On Gwyneth Paltrow

"She’s like some latter day-oracle. She’s like Santa Claus."

Art: Austin Blake Mays

January 4, 2021

Brooklyn, New York

I was 27 years old

Lo, a new year. And what’s the passing of a year without my annual publication of one (1) piece of writing. Started noticing a new online mag called Cultural Fan Fiction sometime in the fall. Mostly because of the people contributing to it. Each new piece written by another bonafide fixture of Hip ‘n’ Successful Twitter. Stephen Phillips-Horst, the beloved Brynn Wallner, Michael Cuby, Ryan O’Connell. A bizarrely impressive roster of writers for a site that seemingly popped up out of nowhere. But feeling like those just might be birds of a feather for me, I tracked down an email and pitched a fan fiction of my own—one in which Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna bury their decade-long hatchet or, at the very least, make an attempt.

I sent that pitch mid-November and the editor, a deeply sweet guy named Marshall who isn’t gay but might as well be, followed up pretty promptly. Saying that their pieces for December, their pieces for that “season,” were pretty set in stone but that I could expect to hear back from them sometime later on. And, indeed, I did—about three days later. Marshall reaches out, saying we should go forward with the M v. GP piece after all. He asked on a Thursday at 3:00 p.m. if I could get it to him by Saturday. Eek.

I’d provided a pretty detailed pitch—of Gwyneth inviting Madonna over to her home to catch up, per Apple’s Gen Z-informed fourth wave feminism, what with Madonna living in LA to write her biopic with Diablo Cody and all. So I had a pre-approved road map, really, of exactly where I should go with it, making the writing slightly less daunting. What with how out-of-practice I’d like to think I am—despite what I’m doing at this exact moment. And it was fun. To get up so early and caffeinate and get hopped up and write about something I’m so into, to write from the perspective of women I love so much, who I feel I understand so keenly.

Did research in the form of watching and listening to some filmed interviews with Madonna and with Gwyneth, though it really wasn’t necessary. It’s written from Gwyn’s point of view. Of course. Madonna just too superhuman for that to be a possibility. Also, I’m not naive enough to think “Madonna” has more clickability than “Gwyneth Paltrow.” People either sincerely love or love to sincerely loathe GP in—sadly—a more modern and wide-reaching capacity than Madonna. Thinking about it now, what does it say about me that I’m so attracted to women who prove so universally contemptible?

Finished the piece with a minor conflict between the two blonds, an allusion to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and a final tableau of Gwyn and Madonna working out together, looking at one another in the mirrored wall of Gwyneth’s at-home gym: “two blonds arching their legs and engaging their cores, right in time with one another, an immaculate collection. If she didn’t know any better, Gwyneth just might think she was looking at two very good friends.” Revelatory, if you ask me.

I titled it “Exile in Goopville.” The piece was originally slated for publication on my birthday, which felt heavensent, but was pushed to December 1st, which was fine. Rabbit rabbit. Cultural Fan Fiction doesn’t publish their pieces till 7:00 p.m. which seemed a little puzzling—but then again, that was exactly when I’d always shared my Over the Rainbow columns to Facebook back in the day. And while we’re actively comparing, based on how little engagement my Madonna/Gwyneth piece got right from the very jump, it would appear that I am indeed over the rainbow. Of course, I have a much smaller following than the previous contributors so that was already a factor working against me. But it just wasn’t making any traction. As hard as I tried to tweet the piece with something clever accompanying it and retweeting Marshall’s valiant efforts to get it moving, still—nada.

And I’d be remiss not to explain that mere minutes, seconds even, after I first tweeted about “Exile in Goopville,” Spotify dropped “2020 Wrapped” unto its masses. The yearly opportunity for me to feel like an entirely irrelevant loser, repeatedly punished for my decision some fateful day in 2015 to be an Apple Music user. Something so Larry Davidian about it all. So deeply poetic that every Spotify listener would take to Twitter to post screenshots of their most-listened-tos at the same exact moment that I, a lowly Apple Music user, was trying my hardest to get people to read my little made-up story about Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. Nothing more than a coincidence, of course, but one that felt all too easily like the universe cackling directly in my face.

