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.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
