Boug’ & Confused: The Scoop On Goop’s Docuseries
By: Gfc, Grown Folk Conversations
Tags: Race, Gentrification, Healing, Womens Sexuality, Goop

A Case Study On Gentrified Tribalism: The Intro Analysis

Boug’ & Confused: The Scoop On Goop’s Docuseries

A Netflix show review

/Photo by Antonika Chanel on Unsplash

Please read with an open mind and open heart. This is an attempt to point out some blind spots and hopefully open a positive and productive dialogue about what we see, accept and need to change.

The Back Story

This piece is not about Gwyneth Paltrow, As a matter of fact, I like her calm vibe and her story. She’s a smart, sophisticated, highly successful CEO of the luxury lifestyle brand, Goop. She’s also a second-generation actress who “consciously uncoupled” with her multimillion-dollar rocker ex and married another wealthy, handsome guy a few years later. What bougie woman wouldn’t want her rich, hipster life? She seems like she has it all: beauty, brains and a sense of humor and business savvy to turn her ironically silly and pretentiously named company, Goop into a $250 million media and wellness empire.

She seems laid back and too rich to be bothered to even raise her voice at people, but she’d have her assistant do it…because at the end of the day she has to protect her image. She is the quintessential embodiment of American beauty, power and privilege. She has money, power and respect (Lil Kim) and brought Goop’s high end brand to Netflix.

Gooplab has a docuseries and it’s interesting — I’m still not sure if I’m going to cover all of the episodes, but I’ve watched 4 out of the 6 thus far and it got my wheels turning. This series will serve as a case study and examination of gentrified tribalism — privileged people’s obsession, fascination and appropriation of Black, brown and indigenous traditions and rituals.

I’m writing about this to hopefully open dialogue because this issue isn’t harmless regardless of intent. Gentrification in any form misinforms and misguides, but most importantly it revises histories and erases and dismisses displaces the indigenous people and cultures that created and inspires “new”, whitewashed, versions of life/community. In this case, it’s sacred healing and spiritual practices. In more simplistic terms — it’s whiteness’ love of tribalism that kills it… It’s privileged people in — Black and brown spaces and places taking our sacred words, work and movements and saying, “gimme, you don’t know what to do with that______, I do”, they rebrand, monetize and price us out to help and “heal” the people that hurt and ignore us…

I don’t know if Goop is guilty of this — but this docuseries and some of the experts don’t demonstrate a high level of cultural competence or appreciation.

The Promo: Inclusion Illusion

The 30-second promo showed 11 scenes with Black or brown women, one of which wasn’t a Goop staffer. She was the phlebotomist who came to Goop to take blood for their bougie blood tests (where the average person would have to go to a lab and couldn’t afford the $500–2000 fees). They showed her as if she was part of the Goop family in scrubs. This is problematic in that I saw no more than 5 individual Black and other (POC) people of color in the 4 episodes. In terms of diversity in aesthetics, outside of the two tokenized, plus-sized, Black women (who were not staff), I didn’t see one overweight or unattractive person. The series is a parade of thin, attractive, young (looking) predominately white privileged people. As an older, working-class, plus-sized, disabled woman of color — I didn’t see many identifiable intersections. So if you’re the trifecta of un-American beauty: non-white, fat and old + lower class — I guess you’re SOL.

Innovation versus appropriation

I enjoyed the healing and sex education episodes mostly because I like to learn. The episode on healing was informative, but had a blatant dismissive tone to the healing practices. They worked with an organization led by a white man and featured an ethnic looking, but Americanized man who was “trained” by this organization. One of the two racially ambiguous (non-Black) men in the episode said that the lack of connection to spirit is a problem in western culture. This infuriated me because:

It implied and perpetuated the myth that Western culture is white and Black and Brown people are not part nor contributed anything to the culture In perpetuating that myth, you negate every Black and brown culture’s spiritual practices and traditions within the community and in the Christian churches

Black and brown people have always used communal, and cultural traditions to ground and bond us together. They strengthen us and give us a firm foundation as an individual and collective. When Black and brown people began to break away from our communities and our communal, spiritual and healing rituals to assimilate to white “western culture” we lost our way… But it’s not all or nothing we can maintain our own cultural identity and while appreciating others…

I think there’s also room for both traditional and non-traditional medicine and healing practices especially when there’s a serious physical or mental illness. I’ve personally seen how they can create better outcomes and long term holistic healing.

Rock Of Ages

This episode was also challenging because of my love and respect for my elders. It featured a funny, feisty 90-year-old white woman, Ms. Betty Dodson who created the Betty Dodson Method of rocking your pelvis back and forth to achieve orgasm. Well, Ms. Betty I think you forgot about the millions of Black and brown women all across the African diaspora (that includes my Latina sistas) and some Asian & Pacific Island sisters, too who have innately, rhythmically rock their pelvises/hips on the dancefloor and in the bedroom for thousands of years.

Now Ms. Dodson’s “method” is specifically for self-pleasure and masturbation purposes, but I can assure you I am a quasi Christian prude and no one ever told me that’s how to move my body when I’m aroused — but my body knew… I was too ashamed to even touch or look at myself until my late 20’s… And for THIS reason — I appreciated this episode. It was educational and funny and addressed the universal shame, stigma and ignorance about women’s genitalia and sexuality.

