Given she's very successfully marketed a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina, it's a surprise to learn that actor and supposed wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't actually know what a vagina is.
It's one of the few learnings to be found in Paltrow's Netflix series, The Goop Lab, ashow that sets out to explore alternative healing methods and bring the Goop lifestyle empire to an even larger global audience.
Considering Goop's the type of company that sells something called Psychic Vampire Repellent (which can be yours for just $41), I expected this TV spin-off to be packed to the gunnels with bonkers material. Instead, it features a ground-breaking 30 minutes of television that could do wonders for women's sexual health. Although you have to wade through a lot of tat – and a couple of episodes of complete quackery – to get there.
Each of the series' chapters follows the same format. Paltrow and Goop's chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, sit down with a couple of experts to discuss whatever alternative healing is the focus of that particular episode. There's plenty of earnest nodding of heads, even when the information being shared makes absolutely no sense at all.
Then Goop's employees take part in those healing treatments, whether it's yoga in the snow, learning how to masturbate, or hopping on a plane to Jamaica to take magic mushrooms. (I know. I'd love to see Goop's employment contracts, too. The "expected duties" part sounds... wide-ranging.)
There's little in the way of any fact-checking about any of the therapies being "investigated". Each episode might start with the disclaimer that the show's "designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical advice", but that feels like mere lip service to appease nervous lawyers.
However, plenty of The Goop Lab's chosen therapies are already becoming more common practice in some parts of society – such as fasting or Wim Hof's breathing and cold exposure theories.
Even the highlighting of psychedelics in the first episode is far from controversial, given such psychedelic-assisted therapies have been granted "breakthrough status" by America's Food and Drug Administration. Although any semblance of scientific respectability rather goes out the window when members of the Goop team head to Jamaica to try psychedelics together.
"Unlike the clinical trials, we're doing this in a more ceremonial setting," says Loehnen, as three 'psychedelic elders' tell her and her colleagues to "be with the spirit of the mushroom".
But that's nothing compared to the energy healing discussed in episode five, where Loehnen claims to experience an "exorcism". Then everything goes well and truly off the rails when medium and psychic Laura Lynne Jackson is also invited on to the show to run a series of "psychic toolbox" workshops with Goop staff. In what looks like the worst team building exercise ever, they all try to "beam love" at their colleagues via their outstretched hands.
But, as tempting as it is, we shouldn't write The Goop Lab off completely – because its third episode is an absolute blinder.
Titled The Pleasure is Ours, it addresses women's sexual wellness and the importance in dismantling the taboos around that – and it does this so effectively, it sticks out like a vaginal barbell amongst The Goop Lab's other wishy-washy content.
Ninety-year-old sex educator Betty Dodson makes Paltrow blush while talking about female sexual pleasure and also bluntly points out that the Goop CEO doesn't know the difference between the vulva and the vagina (which is probably something to think about the next time she advises anyone to steam it or stick a jade egg up there).
And just in case anybody else isn't so sure what a vulva is, the episode offers up a parade of them in various shapes and sizes.
It all becomes patently obvious that Netflix has made a series with the wrong person.
Betty Dodson's approach might not be for everybody (I know I'm not signing up for genital show-and-tell any time soon), but she is the sole star of the entire series with the hilarious, straight-talking manner in which she directs women – including Goop accountant Lexi – in how to explore their bodies.
So, do yourselves a favour and skip the rest of The Goop Lab. And then petition Netflix to give Dodson the call-up for the TV show women actually need in 2020.
