Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop “docu-series” The Goop Lab, a quasi-documentary reality show on Netflix from the actress-influencer’s lifestyle brand, is almost exactly what you’d expect. There are magic mushrooms and powdered diet food and plasma facials and “energy healing.” The activities shown run from charmingly expensive nonsense (like the medium who argues that the refusal to accept mediums is like the historical refusal to accept that the earth is round) to underresearched and irrational (“The prevailing belief that we cannot control our autonomic nervous system is a fallacy,” says one expert, who argues you can keep your body temperature up using just your brain before jumping into a freezing body of water).
So it’s odd that in the middle of all of this, there is a truly ground-breaking episode about female pleasure.
“The Pleasure Is Ours,” the third episode in the series, clocks in at under 40 minutes. In that brief window, it manages to interrogate society’s bludgeoning impact on female pleasure, deliver full-frontal shots of a dozen vulvas, debunk myths about basic biology, summarize rigorous studies about female orgasm, teach a clinically tested orgasm technique, share tips for communicating and receiving pleasure, and show an actual woman having an actual orgasm on your actual screen.
It’s educational, anti-shaming, and entertaining. There’s certainly never been anything like it on mainstream TV. The weird truth is that Gwyneth Paltrow and her preternaturally glowy-looking Santa Monica mafia made something that could make the world a better place. This episode of television will actually help people. Viva la vulva.
But it wouldn’t be Goop if it wasn’t also a bit problematic. In between all the empowering talk about female pleasure, Paltrow also revealed that she doesn’t know the difference between the vagina (the birth canal) and the vulva (the outer area of your anatomy including the labia and pubic mound)—two completely different body parts.
Plenty of grown women don’t know that they’re probably saying vagina when they mean vulva—vagina has been used as a blanket term for years. But it’s disturbing considering Paltrow’s company has been selling women products for their vaginas or vulvas for years—some that have been actively harmful and others that have promoted the myth that vaginas are dirty and smelly and need to be cleaned. And she’s just learning how to correctly label them?
Goop’s relationship with female biology is well documented. In 2015 the company published an article that (inaccurately) linked wearing underwire bras to breast cancer. The same year the site was rightly criticized for promoting vaginal steaming, which, as Dr. Ann Robinson wrote, can cause itching and the risk of vaginal thrush, plus spreads misinformation—the vagina is self-cleaning. In 2018 the company paid a settlement of $145,000 in the state of California over unsubstantiated claims about jade and rose quartz eggs, which the company falsely claimed “balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control” if used in the vagina. (The suit also included an essential-oil blend that Goop claimed could prevent depression.) They inaccurately claimed that tampons contain toxins, tried to turn people off mainstream lubes, and marketed a $15,000 dildo.
The “Pleasure Is Ours” docu-series episode, however, is so opposite to all of these claims and myth mongering that it seems almost as if it was made by another company. The women share deep insecurities about their bodies and talk about “genital shame.” They talk about the trouble with “performative receiving” with sex educator and “pleasure anarchist” Isabella Frappier, and it’s strangely emotional to watch them, for the first time, practice telling imaginary sex partners what feels good. “Shame is a killer of pleasure,” famed 90-year-old sexologist and orgasm expert Betty Dodson says in episode. (In a 2008 study of 500 women with anorgasmia, the inability to orgasm, she coached 456 straight to the Big O). The women look at labias and learn about the makeup of the clitoris (which, the show points out, was only fully mapped in 2005) and practice obtaining consent.
In spite of the weird revelation that the woman peddling vagina candles does not know what a vagina is, the whole thing feels strangely miraculous.
The episode, in all of its unlikely beauty, is missing only one thing: male viewers. “The Pleasure Is Ours,” which should be required viewing for women and anyone who has sex with them, will probably be watched almost exclusively by women. No wonder we reach for absurdly expensive sex products or believe faulty information about our bodies sometimes—we have been both punished by society’s indifference to our pleasure and fully tasked with rectifying the problem.
The night of the 2019 Grammys, Musgraves had already won more trophies than her two hands could carry before the Album of the Year was announced. But this was the Big One, the one that makes someone a household name. As her name was called, the cameras zoomed in on her face. In videos of that moment we see her life change. Her look of disbelief and joy is so purely honest and endearing that it’s since gone viral, launching memes all across the Internet.
