Gwyneth Paltrow—purveyor of $15,000 gold dildos and sex-dust smoothies—is back at it again with another oozing spoonful of Goop for your sex life. Ladies, it turns out that the key to life is sticking a jade egg up your “Yoni.”
In the latest Goop newsletter, Paltrow turns to jade egg-veteran Shiva Rose for the 411 on all of the amazing things that putting a $66 piece of jade up your hooha can do for you.
“Fans say regular use increases chi, orgasms, vaginal muscle tone, hormonal balance, and feminine energy in general,” Goop advises, boasting that the eggs “were once the strictly guarded secret of Chinese concubines and royalty in antiquity.” Rose recommends ladies sleep with their stone eggs in, and even walk around with them, which will magically make you appear more attractive. Basically, it’s kegels meets healing crystals meets some nightmare scenario where you have to live life with a rock stuck up your ladybits.
Unsurprisingly, though, actual doctors are calling bullshit on Paltrow’s pseudoscientific advice.
“A lot of things here are concerning,”said Jen Gunter, a San Francisco OB/GYN. “For one, this is a porous rock you’re putting in there, not medical-grade silicon, and who knows what bacteria can lodge in those nooks and crannies. Then there’s also this magical belief that putting something inside you can do something to your aura or chi.”
After reading the Goop interview with Rose, Gunter penned a takedown of the jade eggs. (Which are, by the way, now sold out on Goop, which was also of course selling them.)
“I’m always concerned about the erosion of science,” she told Gizmodo.
Gunter, whose practice specializes in pelvic floor disorders and infectious disease, said it’s not just that Paltrow is peddling pseudoscientific eastern mysticism—it’s actually bad medical advice.
If you really wanted to strengthen your vagina’s pelvic floor, for example, Gunter said that sleeping with a weight down there or walking around with it inside of you won’t do the trick. The key, she said, is exercises to tighten and relax the muscles. Keeping an egg up there, she said, could actually do the reverse and damage those muscles.
“People keep telling me that this is eastern medicine practiced for centuries, so how could it be bad?” she said. “But there are a lot of ‘ancient’ practices we now know are bad. I’d rather my science be biologically plausible.”
The best practice, probably, is to avoid getting your health advice from Gwyneth Paltrow. In the past, she’s doled out equally suspect advice on tampons, vaginal steaming and toxic lube. And that’s just Goop’s vagina-themed pseudoscience bullshit.
“There doesn’t seem to be much good science on Goop,” said Gunter. “It’s what I like to call Snake Oil Bingo.”