TO ANY REGULAR person, Gwyneth Paltrow’s everyday life and interests are a source of endless fascination.
On the surface, she’s like any other wildly successful person in Hollywood. A conventionally attractive, rich, middle-aged white woman. However, if you give her a few consecutive minutes to speak out loud, or pay a quick visit to her lifestyle brand’s website, you’ll find that she’s actually pretty weird.
In the past, she has endorsed the healing powers of bee stings, spoke enthusiastically about the benefits of inserting jade eggs into your vagina, shared her everyday breakfast smoothie recipe with an ingredient list that cost a total of $223 and recommended that women steam their vaginas.
Just last week, she complained that all of her fame and wealth are actually a hindrance on the success of her website Goop, while ignoring the incredible platform she has been given because of her fame. It’s safe to say that she’s just a tad out of touch with reality thanks to her incomprehensible privilege.
So, when Goop comprised a list of products they recommend in their holiday gift guide, it’s safe to say that they weren’t targeted towards regular people, like you and me. The internet has been taking the piss out of them for the last few days, and rightly so, because they make our notiony Brown Thomas picks look like items from Lidl’s Special Buys.
The gifts are separated into twelve different categories, for the twelve most important people in your life.
The first is ‘The Cook‘, which we will assume is not designed with Gwyneth’s in-house chef in mind, but rather a someone in her life who enjoys working with food. Possibly Gwyneth herself. Here are some of the highlights:
That’s a set of four wooden egg plates (three wooden circles with a hole in the middle for the egg to sit in so it doesn’t roll around the plate) for $160 and then she’s also selling a 3LB box of her favourite wild mushroom medley for $80. In fairness, that’s a lot of mushrooms, but we’re not entirely sure we would want to ingest any mushrooms that she recommends, since she’s the embodiment of a weird smoking area chat.
In the second category, entitled Stocking Stuffers, there are some smaller gifts recommended.
This list includes an ‘Empathetic Thinking Card Deck’ that improves your sense of empathy ($25), and an “emotional detox bath soak” which actually sounds kind of appealing (but not at $35 a pop). She’s also selling 24K gold rolling paper. Try and convince me she’s not just an NCAD student burning the ear off you in the smoking area.
Let the good times roll: For a little shine right at your fingertips, these luxe rolling papers – handcrafted from an edible 24-karat gold hemp blend – are the very definition of ridiculous… but awesome. They’re sleek, smooth-burning and totally cool. Not intended for use with tobacco, only legal smoking herbs.
That’s not the only piece of drug paraphernalia she’s selling on Goop either. She’s selling a pipe made from porcelain, in the shape of a rock.
For some reason, this section also has a ‘pull-back car’ for your desk, presumably for use when you’re stoned from smoking golden Gwyneth Paltrow joints. Whoever’s marking the price of these products seems to just be throwing some random figures out there, because this tiny toy car is $24.
Then there are some gift ideas for ‘The Host’ in your life.
There’s plenty of parties around Christmas and the New Year, so you’ve got to show all of those hosts some love. Imagine rocking up to the home of a friend or loved one and presenting them with a $295 agate burner and incense set or a $230 candlestick holder. You probably couldn’t imagine doing that in a million years, but someone on Gwyneth Paltrow’s team at Goop can.
Naturally, Goop have plenty of recommendations for ‘The Wellness Junkie’ in your life.
Do you know a wellness junkie who just loves to drink water? Well, now you can get them a big water dispenser, so that every time they pour out a big glass of water, or have to go through loads of effort to refill their dispenser, they’ll think of you. All for just $450.
There’s also this marble dumbbell, if you dream of being well-sculpted. In reality, it seems more like a murder weapon in a mansion from Cluedo than something that you could ever envisage one of your friends using.
There are also gifts for the One-Step-Aheader (which is the cool person in your life).
Let’s see what’s on the agenda for cool people in 2019… A $450 cabin bag, a collapsible helmet for $140 (because as we all know, cool people hate wearing bike helmets) and an $80 mug that you can control with an app.
Another category has selected gifts for ‘The Collector’ in your life.
To be honest, these just look like things you’d buy for a rich steampunk.
There’s also a section for ‘The Lover’.
As far as I can see, this is just a reshuffling of their Valentine’s Day gift guide. It’s lingerie, sex toys, books etc. One of the books is called ‘Porn For Women’, and it’s a picture book full of photos of ‘Hot guys vacuuming, taking out the trash, asking for directions…” which is kinda sad. There’s also a rose that stays fresh for a year, which is strangely impressive.
Another category is entitled “The Ridiculous but Awesome Gift Guide.”
You might have thought that many of the things we’ve already looked at were ridiculous. You were right. However, this section is beyond the pale. There’s a $140,000 caravan, for the Walter White in your life.
And a clip-on bidet.
There’s also a Spanish village.
We’re trying to sift through these gift guides to find the most shocking products, but to be honest, they’re all quite shocking. If you want to waste even more time browsing Gwyneth Paltrow’s weird gift guides, you can check them all out here.