As a millennial, Musgraves loves the memes, of course. She’d figured she had a shot—she was in the running, after all—but it was still surreal. “It was a moment of definite disbelief, but also openheartedness,” she says. “I was flashing back through writing all the songs, meeting my husband, recording everything, and all the positivity that’s come my way through all of this. It was this overwhelming sense of gratitude. I love these songs so much. I have a man that loves me so much and inspired a lot of it. I have a team that works hard.” As she stepped up to the stage to accept the trophy, she had one thing in mind: “I was trying to think, OK, don’t forget anybody.”
What she couldn’t think about—imagine, even—is how hot this new spotlight would be. Now not just her fans but the rest of the world wants to know Kacey. And what’s next. She added dates to her tour, and there’s already pressure about her next album. No matter what Musgraves produces, there will be the inevitable comparisons to this success. “It can be freaky, because Golden Hour really resonated with a lot of people and reached far beyond what I ever thought it could do,” she says. “So there can be a worry inside your mind a little bit, as a creative person, thinking about the fact that there’s no way to bank on the muse coming and visiting you again.”
There are little things she can do to coax that muse, Musgraves says. See live music. (“Anytime I go out and see live music, I leave inspired.”) Ride her horse. (“The dirt and the sunshine and the fresh air can stimulate your brain.”) Read books. (Her husband has been reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden aloud to her so, “as I’m absorbing the story, I can paint the pictures in my mind.”) But there’s never a guarantee the muse will return. “It’s not certain. I’m not owed anything by it. It just comes when it comes,” she says. “It’s exciting but also a little daunting.”
And giving herself space, in her bus or at her home in Nashville, also helps. She knows she needs time to find that muse again, and that means saying no to some things. “When you’re younger and have opportunities knocking at your door, you think, I have to say yes; what if they don’t knock again?” she says. “But that’s just not how it really works. Opportunities will knock as long as you feel like you have enough of yourself to keep giving. That’s been a good part of hitting 30 and getting older—the power of saying no is a beautiful thing, and it can actually bring a lot more yeses into your life.”
Her friends, like Fitchuk, are all for the self-imposed break. “I was telling her the other day that I hope she’s allowing herself to enjoy this and not work herself into oblivion,” he says. “Whatever happens for her this next year, I hope she can find balance and pleasure in the things she is doing. If that means we make another record, that’s amazing. If that means she needs some time to live her life and enjoy a new marriage and the success, she should do that. She’ll know what to do. I’m not too worried. She’s got her head on a lot straighter than others.”
The guy who left the voicemail didn’t address Beth Fukumoto by name.
“Hey, C*nt,” he said.
Fukumoto, a member of the Hawaii legislature, was in an airport when she heard the message and its warning: “We know where you live. We know what you drive. We’re on you,” the caller said. “Just wait. We can’t wait.”
As a lawmaker, Fukumoto, 35, had gotten used to fielding (and ignoring) angry messages and threats—particularly after leaving the Republican Party and becoming a Democrat. But when she heard that voicemail, “I just immediately started shaking,” she says.
“I definitely spent some time before running for Congress [this year] deciding if it was worth it, deciding if elevating my profile was a good idea, because of this kind of stuff—and because how easy it would be to just walk away.”
After weighing her options, Fukumoto did end up waging an unsuccessful Democratic primary bid for a U.S. House seat. She shared the unsettling voicemail with Glamour to highlight the toxicity that can plague women officials and candidates—and even make them think twice about getting in the ring.
Fukumoto says she’s seen plenty of crassness and creepiness as a young woman in politics, like donors who hint they expect a little side action for cutting a check. And yes, even threats.
She’s not alone.
In a record year for female political contenders—and in the era of #MeToo—women on the trail are besieged by comments that go from sexist to scary almost daily.
Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist who just lost her primary challenge to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, says she found herself the target of a kaleidoscope of slurs. “This kind of misogyny is hardly limited to political candidates. Running for office just makes it that much more visible. The reality is this is what women have to deal with every single day,” Nixon told Glamour via email ahead of the Sept. 13 vote.