Now as an African American/Black woman I am not as close to my African roots as my African, Carribean, or Afro Latina sistas — so I didn’t grow up knowing how to do the Chakacha which is similar to the Jamaican whine — but I learned some moves in college to add to my natural movement (I’ll elaborate in my next piece)…

Once again, another white “expert” either doesn’t know, forgot or chose to ignore millions of Black and Brown women that naturally know how to “rock their pelvis”. You mean to tell me that in all her 90 years she’s never seen a belly dancer, hula dancer, Latina, Black, African and island sister dance and didn’t get inspired or want to move like her — with all due respect -stop playing Miss Betty.

The Goop Scoop

Shows like this docuseries and featured “experts” are not “bad” per say because I don’t think the intention is to dismiss and appropriate — but it’s so ingrained in American culture that I think they are culturally color blind and deaf… If your life is whiteness and 99% of the people who love and support you look like you and/or those who aren’t are either too powerful to care (fellow celebrities and moguls), under your employ or have no power — how else would you know otherwise. Unless people like Gwyneth make a conscious decision to be culturally competent, aware and inclusive — nothing is going to change. This is a big ask and expectation — that would require her to be REALLY uncomfortable and face her personal and professional implicit and explicit biases. This means rocking a big, beautiful white boat of power of privilege that can be messy and petty and that — honestly doesn’t seem to be aligned with Goop’s brand nor her personal mission.

However, when you have someone who is as intelligent and resourceful as Gwyneth Paltrow be the name and face of a project, approve a promo with 11 shots of women of color and not have not one fat, Black/Latina or unattractive person in her core leadership circle or the fact that your first episode didn’t acknowledge or honor the culture, traditions and rituals her white experts have appropriated — that’s not ok. The knowledge and power of indigenous healers have can’ be taught, translated or interpreted…Opting to go to white experts versus the source is perpetuating privilege.

In her defense, Goop was not created for the average working or middle class, Black or brown person. It was honestly and organically created for people like Gywneth — rich, thin, beautiful, blonde-haired, privilege women and to be honest — that is okay. Goop is a high end, lifestyle brand and she has to source and price things for her target demographic. Yet, it’s not ok to create content for the masses on a platform like Netflix and not use what little diverse staff she has to vet her work through their lens of intersectionality and get real feedback. That’s a blind spot and a design flaw…

Once again, as an average-looking, fat, Black woman, I didn’t see ANY consistent representation of my intersections… Perhaps if Netflix had prescreened this docuseries with their diverse viewer pool — they would have caught some of the diversity and appropriation issues. Maybe this piece will help the Goop team see the tokenism and absence of body diversity and ask themselves why. Maybe she would see how her promo can be perceived as misleading by highlighting Black and brown people to hide Goop’s lack of diversity. This is why the first episode was the most problematic. It made a huge visual statement of unapologetic privilege.

It was uncomfortable watching a group of all-white Goop staffers go to Jamaica where another old white woman and two men used watered down, sacred rituals from brown people that they barely acknowledged. It felt like they needed to add “a little diversity” to their all-white episode so they stuck a plus-size Black woman in one of the segments to some color and body positivity to the mix. In the beach frolic scene, they could have had at least shown some people from Jamaica, but most beaches are “operated” by private resorts that charge high fees. Jamaican citizens have limited access to their own beaches. So it’s another scene with all white people in a Black country ignoring and refusing to acknowledge how their power and privilege contributes to the global oppression...

It reminds when my WM boss was asked about diversity. He said, “I’m never going to use a list to checkmark if I have one Black, one Asian, one Latino, etc. to show my dedication to diversity”. At first, I was offended, but after watching this docuseries, I get it! I kind of agree with him. As a Black woman, I don’t want to be a checkmark to fill a diversity void.

This is purely speculative based on the first episode — but I kept wondering why didn’t any of Goop’s Black or brown staff go to Jamaica, but opted to jump in freezing cold water in another episode. It didn’t make sense unless…Goop may be a nice place to work and pays well, but it’s still not a safe space for Black and Brown people to be vulnerable. If Goop is like most neoliberal, hipster companies — the white leaders and staff microaggressively remind Black and other POC that they did us a favor or should be praised because they took a chance on us despite their perceptions of our lesser identities- be it: bigger, browner, from a lower-income, uneducated, etc. regardless of our realities, self-identities or intersectionalities. The healing episode required a level of trust and connection that’s hard to establish in white spaces without some trouble or trauma for Black and brown people.

This is a message for Goop and any other bougie brands who want to embark on similar reality-based projects. Fresh eyes and perspectives will see it… Please tokenize and don’t start a victim campaign… As I stated, nobody thinks Gwyneth or Goop intentionally slighted any group — nor is this a cancellation call. Goop’s docuseries like EVERY human-led endeavor it has some bias and now that it’s literally out for the whole world to see — I just think they could use the “lab” to find out why — and fix it… Or just be ok being complacent, complicit and getting blasted for it…I just think Goop can and should do better -because it’s a good look and it promotes equity, inclusion and wellness for all — not just for the privileged few…