Most everything that Gwyneth Paltrow does is soaked through with smugness. It's possible that she can't help it. No one, no matter how hard they try, can flatiron their hair to such cold, blonde stiffness that it resembles hanging sheets of ice, yet Gwyneth Paltrow can. No one, when looking at a painting in Toledo, can say with a straight face that certain patterns and numbers in the painting must mean that El Greco was studying the Kabbalah when he painted it, yet Gwyneth Paltrow can (and did in the first episode of Spain…On The Road Again). And no one can make an impeccable Spanish accent sound unbelievably snobby, yet Gwyneth Paltrow can. She's living proof that snobs are born, not bred, which is why her new "lifestyle website" GOOP.com (aka SnobFactory.com, aka SMUG.com) is doomed to fail.
From Paltrow's intro essay on Goop.com:
My life is good because I am not passive about it. I want to nourish what is real, and I want to do it without wasting time. I love to travel, to cook, to eat, to take care of my body and mind, to work hard. I love being a mother who has to overcome my bad qualities to be a good mother. I love being in spaces that are clean and feel nice….
Make your life good. Invest in what's real. Cook a meal for someone you love. Pause before reacting. Clean out your space. Read something beautiful. Treat yourself to something. Go to a city you've never been to. Learn something new. Don't be lazy. Workout and stick with it. GOOP. Make it great.
Thanks, Gwyneth. There's nothing that people like more than a frozen-haired, Oscar-winning, married-to-Coldplay actress condescending to them about how to improve their lives in the most painfully obvious or vague ways. You might as well have just said, "Breathe. Don't be fat. Sweep the floor. Take a goddamn shower."
Incidentally, you, Gwyneth Paltrow, are not allowed to use your life as an instructive example of how people should live, because it is impossible for anyone besides Gwyneth Paltrow to live like Gwyneth Paltrow. Your first sentence should read, "My life is good because I'm Gwyneth Fucking Paltrow and I'm really good friends with Mario Batali, who asks me to travel around Spain with him eating delicious food and going to spas and then the whole thing is sponsored by Chipotle and shown on public television because, again, I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. GOOP that, suckers."