“In a strange way, I think my family was probably more prepared than most for the ugliness that comes with a political campaign. The fact is, when you’re a woman on television, and a queer woman no less, people say some pretty nasty things about you. So this isn’t entirely new to us,” said Nixon, who wed longtime partner Christine Marinoni in 2012.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Cynthia Nixon rallies before the Sept. 13 New York primary election.
A few graphic examples—and there are plenty to choose from—show Nixon’s policy tweets on healthcare and immigration drawing uncouth, ungrammatical responses like, “Oh shut up you ugly Dike,” “FUK YOU SCUM BAG FAG SLUT,” and “rabid despicable bitch.”
But the trolls, she told Glamour, didn’t win: “For every person who’s insulted me online, there have been countless more women who have come up to me on the street or on the subway to say, ‘Thank you for running. I believe in you. I know you can do it.’“
Responding or confronting a commenter engaging in verbal sexual harassment and hurling insults can be tempting, but Jessica Proud, a New York-based Republican strategist, says how she would advise a candidate to handle a misogynistic attack can depend on the source.
“You shouldn’t punch down. If it’s an isolated incident [involving] a voter, I don’t think it’s politically useful to engage,” she said, but there are occasions that merit a witty response—ideally “served with a smile.” (Case in point: Michigan gubernatorial hopeful Gretchen Whitmer, who mocked her hecklers in her own version of Jimmy Kimmel’s “Mean Tweets.”)
If the attack comes from “someone of prominence” or a direct opponent, however, Proud said it may be necessary to call it out sternly or have an ally do so.
Fair or not, she added, women have traditionally risked looking “weak” for making an issue of sexism on the trail—and that risk extends well beyond the campaign trail.
Tennis superstar Serena Williams, for example, got denigrated after arguing with, and demanding an apology from, a U.S. Open umpire who issued her a series of violations. (Williams lost the competition, but won some accolades for speaking up after an incident some observers said grossly entwined sexism and racism in the sport.) In business, women have long paid a price for objecting to verbal abuse from male bosses and colleagues.
Even the highest-profile female figures, elected or not, have to deal with sexist slurs: After a male Congressional candidate called Melania Trump a “hoebag” who “works by the hour,” the first lady’s office told Glamour the remarks were “disturbing and despicable.”
Christine Jahnke, a political communication expert who has advised former First Lady Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, has seen some head-spinning stuff while working with Democrats and progressive groups. The author of “The Well-Spoken Woman,” Jahnke recalls an incident in Indiana, where a candidate she advised arrived to campaign at a veterans’ hall and “some old guy comes up to her, looks her in the eye, and says, ‘Are you the stripper?'”
The best thing a woman can do, according to Jahnke, is have a cool-headed, practiced response ready to go when someone does take that cheap shot: “What you don’t want to do [is] lash out in a way that will be perceived as ‘angry’ or out of control,” she said—and that’s not always easy, because attacks rooted in gender can be distracting and distressing.
In some cases, the vitriol even crosses continents.
Cristina Osmeña, a Republican House candidate challenging incumbent Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier in California’s 14th District, came to the U.S. at age six when her family left the Philippines to escape the Marcos regime. When a newspaper there profiled her in February, noting her deep political roots, she was appalled to see a commenter dismiss her as a “little brown fvcking machine.”
“Since this is the first time I have run for office, and this happened early in my campaign, I really wondered what I had gotten myself into,” Osmeña, 49, told Glamour. “I stopped reading the comments sections of articles for awhile. I spent about half a day seething over the comment, regretting putting myself in the limelight, [and] then I let it go and moved on… I did not respond publicly. I internalized it.”
As to any future woman-bashing she may encounter, “If delivered to me anonymously, as mean comments often are, there is not much recourse,” Osmeña said, but “if in person, I would call them out pretty quickly.”
Vermont’s Christine Hallquist also made international headlines this season as the first transgender candidate to secure a major-party nomination for governor.
Christine Hallquist
In a phone conversation with Glamour shortly after the primary, Hallquist said she’s mainly gotten a warm reception from Vermonters on the trail. She mixed humor with a bit of pity in discussing the people “with issues” who go to the trouble of sending her hate mail.
