'The Goop Lab' Is Just 'Jackass' for Girls

This morning, I awoke to the news that someone had made a $100 penis-scented candle called “This Smells Like My Penis.” Panicked, I scanned my room, hoping to spot a foreign object or feel an unfamiliar texture that might wake me from what I prayed was just a horrible lucid nightmare. But no. I wasn’t dreaming. The dick with a wick was real.

Inspired by Goop’s $75 vagina-scented candle of a similar name, the “This Smells Like My Penis” candle costs an extra $25 because… feminism, apparently. A rep for Taxi, the Canadian ad agency behind the abomination, told Insider that they raised the price on their candle in order to call attention to the gender wage gap and how women make 75 cents to every man’s dollar. OK but honestly? It’s just a dick candle. It’s a bro-y joke trafficking in bro-y humor to get free PR and maybe sell a few overpriced candles.

Then it hit me: Gwyneth Paltrow is no different. Her vagina-scented candle might be dressed up in the same chic aesthetic as the rest of the lifestyle wares Goop peddles, but it’s still just a candle that smells like a vagina—or at least jokes about smelling like a vagina in order to get Goop stans to shell out $75 for it. Replace the minimalist label with sans serif lettering with Papyrus and Webdings, and what have you got? A candle that basically says “lol this pussy STINKS”—a dumbass gag gift I could’ve bought at Spencer Gifts in 2003!

Really. Think about it for a moment. What is a neon pink Hott Love dildo by any other name? It’s the Vesper Vibrating Necklace, available in 24-karat gold-plated steel for $149. What’s the difference between Gwyneth’s vagina-scented candle and a box of penis pasta from Spencer’s? You can eat the penis pasta. That’s it. The end. Fin. Even Paltrow herself admitted that the whole candle thing is just a big joke during her Seth Meyers appearance two nights ago.

Once you realize Goop is basically bro humor for a certain type of woman likely to buy a $3,000 geode to use as a side table in her intentionally sparse Silver Lake home, it’s not a big leap to seeing The Goop Lab, Paltrow’s new TV show that hit Netflix on Friday, as Jackass for rich ladies. Sure, she’s not bear-macing her friends just to feel alive, but she is making them dive into subzero lakes and chemically peeling her face just to feel pReSeNt. She’s not stuffing Hot Wheels in condoms and shoving them up her ass for shock value (that we know of), but she did crawl up a bunch of very vaginal visuals to promote her new show, which, the trailer tells us, will feature plenty of body cavity content (i.e., looking at your vagina with a mirror).

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t watch Gwyneth’s bro show for girls—I’m obviously going to binge the whole thing the second VICE releases me from its open-plan office clutches. Just don’t delude yourself, babe! Goop and The Goop Lab are just Spencer Gifts and Jackass for the ladies who lunch (and/or steam their vaginas).

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