Do We Really Hate Gwyneth Paltrow Because She’s A Privileged Nepo Baby?
Or are we just a bunch of jealous misogynists?
Author’s Note: This article originally appeared in Bitchy on August 17, 2023. Are we still mad at Gwyneth Paltrow? I mean, probably! Happy Oscar season, everyone!
We’re mad at Gwyneth Paltrow again.
This time, it’s for a triad of shocking offenses: keeping beauty products in her fridge, listening to the recently disgraced Lizzo on her summer walks, and listing her guest house on her California estate on AirBnB.
It’s this last transgression about which people seem to have the most thoughts. (Of course they do).
People leapt onto Instagram to accuse her of once again being out of touch, and pointing out that none of her fans could actually afford to stay there.
In response to the backlash, Paltrow had announced that she is taking a break from social media.
It’s hardly the first time we have come after her. The pillorying of Paltrow is practically a national pastime. There are few celebrities we love to hate more.
But why?
Is it because she’s a privileged nepo baby, the child of Hollywood royalty who had a well-muscled leg up in the world and now makes millions of dollars selling overpriced candles and beauty products?
Or because she’s a beautiful, smart, young (ish), and successful woman, and our envious and misogynistic little hearts can’t handle it?
Well, I also have thoughts. (Of course I do).
Let’s explore.
From goop to apples to nuts: a condensed history of Paltrow’s egregious crimes
Paltrow has been piquing our collective ire for years.
It seemed to begin in 1998 when we were irritated by her tearful Oscar acceptance speech for Shakespeare In Love and even more by her ill-fitting pink gown.
This put her on our radar, and not in a good way. Paltrow said she was excoriated by the British press for her emotional display and says she felt an “energy shift” towards her thereafter, and that people were no longer on her side.
This seems to be when we began to question her talent, her choices, and her privilege and were generally irritated by her and everything she did.
But the tipping point came in 2004 when we were aggrieved almost to the point of moral chagrin when she bestowed her poor newborn daughter with the somehow unforgivably offensive name “Apple.” We were only slightly less aggrieved when she gave her son the name “Moses.”
Then we hated her strict yoga practice and her Spartan macrobiotic diet. (What was she eating, anyway? A single teaspoon of coconut Greek yogurt and a handful of raw almonds a day?)
We had concerns about her second cookbook, 2013’sIt’s All Good, which was unnecessarily restrictive, and had the audacity to include a recipe for avocado toast. There were concerns that she was harming her children by limiting their carbohydrate intake. (For the record, both Apple and Moses seem to have entered early adulthood completely intact).
We lost our minds when she used the phrase “conscious uncoupling” to describe her gradual split from her ex-husband, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin.
And we rubbed our hands in gleeful schadenfreude when she failed to complete the #FoodBankNYCChallenge issued by Mario Batali, giving up after only four days of attempting to feed herself and her family using only food stamps issued for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).
And then there’s her most unforgivable sin of all: her $250 million wellness and lifestyle company goop, which sells overpriced beauty products and housewares, including a set of $66 “yoni” eggs that, when inserted into one’s lady parts, perform some kind of miracle (what exactly, I’m not sure).
Hey, it’s a long rap sheet: Crying, naming her children, exercising, eating, being attractive, and earning money.
Oof.
No wonder we hate her. I mean, how dare she.
Paltrow isn’t perfect, but — surprise! — she isn’t evil either (in fact, she’s even done some cool stuff)
Look, I get it.
At least, I get some of it.
She has said some goofy stuff. That whole “conscious uncoupling” thing? It’s a little cringe.
And as for those yoni eggs, they’re not a good idea. Please don’t buy them. They’ll cause yoni problems you don’t want to know about, okay?
But why do we care what she names her children? Or what she eats? Why do we begrudge her phenomenal success and assume that she hasn’t worked for it?
Why are we so damn quick to judge without even probing past the unkind headlines and the general assumptions?
