When you’re a Goop-ert (what Goop newsletter devotees call themselves, I would think), your days are likely filled with a packed schedule of facial and vaginal steaming, several hours of vegetable chopping and zoodling, followed by an evening of sipping alkaline water out of a wine glass while cradling a jade egg in your perineum. It’s an exhausting life, but a full one, and yet still—something’s off.
According to Goop, that something isn’t caused by the crushing sameness of everyday wealth; it’s actually due to to a vitamin deficiency. Any fucking vitamin—you don’t have enough of it. So, they launched something called Goop Wellness: four curated vitamin packs designed to treat a variety of symptoms related to being alive that mindful douching just can’t fix.
“We enlisted our M.D.’s—Western doctors who bring a functional, Eastern approach to their practices—to create curated vitamin regimens to address the most common problems of ourselves and our readers,” the newsletter questionably explains. It continues:
“There have been other pieces of content that have really resonated with our readers—postnatal depletion, adrenal fatigue, medical mysteries—that point to the fact that there’s an epidemic where many women, in particular, don’t feel well. And we all operate with this as status quo. “Of course I don’t feel well, I have toddlers. Of course I don’t feel well, I have a stressful job. Of course I don’t feel well, I’m going through a divorce.” These are just the realities of being a modern woman: Many of us are raising kids in isolation, without a village of support; many of us are working more than FT jobs while still trying to make dinner and be good partners—and flagellating ourselves when we don’t do it all perfectly. These expectations are, in total, unrealistic, but here we are with them. At the very least, we believe that we can use science and technology and herbology to help address that delta and get us to optimal health.
If I were to helm an influential lifestyle newsletter and zine, I might recommend another set of cures for these problems like: wait for your toddler to grow up and go to college; do your job or find a less stressful one; feel sad about your divorce, and then feel a little less sad. But what do I know? I am, by Goop standards, both poor and stupid.
The actual offered Protocols are available for $90 for one month and $240 for three. They are:
Why Am I So Effing Tired?:
No matter how much sleep I get, I still feel exhausted.
This vitamin pack is said to help with adrenal fatigue, a pseudoscientific term applied to a collection of symptoms including body aches, fatigue, nervousness, and trouble sleeping—in other words, how it feels to be alive. Adrenal fatigue can’t be treated, largely because it isn’t a thing, but this pack throws a bunch of the B vitamins at the problem.
High School Genes:
My body isn’t responding to diet and exercise the way it used to.
A pack for peri- and postmenopausal women who “feel like their metabolism might be slowing down.” A message to these women: It is.
Balls in the Air:
I’m running full-steam ahead—and have no intention of slowing down.
This pack has a bunch of antioxidants, including beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E. This actually sounds pretty healthy, if it weren’t for the hefty price tag. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a discounted version? Oh wait, there is: any bell pepper.
The Mother Load:
Motherhood is amazing, but pregnancy is taxing, in every sense of the word—I’m wiped out, and worry that I’ll never recover.
You really should take prenatal vitamins, but I’d probably ask my doctor to recommend which ones, instead of a website that also asks, “Could this hair treatment change your life?”
But who am I to tell a woman how to live her life? Especially if she could buy me? To future consumers I say: go with God, may your protocol fill you with enough energy to figure out a cure for my upsetting addiction to pictures of politicians in shorts.