Why I’m Glad Gwyneth Paltrow Didn’t Stump for Clinton
Gwyneth Paltrow, political enigma. Image by getty images
Sisterhood readers will know that I’m mildly obsessed with the question of whether various lifestyle icons will take an anti-Trump (or pro-Trump!) stand. If you’re selling something — particularly something geared towards an audience of white women with conventional tastes — chances are you’re not storming any barricades. Fine. But maybe you’d make a statement of some kind?
On the Cut, Allie Jones picks apart Gwyneth ‘Goop’ Paltrow’s stance or lack thereof when it comes to The New Fascism. As per the Page Six story Jones cites, Paltrow refused to say, after the fact, whom she’d voted for, instead producing very on-brand platitudes. But Jones points out that Paltrow used a pantsuit-centric election-day Instagram photo, and that she’d supported Obama and other Democrats in the past. Moreover, Jones also points to rumors that Paltrow had wanted to host a fundraiser for Clinton, but Clinton didn’t want Paltrow’s support.
Jones suggests that Paltrow’s non-endorsement is either an egotistical grudge (“Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t forget.”) or a privileged celebrity inhabiting a bubble (“It does not really matter what multimillionaire Gwyneth Paltrow thinks about Trump’s ascendancy; she’s going to be fine regardless.”) I have a different theory: Optics.
Could you imagine the think-pieces we’d be getting if Paltrow had been a Clinton surrogate? Remember the Lena Dunham finger-pointing? Imagine that anti-limousine-liberal (and misogyny-tinged) backlash times a billion. Think of the headlines we were spared! It would have been, ‘Gwyneth Paltrow, Poshest Celebrity Ever, Lost Clinton the Election’. It would have been that and nothing else.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.
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