In defence of Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow has stoked the fury of the internet once again. The 48-year-old actress-turned-wellness guru admitted on a podcast to having consumed alcohol every day and eaten bread and pasta as she went “off the rails” during lockdown.
Her comments were picked up in a Mirror article headlined; “Gwyneth Paltrow hits bottle during pandemic with Goop quinoa whisky cocktails”. The Guardian then responded with a short piece headlined “Gwyneth Paltrow broke down and ate bread during quarantine. How did you surprise yourself?”, asking readers to write in and share their lowest points in lockdown.
By taking Paltrow at face value and failing to note the self-deprecating humour being shared by both the actress and the podcast hosts, The Guardian generated a stream of infuriated responses. One tweet read, “The low point of my pandemic was my mother dying during the summer (non-COVID) and not knowing how to deal with it.” Another user tweeted, “Millions of Americans lost loved ones, millions more lost their livelihoods, but we’re supposed to care that Gwyneth Paltrow consumed carbs??? That is seriously messed up.”
And so, once again, Paltrow became internet enemy number one. But was she really to blame?
On the SmartLess podcast episode the headlines referenced, Paltrow was asked by fellow actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnet if she had any vices. She talked about enjoying the occasional cigarette and liking alcohol, before explaining that quarantine made her drink more: “I’ve been on a bit of a cleanout,” she says, “basically, during quarantine, I was drinking seven nights a week and making pasta and eating bread. I went totally off the rails.” They laugh and the conversation moves swiftly on, until the tabloids caught wind.
Both The Guardian and the Mirror manipulated a light-hearted conversation for clickbait, picking on a notoriously marmite celebrity. Paltrow was not pitying herself, trying to be relatable, nor suggesting that her experience of the pandemic was worse than anyone else’s. She responded directly to a question and, actually, was relatable. The UK didn’t have a yeast shortage because Paltrow was shipping all of our supplies to America – we were all making, and eating, more bread too. The headlines deliberately provoked an emotional response, amid a pandemic, where many people are struggling with grief and tragedy. Isn’t it the media at fault here?
The social media storm that followed is a consequence of the bizarre determination of the government and other misguided celebrities (see Gal Gadot’s Imagine video) to portray coronavirus as the great equaliser. The virus could make anyone ill, but the experience of being ill, quarantining and recovering was never going to be the same for a family cramped in a flat with no outdoor space, as an actress who lives in a multi-million dollar mansion in Los Angeles.
Paltrow, for all of her often bizarre wellness hacks, does not pretend to be anything other than a beautiful, rich celebrity. In 2009, she famously told Elle magazine, “I am who I am. I can’t pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year”. And why should she? She has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the list of awards and nominations she received during her acting career and her wellness company, GOOP, is worth $250 million. Her 7.5 million Instagram followers don’t follow her because she reminds them of themselves, but to see her rubbing noses with other celebrities, holidaying at incredible destinations and showing off her enviable figure. Eating more carbs and drinking more probably was the extent of her suffering in the pandemic. The joy of Paltrow is her unapologetic honesty about her privilege. Wouldn’t it be more offensive for her to pretend otherwise?
If you look up Paltrow on the internet, almost every outlet has used something she has said or done for clickbait. Her comments in interviews are often depicted as out-of-touch and offensive, but really she should be seen as amusingly self-aware and mocking the media’s obsession with her. “I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup,” she told NY Daily News in 2005. “I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin,” she said at the iTunes Festival in 2011. The magazine or website covering the story gets clicks, her brand gets more traffic and her Instagram more followers. All the while, people she will never know exist are enraged about how “out of touch” these hyperbolic comments make her.
In the same SmartLess podcast episode that the break-the-internet bread comment came from, Paltrow comes across as candid and funny. She goes along with the jokes, admits to her company being named GOOP because someone told her that successful companies have two ‘Os’ in, and doesn’t try to be anything but herself. Meanwhile, the Guardian is churning out bitter headlines like; “Dear Gwyneth Paltrow, welcome to everyone else’s sad-potato life”.
Of course, Paltrow is not without fault. The wellness industry is notoriously toxic and profits from our insecurities by promoting the expensive pursuit of eternal youth and thinness. Her company has danced the line between a curiosity in alternative medicine and the promotion of dangerous pseudoscience one too many times. Paltrow’s lasting legacy will not be her career or the Oscar she won, but the $145,000 fine GOOP received for making unscientific claims about vaginal eggs. But Paltrow is someone who has spent years in the spotlight, conforming to size 0 beauty standards and having her appearance fill the pages of gossip magazines. Is GOOP not a mission to rewrite her definition of beauty and wellness away from her acting career? Paltrow operates through the lens she best knows; wealth and privilege. As a result, GOOP is wellness at its most elite, but it has never masked itself as anything else.
Regardless of GOOP, Paltrow’s career, dating history and tongue-in-cheek nature mean she would always be in the headlines. The regular fury over her words and actions raise an important cultural question about the function of celebrity in today’s world. The advent of social media and reality television has removed the curious mystery around the rich and famous and replaced it with a fake sense of intimacy. As a result, actresses and singers who once sat on an untouchable pedestal find themselves being hounded for their political views, held to high standards as role models and forced to be an activist in one way or another. In a recent article for VICE, the journalist Lauren O’Neill wrote, “the entire point of celebrities is that they should be enjoyable to engage with.” This couldn’t be more true. We don’t need every rich and famous person to pretend they are the patron saints of virtue or are, despite their wealth, surprisingly just like us. Some can be outrageous and entertaining and wear their privilege proudly, that way we have something to marvel at and keep us entertained. Whether you love her or hate her, Paltrow knows how to be a celebrity. And I for one can’t get enough of her.