Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest woo for sale: “Inner Compass” cards and a $75 candle that smells like ladyparts

January 11, 2020 • 12:00 pm

Today is Saturday, which is supposed to be my day off, and therefore there will be little or no braining. Instead, let’s see what Gwynnie is up to. (Does anybody like her? Some people must, as she’s gotten rich off her products and surely has a lot of fans).

I’m not one of those fans, as when I see her she always strikes me as insincere, and, more important, she’s now spending her life peddling woo instead of acting, an area where she really does have talent. She is flogging two new products. One is a pack of “Inner Compass Cards”, which come in decks of 49 cards and costs $55: more than a dollar a card. (Let it not be said that her company, Goop prices things fairly.) Click on the screenshot:

Now they’re called “oracle cards”, but that isn’t quite the case. But to see what they really are, you have to read an article in Jezebel by Hazel Cillis, who got a pack (funded by Jezebel), examined them—and used them. Click on the screenshot to read Hazel’s take (note the heading!):

What the cards apparently do is give you a self-helpy thought that will supposedly guide you toward daily fulfillment. Some quotes:

There are 49 cards to a pack of Inner Compass cards, each with a vague nugget of wisdom. “This card is an invitation to drop anchor. Intuitively you feel that something is not quite right, but you are too busy to act upon it,” read the Anchor card’s description. “Now is the time to slow down and take a long, good look around.”The cards are intended, the website reads, to “propose questions that awaken opportunities that have been waiting for you.” So I decided to try and “awaken the opportunities inside me” by offloading my decisions to the cards for a day.

So what do these dollar-apiece cards say?

The directions are basically, “every day shuffle the deck with focus and intention, pick one or more cards instinctively, and your intuition will guide you toward a new pattern of belief and positivity,” the website reads. You can’t pick a wrong card. In the morning I shuffled the deck and pulled a card: The Healer. I flipped through the little book of explanations to find mine. “You are currently going through a process of deep healing,” it began. I was told to shed “everything that distracted me,” to “open myself to change,” to “rise out of the mud like a lotus flower with increased empathy, understanding, and wisdom.” This was redundant, considering that among the Jezebel staff it’s already widely known that I’m a lotus flower who has already risen out of the mud with an increased empathy, understanding, and wisdom. Was I comforted by this apt assessment? Not really.

They’re more like horoscopes than Chinese fortune-cookie slips, but of course they’re all bullshit. As Cillis says,

The thing that sets Inner Compass cards apart from a Tarot deck, is that the latter anticipates the future. Inner Compass cards do something much lazier: they don’t predict, they just give a pep talk. They’re billed as “oracle cards,” a category that can become whatever you want it to be, as long as you’re thinking about “your intentions” while you pick a card. That looseness also means that many of them feel mind-numbingly repetitive. Later, before lunch, I pulled “New Chapter.” I was told to “not stay stuck in my own resistance,” to “be confident,” and to “leap towards the unknown.”

What kind of people would buy these? I suppose the same people who buy self-help books, but these cards cost a lot more than a book and proffer a lot less advice. The advice seems New-Agey, though, which may appeal to Paltrow’s target audience. And how much profit does Goop make off of what is, in effect, a simple deck of cards? Surely at least 75%!

At any rate, Cillis uses them as a kind of fun game, giving them to her friends to interpret them (even I can’t help reading my horoscope, even though I know it’s bogus!). But there are cheaper ways to have fun, and more adult ways to figure out your life. Cillis concludes:

The cards didn’t ground me, nor did I feel like, even with sustained practice and shuffling each day, they’d enlighten me. But having my friends pull them, as if they actually meant something, was cute and admittedly fun. “By exploring the different themes and patterns, you will discover the world as your playground,” the Inner Compass told me. Or maybe the world is a 6th grade slumber party?

And get ready for the “Goop Lab” (I truly object to this nonsense being characterized as a “lab”), premiering soon on Netflix, and exploring the boundaries of woo. Have a look at the trailer below. Here’s the YouTube sell:

The goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow is a six-episode series, guiding the deeply inquisitive viewer in an exploration of boundary-pushing wellness topics, including: psychedelics, cold therapy, female pleasure, anti-aging, energy healing and psychics. The goop lab launches on Netflix January 24, 2020.

Orgasms! Facial acupuncture! Vaginal self-examination! Energy healing! Psychics! Cold therapy! It’s the whole gamut of New Age woo.
As Gwynnie says in the video: “We’re here one time, one life; how can we really milk the shit out of this?”  I think she’s figured that out!

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Speaking of vaginas, here’s the very latest Goop product, which is already eliciting mockery and revulsion on the Internet. (Click on the screenshot.)

Here’s the description, and if you go to the site you’ll see that, even at $75 a pop, it’s sold out:

People Magazine tells us a bit more:

Per the product description, the item — made by artisanal fragrance brand Heretic — “started as a joke” between perfumer Douglas Little and Paltrow while they were collaborating on a fragrance together. The two were testing scents when the Politician star blurted out, “Uhhh..this smells like a vagina,” the website said.

While the two didn’t end up bottling the “funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent” into a perfume, they did think it would be “perfect as a candle,” the description read.

According to Goop, the brand did a “test run” for the candle during the In Goop Health summit and “it sold out within hours.”

I, for one, have no intention of doing the field work to see if the description is accurate, but it’s amazing that so many people are willing to fork out $75 for an unexpectedly vagina-smelling candle. As P. T. Barnum supposedly said. . .

65 thoughts on “Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest woo for sale: “Inner Compass” cards and a $75 candle that smells like ladyparts”

  1. This is outrageous. That candle is offensive. It should be called This candle smells like my front hole!

    1. And also weird. I don’t think my vagina smells like that and I bet no one else’s does either unless they’ve steamed it, put some jade eggs in and then perfumed it with some douching concoction and they are sitting at the doctor with severe crotch rot.

