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Marianne Williamson Hasn’t Even Locked the Goop Vote
How Gwyneth Paltrow and the 2020 presidential race’s most (in)famous mystic are monetizing our anxiety
By the time Marianne Williamson took the stage at the In Goop Health summit in November, I’d had my face depuffed twice. On the floor of Goop Hall, a sage- and eucalyptus-scented showroom with giant windows framing the San Francisco skyline, a sales associate cheerily sold me a $45 jade face roller. In a skincare masterclass later that day, Gwyneth Paltrow’s personal facialist pointed at me — the only man in an audience of 60 — and said I was holding too much tension in my jaw. “I’m a Leo, I’m Greek, and I will kick your butt,” she said. My classmates burst out laughing as a Goop attendant handed me a warm face towel.
Which is all to say that, when Williamson finally sat down for her fireside chat with Paltrow, my face felt puffier than ever.
Heading into the weekend, Williamson seemed a natural fit to speak before the Goop summit. The author of 13 self-help books, Williamson is running (and yes, she is still running for the 2020 Democratic nomination) on a platform of love. Not universal healthcare. Not gun control. Not immigration reform. Her entire platform consists of a feeling: one that philosophers and pop singers have struggled to define for millennia.
After the first presidential debate this summer, many on Twitter likened Williamson’s wacky spiritualism to Goop. The two seemed locked in the same rose gold box: wellness brands built less on fact than belief, lifestyle gurus who monetize the trappings of wellness more than actual well-being.
I came to the Goop summit to see if the synergy was real.
Paltrow has leveraged her 11-year-old empire, worth $250 million, into a wellness roadshow for the rich and vaguely spiritual. Tickets began at $1,000 per person (some had paid $2,500 for exclusive perks, like a pre-summit wellness workshop with Paltrow herself). Over 200 women were gathered at a reclaimed Ford assembly plant in Richmond, on the East Bay, along with maybe three husbands and me. After knocking back macrobiotic smoothies, we were admitted to Paltrow’s wellness sanctuary: a cavernous space accommodating energy-clearing…
