bug repellant that is also glamorous! Ooooooooooo!

Then I learned that the author thinks this stuff is glamorous because it's called Patio Oil, it comes in a silvery tube, and it costs $30. She's not wrong that glamour is born from giving things fancy names and fancy packaging before marking the price up by a zillion percent, but still. The amount she drools over this stuff can only really be explained by the fact that you can buy it in the Goop store.

Final verdict: Goop is simply a not-very-well-written lifestyle blog and the only thing that makes it special is that a famous person started it. Alas. Let's move on with our lives.

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