Gwyneth Paltrow, 45 years old, nearly 300 pages of sex tips and tons of critics.
Her 10-years-old lifestyle blog Goop has just released a new book about all things sex – The Sex Issue: Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about Sexuality, Seduction, and Desire – that has already been subject of criticism for the banality of the material itself (that, according to USA Today, could’ve been just as easily be found at Cosmopolitan.com or another similar site) and the not-so-scientific research behind.
The book is the ultimate synthesis of the conversations Goop had with psychotherapists, psychologists, healers and various doctors over the years, covering everything from BDSM to tantric sex, including sex toys, gender fluidity, threesomes, fantasies and ‘everything you’ve ever wondered but have been too shy to ask’ as acknowledged in the pop up appearing on the website.
In her foreword, Gwyneth explains that ‘The idea behind this book was to create a safe space where questions of sexuality could be explored for everyone—women, men, heterosexual, homosexual, in a relationship, single, young, experienced.’
But there’s also another reason why she took on the project, ‘We’re living in a time where there’s so much access to everything. I have a 12-year-old boy and I live in fear that he’s going to learn all about sex from the internet’ she said on Good Morning America on Tuesday morning.
The experts’ tips are mixed with anecdotes and steamy recollections from the Goop crew who advises readers to try orgasmic meditation and to get down and dirty in public in order to improve the sex life (and now we’re all wondering which staffer told about her sexcapade at her ‘favorite salumeria in Italy’).
USA Today picked out 7 tips, listing them in order of ascending Goop-iness:
- ‘Treat your love life like a growing tree, and the people you date like leaves sprouting on the branches. Keep them alive and rustling but at a safe distance until you find someone you want to take more seriously.’
- Gauge your level of attraction to someone by asking “if you would want to spend twenty minutes orally pleasuring them.”
- Get over an ex by tossing old intimates. “The lingerie you wore with past lovers can carry the toxic residue of those relationships, along with painful memories.”
- Peruse The Labia Library’s website. “It’s pictures of many, many women’s vaginas. As with penises, the variety is huge… Spend some time on that site, and you’ll internalize the truth: that ‘normal’ doesn’t have strict parameters.”
- Invest in the Elvie “to work out the pelvic floor.” Described as “an incredibly well-designed and easy to use device-plus-app that takes you through a series of exercises… You insert a small (smoothly shaped) pod much as you would a tampon. Using Bluetooth, you connect the pod to your phone, and then… you play some games.”
- Pick up a glass dildo for de-armoring, “basically a sexual practice where you press the dildo into pressure points inside the vagina and create deep inner relaxation.” According to sexuality coach Layla Martin, “This helps to release stored trauma and emotional baggage from the vagina and … it’s like doing a physical vaginal cleanse for yourself.”
- Try orgasmic meditation, which is “essentially the yoga of sex, whereby a woman lies down and her partner strokes her clitoris for fifteen minutes, and both reap the benefits (enhanced connection, happiness, vitality and fulfillment) of tapping into a higher orgasm state.”
Paltrow is not new to criticism, especially after Goop published an Anal Sex Guide and some not-so-wise pieces of advice to women about putting a jade egg in the vagina and having vaginal steam baths.
But don’t bother commenting further because there’s really no harsh critic that can reach the multitasking businesswoman who has just celebrated her Mexican hen do (and may have had a secret wedding with Brad Falchuk, television writer and producer behind shows such as Glee and American Horror Story), and is flying high, over the moon.
[Image source: Goop.com]
