Gwyneth Paltrow had some choice words for anyone still offended by Goop’s cheeky, headline-grabbing candle.
Speaking at the Mindvalley Manifesting Summit in Los Angeles on Saturday, the actor and lifestyle entrepreneur addressed the backlash to her brand’s 2020 product, “This Smells Like My Vagina,” calling the reaction “fascinating.”
The $75 candle was inspired by an offhand joke Paltrow made while testing scents with her team.
“We were messing around with different scents one day and I smelled something and was like, ‘Oh, that smells like… you know,’” she recalled in a video shared by the summit’s Instagram. “I was joking!”
When her collaborator, perfumer Douglas Little, suggested turning the scent into a product, she thought he was joking, too.
But soon enough, the candle, described as having notes of “geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed,” was live on Goop’s website.
“It took us a long time to live that one down,” Paltrow admitted. “But I kept it on the site because there’s an aspect of women’s sexuality where we’re socialized to feel a lot of shame. And I sort of loved this kind of punk rock idea.”
Then she put it even more bluntly: “We are beautiful and we are awesome. And go fuck yourself.”
Paltrow also reflected on the candle’s cultural impact during a January 2020 appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” describing it as a statement as much as a scent.
“You know, I think women; a lot of us have grown up feeling certain degrees of shame around our bodies or whatever,” she said. “So this is just a little bit of, you know, a subversive candle for all of us out there.”