September 29, 2021

Brooklyn, New York

I am 27 years old

In the seminal 1990 documentary Paris is Burning—which legally can’t ever be referenced as anything other than “the seminal 1990 documentary Paris is Burning”—ball performer Venus Xtravaganza says, and famously, “I would like to be a spoiled, rich white girl.” And in a 2012 appearance on the less-than-seminal daytime cooking show The Chew, when asked if Goop could go by any other name, Gwyneth Paltrow says, “Umm...spoiled-white-rich-girl-dot-com?” And while I could really tie this all together with the fact that Brad Falchuk, Mr. Gwyneth Paltrow himself, is the co-creator of a certain program on FX that’s just like Paris is Burning but if the people behind Kidz Bop called all the shots, I’ll avoid the temptation to be obvious. Because the joke’s not on him. The joke, and I feel so certain about this, is Gwyneth’s own.

I was in the break room at work a couple weeks ago when I alluded to my “semi-ironic attachment to Gwyneth Paltrow.” How I managed to bring this up among my colleagues at a history museum, God only knows. But it was a self-descriptor that prompted a coworker to say just how much I confuse her, how difficult it is to glean whether or not I actually like GP. “Mission accomplished,” I smirked. Recalling all this to Austin later that same night, I said the words “semi-ironic” and he entirely rolled his eyes. Because the attachment isn’t semi-ironic. It isn’t semi-anything. I guess it arguably began as a joke, a couple years back when I first started attaching photos of her looking bemused or shocked or self-satisfied to my tweets about—for example—“finally facing my Waterloo.” But soon enough, I wasn’t just paying my attention to the ever-increasing archive of Gwyneth Paltrow photos in my camera roll—I was listening to her podcast on my commute. I was spending $125, before taxes and shipping, on a 1.7-ounce jar of Goop Microderm Instant Facial. I was finding a tender, redeeming, deeply human performance at the heart of Shallow Hal. Sincerely, I began to love Gwyneth Paltrow.

And it takes an obvious kind of thinker to hate her. Of course, on the poreless, exfoliated surface, there’s polarizing takes on wellness and a (projected!) air of snobbishness and comments over the years like “I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin.” A too-expensive brand conceptualized by such an unabashedly wealthy person that, for the average philistine, amounts to well-warranted contempt. To that, I say, “Zzzzzz.” Because imagine Gwyneth had gone the usual route of celebrity branding, collaborating on a line with some anchor tenant department store, cutting all the necessary corners to keep things profitable only to create a product that she’d rather, well, smoke crack than use. It’d be far more condescending for someone like Gwyn to shill something “accessible,” to lie about the merits of a polyblend when all she’s ever known is silk.

What’s missing from the most common assessments of her character—what’s missing from most every cultural conversation du jour, really—is that maybe Gwyneth is in on a joke. There’s this thing about her that’s most evident when she’s listening to someone. An observation rooted in the countless interviews with her I’ve watched but it’s there, and undeniably, for anyone who chooses to notice it. Very intently, Gwyneth will look in the eyes of her interviewer, nodding with all the learned active listening skills of a self-appointed CEO, her entire face engaged aerobically into this closed-mouth smile. It’s all-knowing. Like that fault that’s supposed to spit California into the sea someday, her sealed lips are like these tectonic plates, giving way any possible moment to a shit-grinning cackle at some cosmic punchline. Impervious to her critics and godly to her followers, she’s like some latter day-oracle. “She’s like Santa Claus”—as someone personally close to Gwyneth once told me, though I’ll never say who. Because while any beautiful person can glow, Gwyneth twinkles.

It doesn’t make much sense, as far as my own brand is concerned, to love Gwyneth Paltrow. There’s the running theme of my adoration of maligned famous women, yes, but that’s just a guaranteed feature of homosexual hardware. I’m someone who looks at life through such a Catholic lens, idolizing, say, Madonna for her tragic childhood, her penniless arrival to New York City. I’m someone who’s found such refuge and identity in all my tiny bedrooms and part-time paychecks. Feeling so very virtuous in all the pleasure and luxury I’ve denied myself. But I’m no stronger than that desire to be “a spoiled, rich white girl.” It’s a dream of Venus Xtravaganza that seems so tongue-in-cheek when she’s talking about her bridge-and-tunnel johns in front of shrubbery growing out of a plot littered with Colt 45s. And it’s a dream that feels so devastating when she’s alone in the quiet afternoon of her bedroom, stuffed animals propped against the wall ever just so, telling us, “I want a car, I want to be with the man I love, I want a nice home away from New York, somewhere far—where no one knows me.” There was never going to be any affording this lifestyle but at least fantasy is free.