“It comes from men, and here’s the most common thing that I believe a woman hears: It says, ‘You’re ugly.’ I get so many of these ‘you’re ugly’ things: ‘You’re ugly as a dog,’ blah, blah, blah,” Hallquist sighed. “I’m like, ‘First of all, I’m 62 years old. I get to be ugly!’ … What the hell do you expect? I’m not 20.”
Hallquist said she warned her campaign team that “the more we win, the more we’re going to get attacked. The more successful you are, the greater the threat you are. Read that as success, not failure.” But despite trying to frame even negative attention as a good sign, Hallquist, as the Associated Pressrecently noted, has started taking precautions after receiving death threats.
Violence, threatened or otherwise, aside, the rules of engagement in politics can be blurry.
When Gov. Cuomo used Cynthia Nixon’s stage career to suggest she wasn’t qualified for real-life leadership, was that inherently sexist? Could he—or would he—have attacked a male rival that way? Or when President Donald Trump mocked Nevada Rep. Jacky Rosen as “Wacky Jacky,” how did that measure up to his jabs at male critics like “Crazy” Bernie Sanders or “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer?
In the #MeToo era, women are frequently heard saying they feel more empowered to call out misogynist talk. But are they dealing with more of it? Are things worse this year, with record numbers of women running—and winning nominations—for federal and state office? Are more people making gender-based remarks or threats? Are they more violent?
Tough to say, per Kelly Dittmar of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers.
Past female candidates certainly got told, implicitly if not literally, to get back in the kitchen, and “that represented only a fraction of the bias and sexism you might hear in more private spaces and, of course, that might have been in voters’ minds,” Dittmar told Glamour.
Now, “all that stuff that may have been said in bars, at dinner tables, or even just in someone’s head can be said [online] without much consequence,” she said. “Measuring frequency of attacks would be near impossible because of the scope of what we’d be counting.”
As to intensity, it’s also hard to judge, since threats also aren’t new to women in politics: “I think most about an interview with Shirley Chisholm where she talks about how close one man came to stabbing her in the back,” Dittmar said, referring to the first black woman elected to Congress.
Strategically, Dittmar said, “there had [been] a concern in past elections that if women called out sexism they were ‘playing the gender card’ and trying to garner sympathy.” Today, “I think it is harder to make that case (not that people will not…) without some backlash.”
When it comes to issues of sexism and misogyny on the trail, Dittmar said, “the positive note about this year is we are talking about it and, importantly, not accepting that it is just the cost of being a woman or a person of color in American politics.”
For Fukumoto, looking back on her experience in electoral politics, she says it “helped me a lot to have other women sort of come alongside me and just say, ‘That’s happened. I don’t talk about it, but yes, it’s happened.’ [That] kind of whisper network has been supportive. So knowing that you’re not alone, and knowing that other people are dealing with it, too, is very helpful to remember.”
After the ugliness, the threats, the drama she’s seen in politics… What’s next? Right now, working on a podcast and processing what she’s seen and heard.
“I’m going to wait to see what the opportunities are,” Fukumoto says. “I think I’m going to maybe run for City Council.”
In a pivotal election year, Glamour is keeping track of the historic number of women running (and voting) in the midterm elections. For more on our latest midterm coverage, visit www.glamour.com/midterms.
Celeste Katz is senior politics reporter for Glamour. Send news tips, questions, and comments to celeste_katz@condenast.com.
The coal miners parading into the room had reason to clap. Minutes earlier, President Trump announced that he would single-handedly revive the coal mining industry. “The miners told me about the attacks on their jobs and their livelihoods,” he recounted to his suited audience last March, just before inking his name on an executive order to end the so-called war on coal.
“They told me about the efforts to shut down their mines, their communities and their very way of life,” Trump continued. “I made them this promise: We will put our miners back to work.”
Trump’s vow was little consolation to the tens of thousands of other Americans whose jobs, livelihoods and ways of life have evaporated since the dawn of the retail apocalypse in 2016. No one is standing at a podium, waving a fountain pen and pledging to put them back to work. In fact, no one in Washington is saying much of anything at all about the retail industry’s collapse.
