You might have noticed that many of the late-night talk show hosts have slowly begun to migrate back into their natural habitats (aka the studio soundstage) to bring back a sense of normalcy to the comedy landscape. And while we think it’s a bit odd that James Corden and Stephen Colbert, sans-audience with a skeleton crew, are still interviewing guests via video-chat, Canadian smartypants Samantha Bee decided to play it safe with
Full Frontal and stay in the woods near her
quarantine shack where she can get
her kids can dye her hair in peace.It’s probably best that she remain hidden there too, because once Gwyneth Paltrow catches wind of Sam’s latest segment on the fallacy of goop, she is gonna be uuuuuupset. Given all the pseudoscience and false treatments floating about claiming to treat or cure the novel coronavirus (*cough
Hydroxychloroquinecough!*), Sam is breaking down exactly how bad this fake health information is, specifically for women. She starts with goop, noting that Paltrow’s wellness brand has built an empire on selling women “alternative” medicines and treatments that are disingenuous at best, and dangerous at worst.
“This is a terrible time to consciously uncouple from science,” Sam quips. “Anti-science behaviour is on the rise—something that has directly undermined America's health care response to COVID-19. And women, in particular, are relentlessly preyed upon by companies that work to exploit their insecurities while making impossible claims. It's pseudoscience, and we can't talk about it without first addressing my favorite offender: goop.”Sammy Bee then gives a rundown of all the unfounded and unproven claims behind some of goop’s best sellers: sure there are “intense pace” vitamins (whatever that means), and the Lisa Frank-inspired skin stickers for “cell turnover,” (ohhhhkaaayyyy) both of which seem innocuous enough and don’t raise any major alarms. But then there’s “vaginal steaming” (
docs say don't do it) which resulted in one women receiving second degree burns from the treatment, and one of the worst offenders that had social media spinning for ages—those jade and rose quartz eggs goop instructs women to insert into vaginas to
*checks notes* “balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control.” We have so many questions.So does Sam, because after noting that women have been sleeping with those jade eggs inserted, she reminds us that practice can, “put a person at risk for bacterial vaginosis or toxic shock syndrome. It's truly the worst thing Paltrow has endorsed putting inside your vagina since Chris Martin.” Does that jade egg also cure epic burns? Omg.[video_embed id='-1']CHECK OUT MORE MYTH BUSTING: The internet’s most famous gynecologist claps back at old wives tales [/video_embed]It should also be noted that the entire goop brand is essentially based on a
whitewashing of traditional medicines and practices from Eastern and African cultures. Like
white chefs who profit off making Asian, African and South American cuisines accessible through “fusion” while chefs of those cultures are sidelined in the culinary industry, goop presents treatments used by other cultures for centuries as new and hip while profiting off the appropriation. Oh, and of course, adding in extras that are totally unnecessary for health anywhere.Sam notes another little fallacy that's not unique to goop: that companies exploit the fact that there is no legal definition for words like “natural” or “clean," thereby allowing brands to define those terms in their marketing however they please. Take, for example, Covergirl marketing something called “Clean Fresh Skin Milk” as a facial cream. Fresh? Clean? What does that mean? “Mmm. In Canada, we buy our skin milk in bags,” Sam jokes. It’s funny because it’s sorta true.But the real culprit is the usage of the dreaded word “toxins” which, as Sam puts it, capitalizes, “on long-held beliefs that women's bodies are unclean.”“Sadly,” she continues, “it makes sense that women would be open to alternative wellness. Women face higher chances of misdiagnoses, have been left out of medical research, and frequently report that doctors take their pain less seriously.” And that's not even accounting for the deep racial divide between white and non-white women,
particularly Black women, who face systemic racism in health care resulting in
higher maternal and infant mortality rates,
later diagnosis and
lower breast cancer survival rates, among other serious problems.We highly recommend you watch Sam’s entire segment in full to rid your mind of pseudoscience toxins and cleanse away the jade eggs hatching inside your critical faculties. Sam’s logic is clean and all natural!Watch
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Wednesdays at 10:30EP on CTV Comedy Channel.[video_embed id='2027143']BEFORE YOU GO: John Boyega calls out Disney in British GQ [/video_embed]
