Witch, Please.
Unless you’ve been living under a giant jade egg, you’re probably aware that Gwyneth Paltrow and her company goop recently debuted “The goop Lab” series on Netflix. If not, just go on Twitter. You’ll also discover that quite a few people love to hate on her and her brand of wellness. I’m not going to @ anyone, but there is a lot of anger and contempt for a woman, albeit a privileged one, who is mainly selling beauty products, questionably-named candles and holistic health treatments. The sentiments I witnessed online made me think of a few other hateful words.
Old Wives’ Tale.
Hysteria.
Witchcraft.
The words above all share the fact that they’re gendered historical terms used against women for practicing alternative healing modalities, exploring anything outside of the mainstream or owning their sexuality.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Elisa Albert and Jennifer Block note:
“ Throughout history, women in particular have been mocked, reviled, and murdered for maintaining knowledge and practices that frightened, confused and confounded “the authorities.” (Namely the church, and later, medicine.) Criticism of Goop is founded, at least in part, upon deeply ingrained reserves of fear, loathing, and ignorance about things we cannot see, touch, authenticate, prove, own or quantify. It is emblematic of a cultural insistence that we quash intuitive measures and “other” ways of knowing — the sort handed down via oral tradition, which, for most women throughout history, was the only way of knowing. In other words, it’s classic patriarchal devaluation.
When 19th-century medicine men were organizing and legitimizing their brand-new profession, they claimed the mantle of “science” even though there was no such thing as evidence-based medicine at the time. In order to dominate the market, they slandered all other modalities as “quackery,” including midwifery, which we know achieved safer birth outcomes back then, as it still does today. Pejoratives like “woo” or “pseudoscience” are still often applied to anything that falls outside of the mainstream medical establishment.”
You know what I haven’t heard? Calling anyone a Newtonian as an insult. Did you know famed scientist Isaac Newton was an avid alchemist, a practice that relies heavily on a belief in magical substances.
So whether you like goop or not, let’s try to avoid perpetuating the idea that a woman who is trying to have ownership of her body and health, and encourage others to do the same, is someone who should be ridiculed and vilified.