Gwyneth Paltrow Got Me Fired*

*well, I *think* she might have

It’s Christmas in July for a certain contingent of Gen X chicas. Amy Odell’s unauthorized biography of the woman who needs no surname dominated the cocktail portion of the dinner I went to last weekend (“Don’t judge me - we were born the exact same year and I am obsessed with her!” said the host, a science journalist.)

Delectable and despicable morsels from Odell’s Gywneth files have come up on seemingly every podcast and online publication in the days since. Through osmosis I now know that Madonna was a good friend - until she wasn’t. Carolyn Besette was a good nemesis. Ben was v. good in bed. Brad was dumb as a doorknob.

While I wait for my library hold (#22 on the list) to fall into my golden yoni, I thought I might regale my dear readers (BTW, thank you all for subscribing!) with a few memories from my short-lived time on the periphery of planet “GP” (that’s what everybody who works in her service calls her).

I was working as an editor at Vogue when Conde Nast struck up a deal with Goop, Paltrow’s wellness empire, to publish a quarterly magazine about how to live more Goopishly. Art directors and fact checkers and photo editors were plucked from various print magazine titles and assigned to this curious side project. The special projects team that put out one-off magazines (“101 Paleo Chicken Dinners” or “The Inauguration in Pictures” special issue) was roped into this very glamorous assignment. One text editor was tapped to oversee the words. That was me.

The vision for the magazine was a Goop that you could hold in your hands while waiting in line at Whole Foods or display on your coffee table when you had friends over for tea and cigarettes. It would have stunning visuals and present a side of GP you’d never seen before. Except… you’d seen a lot of it before. Much of the copy was inspired by preexisting Goop posts, which focused on things like the healing properties of lentils or the dangers of nightshades or something called “love boards” which was a nice way of calling sliced apples arranged on a cutting board.

There was a preexisting cabinet of GP’s favorite experts we could feature in the pages. Among them were facialists, functional medicine doctors, and a man called “The Medical Medium,” a former health food store owner from Connecticut who said that a spirit visited him and allowed him to scan people’s bodies for cancer and other diseases.

We assigned a few original pieces, where we sent lucky writers to the studios of GP-blessed foam rolling coaches and pelvic floor whisperers. One journalist even got to hang out with GP herself. (We were unable to line up a shoot in Conde’s sky-high photo studio with a GP-approved exercise instructor when it emerged that the subject had a crippling fear of elevators.)

GP swung by the office from time to time. What was it like to be in such close proximity to the woman who set in motion modern-day wellness as we know it? You already know the answer. Men, women, inanimate objects, we all swooned for GP. She wasn’t just charming - she was a sorceress. When she dropped F-bombs in boardroom meetings, it was the most adorable thing ever. When she sat crosslegged on the floor of a planning room, I was ready to throw every chair I owned out the window. Fuck chairs!

Of course she was the cover model for the inaugural issue. The publication was going to challenge the reputation of the website, and be surprising and inclusive. GP didn’t want to be on all the covers. But when we sent over options for the Valentines Day-timed issue, to feature a cool celebrity couple, one that was surprising and inclusive and also famous, we all scrambled to compile options. In the end, this was the cover that ran:

The Sex & Love issue

I have GP to thank for a lot of things. Were it not for her, I would not have flown to Los Angeles for the Goop wellness summit and had my aura photographed. I would not have witnessed a doctor perform a needle-and-thread facelift. I would not have learned the name of the GP-rubber-stamped designer behind the majority of my RealReal purchases.

A pelvic floor event at the Goop summit.

One of my duties was relaying the feedback from the Conde Nast fact checkers to Goop HQ. Breaking the news that we needed a little more scientific backup was a more delicate task than I must have realized at the time. Before the second issue went to press, I was informed that I had been taken off the project. A few weeks later, I was informed that I was no longer needed at the company, periodt.

No hard feelings, GP. You remain a fucking goddess.