    2. My own thoughts exactly – but maybe the reviewer is a transwoman in which case she does have a vagina (unlike my cis-gender wife – I haven’t broken the news to her yet, for some strange reason).

    4. And what do you imagine a candle that smells of gentleman parts would smell like? Mostly woody I would guess.

    5. At that price, it should be called this candle smells like burning money.

      I’ve bought jokey-named candles. “Smell my nuts” and “Nice melons!” Both were nicely scented and reasonably affordable. Thumbs up.

      $75 fora candle is an outrage. But, grifters gotta grift I guess.

    2. Marianne Williamson has astrally projected herself out of the campaign for

      Oh, I haven’t heard of a piece of electoral idiocy from the current transPondian dog’n’pony show that would have made me think of that sort of thing. Obviously distance does have some protective effect.
      But to make you feel better about American politics, I give you this memorable piece from the UK 1994 European Parliament election (especially from 1:10). To our undying shame, almost 100,000 people voted for the Yogic flyers.
      On the upside, that was about 8 times as many as voted for the then-current incarnation of the Nazis. Who then went for another name change, and have been far more successful over the last few years. IF only more people had voted Monster Raving Loony.

      1. Seems we had a yogic-flying loon running for office around Toronto back then. Diana? The presenter in your clip looks and sounds so normal, till you get to the hippity-hopping.
        Maybe I’ll try that in yoga next week (and end up with my ass literally in a sling.)

        1. They were … refreshingly … different. A lotus-posturing embodiment of the warning about having a mind a little bit too open.

      2. For those who don’t know, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party’s founder, Screaming Lord Sutch, led the (totally ridiculous, obviously) campaign to lower the voting age in the UK from 21 to 18. During his musical career, his band featured the then relatively unknown musicians Keith Moon, Jimmy Page, Charlie Watts, Jeff Beck, and Ritchie Blackmore.

        2. Complete failure then.

          Oh, hang on, didn’t Ritchie Blackmore do a track with Rainbow once?

    1. I love those prints. The thought of putting that noxious item near them nauseated me.

  5. another purported Barnum quote, which fits which I read in Andersen’s Fantasyland :

    “the perfect good-nature with which the American public submits to a clever humbug.”

    source :

    https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/56504775-fantasyland-how-america-went-haywire-a-500-year-history?page=3

    (I am putting good weight on Andersen’s research skills here)

    … come to think of it, what is Paltrow’s claim to fame? Some movie I think, but I’d have to look it up.

          1. I just knew you would eventually have to admit it worked – those snake oil salespeople deserve an apology!

          2. But they shouldn’t be selling the snake oil, except to snakes with a plantar fascia to get itis-ified.

  9. In all fairness to Ms Paltrow, thanks to her promotion of the vagina candle, Jerry and Bing, I now know something about bergamot and ambrette, neither of which I had hitherto heard of, and cedar absolutes (not to be confused with the company selling cedar siding). Woo can be educational.

    I suggest Ms P. copyrights her description of the candle before a pretentious vintner steals it.

  10. We always read out loud our fortune cookies at Chibese restaurants. Always brings smiles. Especially when mine or my wife’s say you are giving to met someone new and exciting, or something of that nature.
    My guess us that the cards cost ten cents each to produce, and sell for more than a dollar each. Not bad markup.

    I enjoyed several if her movies, A Perfect Murder and a few more.

    2. We always read out loud our fortune cookies at Chibese [sic] restaurants.

      I had a girlfriend who always insisted we do the same, then add “… in bed.”

      I miss that gal.

      1. I hope you are Chibese yourself, Ken. Wouldn’t want the Chibese People’s Popular Front to belatedly target you for cultural appropriation of their cookies.

    3. Yes, me too (enjoyed her movies). It’s sad that an actress pulling in millions per movie feels the need to fleece regular people on top of that. Life gave you so much being a legit entertainer, and yet, you decided to be evil to get more money?

  11. Everyone should also have an ass that emits a range of earth, leather, white pepper, malted chocolate, spice, caramel, and a touch of nutmeg.

  12. I’m cracking up laughing at the comments to this latest from Paltrow and Goop.

    Just for the heck of it I Googled “vagina candle” and, lo and behold, such objects are a dime a dozen https://www.etsy.com/market/vagina_candle, even scented candles, but none that are vagina scented (thank goodness!). One curious item listed on the etsy page is the “6in Vulva de Guadeloupe Mini Wall Hanging,” the Virgin of Guadeloupe depicted as a vagina. Just what every practicing Catholic needs for devotions. Should be in every Catholic church!

      2. Me too!

        However, the bible says “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” Matthew Something-or-other and the bible was referring to the Google (also Ecclesiastes – nothing new under the sun). Not exactly semen-flavored lip gloss but I found this on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Yummy-Cum-Semen-Flavor-Enhancer/product-reviews/B008663APC. If one made one’s own lip gloss (there are recipes), I’m sure it could be incorporated into the mix.

        There’s also an urban legend that lip gloss is made from whale sperm, which I think must be confused with ambergris Then there’s this
        charming list of ingredients in cosmetics https://www.oddee.com/item_98322.aspx. I note it’s categorized as “weird science.” I must see what other posts are in that category

  16. ‘Heretic’? Wtf??

    *I’m* a heretic, and proud of it. You, Paltrow, are just a sleazy pretentious con artist. You don’t have the intellect or moral fibre to be a heretic. You wouldn’t even make a decent cynic.

    ‘This smells like my vagina’?? You wish. I’m certainly not offering to take a sniff to disprove it, though…

    cr

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