Instead, the president has put all his eggs in one controversial basket, pandering to white working class men with the promise of jobs (and of making America as great as it was in the 1950s, when coal was the nation’s primary energy source). There’s one snag: other conservatives and even Murray Energy founder Robert Murray, the man behind one of the largest independent US coal mines and a vocal Trump supporter, consider that battle lost. Natural gas is a more pocket-friendly energy source, and wind and solar power are more environmentally friendly. Up against such stiff competition, Murray warned the president that even “he can’t bring [coal jobs] back.” Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg likened reviving the coal industry to resurrecting the telegraph industry. With today’s technology, it just doesn’t make sense.
To put things in perspective, retail employees account for nearly 10% of the total US labor force. Roughly 101,000 retail workers have lost their jobs so far in 2017, nearly half a million positions eliminated since 2001. That’s about eighteen times more retail layoffs than coal industry saw in the same span. In fact, add up al the coal industry’s current employees and you get just 52,000 people, 95% of them men. Nearly half of America’s retail employees are women — about 8 million, altogether — a figure that jumps to almost 75% in clothing stores.
Cheaper, cleaner energy sources threaten the coal industry. Pinpointing a specific culprit is harder when it comes to retail’s catastrophic collapse. E-commerce giants like Amazon shoulder some of the blame as they cannibalize brick-and-mortar sales. Automated technology, too, will eliminate 7.5 million retail jobs in the not-so-distant future, if financial services firm Cornerstone Capital Group’s predictions are accurate. And then, of course, there’s the imminent decline of shopping malls, built (and arguably overbuilt) at a break-neck pace over the last four decades.
Credit Suisse foresees a quarter of America’s shopping malls closing in the next five years, sending thousands of employees packing when they do. Even those shopping centers that avoid the wrecking ball may see traditional anchor stores — what’s left of them, anyway — vanish. Sears, JCPenney and Macy’s have together closed about 550 stores since 2014, with Macy’s alone eliminating 10,000 jobs in the process. More downsizing anticipated for early next year.
Mall corridors aren’t faring much better. The list of retailers who filed for bankruptcy protection this year reads like a suburban mall directory: Wet Seal, BCBG Max Azria, Rue21, True Religion Apparel, Perfumania, Vitamin World and Toys R Us, among others. About 1,000 Radio Shacks, 350 Gymborees, 200 Gaps and all Bebe, American Apparel and The Limited stores have already closed, along with more than 1,000 other doors bearing familiar names.
The retail apocalypse simultaneously ascended like King Kong on America’s cities, leaving a trail of abandoned storefronts in its wake. One particularly hard-hit thoroughfare was on the Upper East Side of New York, which saw iconic flagships like Polo Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan Collection close in unison with Juicy Couture, Diesel and all Scoop NYC locations over the last two years.
A few months after delivering promises in Washington, Trump reiterated his devotion to working families. “It’s finally time to… fight for the jobs our great American workers deserve,” he proclaimed to an Arizona crowd, “and that’s what we’re doing.” Whether retail workers factor into that statement remains to be seen.
As nearly 8 million women face an uncertain future in the retail industry, Glamour is sharing six of their stories. The following interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.*
This summer, Kim Kardashian had a thing for not only embracing the naked dress trend that’s hot in Hollywood right now, but for wearing completely see-through clothes. (We get it! It’s hot out!) Her most notable looks included tights as pants and thatplastic dress she casually wore to pick up sushi. Now, instead of wearing cheeky sheer fabric, the selfie queen has apparently given up things like on shirts altogether. Less is more, after all!
The mom of three showed up to LACMA Art + Film gala event in L.A. on Saturday night with her mom, Kris Jenner, in an ultra-chic Tom Ford for Gucci suit. Instead of wearing a shirt or bra underneath her oversized blazer, Kim opted for absolutely nothing underneath and kept her blazer unbuttoned, leaving some logistics best left to physicists and double-sided tape.
She topped the look off with simple makeup and waves in her long platinum hair. See the outfit for yourself below:
PHOTO: JB Lacroix
It’s not the first time she’s done this, either: just three weeks ago, Kardashian wore another black blazer with nothing underneath—though she kept it buttoned. In fact, she and her sisters, Khloé and Kourtney, all wore similar blazers, but they each styled differently.
Whether this is the last time Kim goes topless under blazers, we do not know. But when she gets obsessed with a trend, she runs with it—so stay tuned.
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