Have a happy homeopathic Christmas with Gwyneth Paltrow

To America, where Gwyneth Paltrow’s enchanted mirror is the bearer of bad tidings. Now that Kellyanne Conway has been appointed “to oversee White House efforts to combat the opioid overdose epidemic”, Gwyneth is only the second-least qualified medical expert of them all. Can she claw it back? Can Gwyneth get back on the top spot without resorting to poison-assisted homicide?

Only time will show, but God love her for coming out of the traps so quickly and having a go. “In most countries outside of the US,” Gwyneth’s Goop account tweeted on Thursday, “homeopathics are the first line of defence against ailments.”

Like me, you will admire how Gwyneth just refuses to be held back by facts. I know the fashionable term is “wellness”, but you may eventually decide you prefer the classification “alt-science”. Naturally, though, there may be a few questions some will want to put to Gwyneth on the basis of her homeopathy claim. For instance: which countries? And: this? THIS is your critique of US healthcare?

Still, let’s not spoil the fun by getting bogged down in peer-reviewed arguments about the magic energy properties of water, or whatever it is. Let’s just accept that Gwyneth belongs in the set of life’s rich Venn diagram that my husband refers to as “hippies who are actually Tories even if they don’t realise it”. None of which is to come over remotely partisan: she can be whatever she wants. But if you are what Gwyneth is, you should accept it’s what you are, and wear it as a badge of honour as opposed to imagining you’re something else. Or to put it more clearly: if you are late capitalism’s foremost pedlar of $100 vagina steams and apparently think that the issue with US healthcare is that users already lean on it too much because they are insufficiently self-reliant on homeopathy … you need to realise you’re a massive fiscal conservative. And that’s fine!

But you are one, babe.

Looking back, maybe there were other rightward clues about herself that Gwyneth could have picked up on. Shortly after the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, Gwyneth declined to say who she had backed. What she did want to make clear, though, was that “it’s such an exciting time to be an American, because we are at this amazing inflection point and everything is kind of up in the air.” Go on. “It’s such an amazing time for entrepreneurship. People are clearly tired of the status quo and […] it’s sort of like someone threw it all in the air and we’re going to see how it all lands.”

One year on, and will you just look at where it went and landed. Who knew?

Certainly not the good friends of Trump on our own shores, who are now affecting shock that he might be a dangerous racist. IF ONLY THERE HAD BEEN ANY SIGNS SINCE FOR EVER, instead of him fooling us with his brilliant disguise as a pussy-grabbing nepotist – a career white supremacist who shits on the wrong sort of Gold Star families and whose operatives are one-by-one being pulled in by the FBI on suspicion of conspiring to subvert American democracy in the interests of Russia. You never can tell, can you? The nouveau woke should be forced to greet him on the tarmac for the state visit, and accept their self-determined status as the Lord Haw Haws of our time. It’s waaaaaaay too late to eject now.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes: Goop. Well, the good news for those in need of a laugh is that Gwyneth’s legendary Christmas gift guide has landed. And like the really expensive presents brought by the Magi, it is tinged with sadness this year. We might speculate that Gwyneth has read a couple of 5,000-word articles about the left behind and become dimly aware that the $956 bog roll she genuinely recommended a couple of years ago probably isn’t a good look, even in her own markets.

That said, there’s still a lot to enjoy. There are $125 bookmarks, $250 Christian Louboutin shoes for babies, a $350 hi-tech meditation band, a “Goop medicine bag” that contains nothing but eight “magically charged stones”… if you can’t find something for every member of your family here, you should probably consider streamlining your relatives for a cleaner feel next year. Delving deeper, why not pay $250 for something described as “integratron private sound bath”? The experience is described as taking place in “The Integratron”, which is apparently “Palm Springs–adjacent”. Other highlights? A $5,000 ticket to the TED conference – for the relative you hate the most, surely – and a lover’s gift guide in which every single item reads like the setup to a Victoria Wood joke about having to descale the kettle first.

Finally, we’ll play out with Gwyneth’s literary presents, which include a book described as “a gorgeous meta-commentary of your living room” ($95). And a “limited edition” of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for $475, so you can say: “Oh my God, you have to read it, it’s literally my favourite book, I have a first edition” to your fanny steamer next time you’re in.

Happy holidays one and all!