That has come to my attention GOOP, Gwyneth Paltrow’s welfare propaganda empire, has branched out into the wild and woolly world of sexual “well-being”, go beyond the vagina egg and more frankly, sex toys that look like artifacts and not at all the way they should.
The GOOP vibrator, which is currently out of stock, costs $ 95 and resembles a stylized ice cream cone. According to the site’s description, it’s double-sided: the tempting scoop of gelato at the end is a ‘wonder ball magic wand, delivering vibrations for external stimulation, while the other end is the part that goes up in it, to use the clinical term. The thing looks like an excited Hitachi wand, but also looks like something they would sell The wing, that’s the first red flag. The second, larger and more vibrant flag is that, according to Ms. Goop herself, the vibrator is meant to be “intellectual.”
Paltrow said this in an interview with the New York Times around the launch of this item. The reason she’s launched a vibrator now is in part because of the pandemic, and so on because sex toys are always selling, and because not everyone has or wants to spend $ 15,000 on one solid gold dildo, the consumer-friendly price of this thing could work in their favor. Since the item is sold out, I think so! Here’s the old girl herself, with an explanation:
Why a vibrator now?
For a lot of people – not you and not me – a vibrator is still considered quite a snappy thing. That has clearly changed a lot in the past ten years. Yet people are triggered by sexual content or triggered by their own sexuality. Women don’t learn any particular language and how to express what we want. We are not good at being vulnerable about our own sexuality.
I think contrary to “Why a vibrator now?” it’s kind of like, “How can we make a vibrator that helps keep reducing the stigma around that stuff?”
Talk about the design.
So many vibrators look hypersexualized. They are either really phallic or they look like something you would buy in a sex shop. I was really intrigued by the idea that this would be something that looked really pretty and cool, and that you could leave it on your nightstand without embarrassing yourself or anyone else. There is something very peculiar about that.
Explain?
I think we were just trying to do something … maybe a little bit more intellectual.
Everything else in this interview is the same kind of porridge you’d expect from a vibrator that looks like your mom is picking it up and asking you what it is like when you leave it on the kitchen table as part of an interior design tableau you were at work . Because the vibrator looks like one adornment instead of something you use to fuck yourself before bed, that means it “destigmatizes” masturbation. It’s also got the skeevy sex shop associations that lost, say, the rabbit, as its curved edges and brass accents scream ‘West Elm’ instead of ‘crotchless panty emporium off Central Ave in White Plains near the Burger King.’ Sex toys that look like things you would be ‘proud’ of to display on your dresser or Lucite waterfall coffee table or whatever are not new – it’s just that Paltrow isn’t groundbreaking in the way she thinks she is.
Other companies like Lelo have been producing vibrators and sex toys that don’t look like bachelorette parties for a minute now, so that point is neither here nor there. My bigger problem with the Goop sex toy is my problem with all the sex toys that look like rolling little blobs are dumb. A sex toy should it looks like it’s from a sex shop because that’s half the fun. The Rabbit vibrator is good because it is good, but it is also good because it looks like a purple alien with “pearls” in its shaft and it is something you might have to laugh about when you look at it, and it is ok tuck away in your underwear drawer when you’re done. I want the thing you use to bone yourself to look ‘nice’ in case it’s on the table when someone comes over, but why the hell would you want it to look? so nice that someone would pick it up and touch it with their hands? I don’t care if anyone knows I’m masturbating, but I don’t want other people touching my shit unless they’re going to be REDACTED and we’re already talking about what that REDACTED is.
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A sex toy is dumb by nature! It is literally a resource. There is nothing special about a toy that attaches herself towards your clitoris and suck it like a small lollipop. There’s also nothing intellectual about Goop’s Hitachi knock-off. Does the sex toy read Proust? Have you been forced to pass a lecture on Marxism while just trying to rub one out and eat some Sun Chips? Let the sex toys just be what they should be, and for the love of God, leave the intellect out of here for once!