Guess what? Paltrow is not all bad!
She’s an active philanthropist, and has generously donated to causes such as cancer research and food banks. She also serves on the board of The Robin Hood Foundation, an initiative aiming to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City.
She was one of the first women to help reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey in their investigation of Hollywood producer and sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.
Why? Because she too had been a victim of Weinstein when she auditioned for her breakout role in 1996’s Emma. (And yes, she had to audition, despite her “nepo baby” status as the daughter of television producer Bruce Paltrow and actor Blythe Danner).
As for that SNAP challenge? Sure, she “failed,” I guess, depending on how you define failure. How would you do if you only had $29 to spend on food in a week? Maybe you could, but a lot of people couldn’t.
Paltrow fully owned her “failure,” by the way, and wrote that the challenge “forever altered” her perspective and that the food system needs to be revised so that everyone has access to fresh, healthy food.
And what about that listing on AirBnB? It’s just a cash grab, right? Or a publicity stunt.
Well, according to her tour video on Instagram, it was in fact AirBnB who reached out, asking “unexpected hosts to create shared experiences and connections” in an attempt to alleviate our ever-growing epidemic of loneliness.
Seth Rogen did a similar thing in February, and Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis are now jumping on board as well.
We didn’t know that, though, did we?
Nah. It’s a lot more fun to hate Paltrow and assume the worst about her.
But… again, why?
Honestly, I’ve never quite understood it. Is it because she’s a woman? Is because we’re jealous?
We hate Jeff Bezos too, but that guy tried to shoot himself to the moon. We’re also not crazy about Elon Musk, but he’s awful to his employees, writes mean tweets, and seems to be a misogynist.
Perhaps we just enjoy hating successful people in general. Especially if they do horrible things like naming their kids after a fruit.
But here’s a question: Paltrow was dragged in the media for giving her kids “wacky” names. But guess who named their daughter?
Yep, her husband.
Hey, it’s apples for thought.
Don’t like Paltrow? Good news! You can (gasp!) just ignore her!
I was having lunch with a friend a while back when the subject of Paltrow came up.
“Oh, her,” my friend said. “Didn’t she crash into some guy on a ski hill and then sue him for a bunch of money?”
Um, no, she didn’t, in fact. Terry Sanderson, an ophthalmologist who claims that Paltrow crashed into him on a ski hill, sued her for $300 000, and she countersued for $1. The judge ruled in her favour.
But we’re not going to let a little thing like the facts get in the way of our perception of Paltrow, are we? Where’s the fun in that?
We want to keep hating her.
I’m not sure why. (Maybe it’s misogyny, or maybe it’s Maybelline).I’m also not sure why we spend so much energy on her, especially if we hate her?
Why can’t we just leave her alone?
We don’t have to buy her crap, watch her movies or use her cookbooks. We don’t have to follow her on Instagram, and we certainly don’t have to rent her AirBnB.
We can just ignore her and let her do her thing and not bother commenting on it.
Because even if she comes from Hollywood royalty and is beautiful and a little out of touch (okay, even if she’s a lot out of touch), she has every right to earn a living.
She also has every right to name her children what she wants and to eat as she pleases. She has every right to open her home for one evening to guests who can afford it and would like to stay there.
She has every right to be successful.
Maybe we could look past our jealousy or misogyny or whatever is going on here and just admire her for her success and her philanthropy and her warmth and her humour. (Newsflash: She’s actually pretty funny and swears like a sailor, by the way. Don’t believe me? Check her out on Armchair Expert or Smartless for a fun listen.)
Or we don’t have to. We don’t have to like her or pay attention to her.
We don’t have to buy her $86 candles if we don’t want to.
Or we can if we want to. And if they make our houses smell nice and maybe even make us feel a little more beautiful and successful and Paltrow-like for an hour out of our day, what’s the harm in that?
None. Because Paltrow isn’t hurting anyone.
But do stay away from those yoni eggs.