Have you ever read something that makes you see a subject in an entirely new light — and that new light makes total sense?
That’s what happened to me after I read The New York Times article, “Who’s Afraid of Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop?” by Elisa Albert and Jennifer Block. The article’s subhead is, The long history of hating on “woo.”
If you’re interested at all in the #Woo, I’m sure you’ve heard a looooot about The GOOP Lab. While I’m watching it and have many, many thoughts on it (Hello, vagina episode), right now, I’m more interested in what this NYT article has to say about the #Woo.
Here’s a passage from the article (bold emphasis is my own):
Throughout history, women in particular have been mocked, reviled, and murdered for maintaining knowledge and practices that frightened, confused and confounded “the authorities.” (Namely the church, and later, medicine.) Criticism of Goop is founded, at least in part, upon deeply ingrained reserves of fear, loathing, and ignorance about things we cannot see, touch, authenticate, prove, own or quantify. It is emblematic of a cultural insistence that we quash intuitive measures and “other” ways of knowing — the sort handed down via oral tradition, which, for most women throughout history, was the only way of knowing. In other words, it’s classic patriarchal devaluation.
When 19th-century medicine men were organizing and legitimizing their brand-new profession, they claimed the mantle of “science” even though there was no such thing as evidence-based medicine at the time. In order to dominate the market, they slandered all other modalities as “quackery,” including midwifery, which we know achieved safer birth outcomes back then, as it still does today. Pejoratives like “woo” or “pseudoscience” are still often applied to anything that falls outside of the mainstream medical establishment. (Think about this the next time you hear something harmless or odd or common-sensical dismissed as an “old wives’ tale.”)
A lightbulb went off in my head after reading this. Oh, I thought, so this is where disdain of the Woo began. This is why I’ve been so embarrassed/ashamed/closeted about my exploration of The Woo. This is why I’ve barely told anyone about this blog. And this is why society, at large, ridicules The Woo.
The day after reading this NYT piece, I came across this article in the Washington Post: “Why Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Goop Lab’ is horrible. The medical industry is partly to blame.” It’s written by Nikki Stamp, a heart and lung surgeon in Perth, Australia. Here is what she says of the growing popularity of the “wellness” industry.
The growth of Goop and, more broadly, of the multitrillion-dollar wellness industry is cause for concern. On the surface, it looks full of promise and hope. Dig just a little deeper, beyond the claims of all-natural miracles — the energy healing, the cold therapy, the anti-aging treatments — and what we find is at best, a waste of money and at worst, harmful methods that actually compromise your health.
But then, in an interesting twist, Stamp goes on to explain the significant role the medical establishment has played in fueling the rise of wellness.
For virtually the whole of its existence, medicine has disenfranchised women and, to varying degrees, continues to do so. Even as medicine has modernized with an emphasis on autonomy and resolving bias, it remains, at times, paternalistic and patriarchal.
… Medical care has not accounted for what women need and want. Women are more often dissatisfied with medical care, feeling that it has failed to recognize their autonomy and unique biological and social needs. Women are more likely to have chronic illness and autoimmune diseases, both of which can be challenging to treat from a doctor’s point of view but even more challenging to live with.
I say YES to this. As someone with a chronic condition, I know how challenging my condition is for my doctor to treat and how super challenging it is to live with.
I finally turned to The Woo because, after years of seeing doctors, I didn’t know where else to turn. And If I didn’t find solutions in The Woo — meditation, mindfulness, the law of attraction, visualization, hypnotherapy — I’d be much, much worse off.
That is why I love this paragraph from the NYT article:
It’s condescending to suggest that if we are interested in having agency over our bodies, if we are open to experiencing heightened states of awareness and emotion, if we are amazed by and eager to learn more about the possibilities of touch and intention and energy, and if we’d like to do everything within our power to stay out of doctors’ offices, we are somehow privileged morons who deserve an intellectual (read: patriarchal) beat-down. Openness to intuitive measures that might help us avoid or ameliorate chronic despair and disease does not make us flat-earthers.
YES! So much YES to this! I believe in science. I believe in Western medicine. I still see all my doctors, go to a therapist, take prescription drugs, get yearly physicals, and I intend to continue to do all of those things if I need to.
But exploring ways I can aid in my own healing, improve my mental health, and vastly improve my quality of life doesn’t mean I’m consumed by “magical thinking.” It means that I know science has its limits, and I have the right to search beyond those limits if I’ve hit a brick wall in my healing process.