Gwyneth Paltrow has a few choice words for those still criticizing her controversial candle.
Back in 2020, Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop made some memorable headlines for selling the $75 candle “This Smells Like My Vagina.” Evidently, the public still hasn’t recovered because Paltrow once again felt the need to defend herself against critics at Saturday’s Mindvalley Manifesting Summit in Los Angeles.
“That product is so fascinating because we were messing around with different scents one day,” the Goop CEO explained. “I smelled something and I was like, ‘Oh, that smells like — you know.”
As the crowd laughed, Paltrow added that she was only joking — and when her collaborator, perfumer Douglas Little, suggested selling the “vagina” scent, she assumed he was joking too.
“All of a sudden, it was literally on the website, and then we broke the internet again,” she said, referencing the buzz surrounding the product. “It took us a long time to live that one down.”
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images; Goop
Gwyneth Paltrow; Goop’s “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle
That said, Paltrow is glad that the company didn’t pull the product in the face of backlash.
“I kept it on the site because there is an aspect to women’s sexuality that I think we’re socialized to feel a lot of shame,” she explained. “I sort of loved this kind of punk rock idea. We are beautiful and awesome.”
And to those that disagree?
“Go f‑‑‑ yourself,” Paltrow added.
Paltrow has been fending off criticism of the product since it first debuted five years ago. In 2023, she took to Instagram Stories to tell followers that the viral candle — touting such scents as geranium, citrusy bergamot, cedar absolutes, damask rose and ambrette seed— was never meant to “actually smell like anyone’s vagina,” adding “that was the point.”
“People tried to make it about something else, which is kind of a shame because it was really meant to be this strong feminist statement,” she said.
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While Goop no longer sells the OG candle, which was discontinued two years ago, Paltrow has since capitalized on the controversy with additional scents such as “Hands Off My Vagina” and “This Smells Like My Orgasm.”
Outside of the memes that it inspired, the infamous candle also landed Goop in legal trouble, when Texas man Colby Watson filed a class action lawsuit, alleging the candle “exploded” and became “engulfed in high flames” due to a “catastrophic failure because of a manufacturing flaw.” The brand slammed his $5 million lawsuit as a “frivolous attempt to secure an outsized payout.”
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