In these dark times, it’s nice to be reminded of our worth every now and again. And, with that in mind, perhaps we should all now repeat a quick affirmation: you are more powerful than Gwyneth Paltrow.
Of course you are. In a recent interview, Paltrow revealed that she had gone “totally off the rails” during the Covid pandemic by drinking two alcoholic drinks a night and eating some bread. “I mean, who drinks multiple drinks seven nights a week?” she said. “Like, that’s not healthy.”
If there was ever a time to be proud of your constitution, fellow non-Paltrows, this is it. I can’t say for sure, but I think I ate pasta four times last week, and washed it all down with multiple loaves of bread, and I was basically drunk for the lot of it. And look at me, I’m not off the rails at all. These are my rails. True, it’s a lifestyle that has left me looking like an especially sad potato that probably needs to have its arteries stented with some urgency, but look at me. I am a human being capable of eating a Nando’s without instantly warping out of all recognition. You are, too. This makes us much sturdier than Gwyneth Paltrow.
Then again, this is Gwyneth Paltrow we’re talking about; a person who increasingly occupies a Shatner-esque territory where nobody is ever completely sure how sincere she is being. The “two drinks a night” comment may have come from a place of true concern, but then again perhaps she just wanted to drum up awareness of her returning Netflix show. Same when she made her genital candle. Same when she told Jon Favreau that she couldn’t remember starring in a Spider-Man movie with him. It all comes from a place of perfectly earnest sincerity but, at the same time, it’s an awfully good way of generating headlines. We cannot rule out the possibility that Gwyneth Paltrow is the world’s biggest piss-taker.
Either way, it was probably a very shrewd admission on her part. Now that some of the world is starting to open up again, this is the perfect time for wellness sites to get back to preying on everyone’s insecurities again. We’re groggier, fatter and hairier than we were a year ago, and that makes us perfect targets for Goop’s brand of luxury judgment. Paltrow sounds like she hates herself, and all she did was eat some bread. Meanwhile, you just smashed your way through six tubes of Pringles like a circus sword-swallower trying to hide a set of golf clubs, and you didn’t even break sweat. You must absolutely detest yourself. You know what’ll make everything better? A £320 bottle of wrinkle serum.
Then again, perhaps we’ve come too far for that. Perhaps we have all been inside for so long that the old ways will change for ever. Just as people are reluctant to return to the office or brave a cinema in the post-Covid era, perhaps sites like Goop will have to readjust to a customer base that’s less eager to maintain such rigorous health and beauty standards. Perhaps Paltrow will have to move with the times and start selling tatty jogging trousers, or supermarket own-brand lager. Or, God help us, some pasta.
