GOOP - Gwenny who are you?

I subscribe to GOOP, Gweneth Paltrow's lifestyle blog. She gives advice on everything from perfume to meditation. Gwenny, as I fondly call her, knows about a lot of things. I eat up her stories about personal training sessions and diligently take notes about house guest etiquette. Though sometimes, her blog posts about building a wood burning oven in her back yard, (the best thing she ever did as a cook) or dinners with close friend Mario Batali, make me feel like I'm missing out.  I thought an amazing day started with buying boots for 20% off at Macy's and ending with Max going to bed at exactly 8pm. But let's be honest here, amazing is that picture of Gwenny on a dock in Venice, the sun setting over her golden tresses. In the beginning days of GOOP, I  was a fan.  But these days  I find myself emailing her blog post to my cousin, a fan of GOOP too, with the subject line, "What planet do you live on Gweneth?" and I can answer that: Planet Perfect. At the end of every post Gweneth signs off  to us, the reader, "Love GP", like she is a personal friend. But her anecdotes about cheese  plates and famous designer friends, let me know that we are not good friends.  We have nothing in common, except  that our dads are Jewish. But while her dad taught her how to cook and flew her to Paris on a daddy and me vacation. My dad loved to re-heat fish fingers and boil hot dogs when Mom was a way, so our similarities end right there (although shout out to dad for the best home  made pizza ever, and from an indoor oven!) Sometimes, I suspect that Gwenny thinks that we, who follow her blog, have never been inside a museum before. Basically she is evolved and we are cavemen.

This month, Gwenny writes about collecting contemporary art. Last month she shared her "scrapbook" at the Emmy's, where she humbly starts off with how she's surprised that she won a Creative Arts Emmy. The rest of her blog is a photo montage of an hourly, play by play of her getting ready at the Montage Hotel....sigh (blogger  loves this stuff) The month before, she touted her favorite flower shop in London. Every now and then she'll throw her readers a "down-to earth" curve ball, like writing about her favorite restaurants in Chicago. Surprise, surprise, Gwenny wasn't in Spain that week.

Unlike most celebrities, she looks totally comfortable in her couture clothes and hanging with her famous friends in even more fabulous locations. It's hard to find anything remotely wrong with her, she's the kind of pretty that will age gracefully, she can act, sing,  and read from a teleprompter and actually make people laugh. She's skinny, and toned and she is a mom to an adorable family. Furthermore, her husband wrote the song that I played on repeat for the entire year of 2003. Gwenny calls a homemade roasted chicken, "fast food", and she even shops for organic produce on a whim (I saw the video)   At this point in my life I know that we all have our issues and problems and there's no such thing as  perfect.  But GOOP might be a window into a truly perfect world..maybe perfect does exist after all. Or maybe GP is an alien from another planet called Hollywood.