What would Gwyneth do?

The response to Goop, on the other hand, has been vociferous. Already, the “Gwyneth effect” has been proven to extend beyond shoes. After Paltrow named Bridgewater chocolates “my absolute favorite chocolate in the entire world” in December, sales rose, says owner Erik Landegren. Paltrow has been a customer for years, he says, though her endorsement came as a surprise. “It was terrific for us.”

Not everyone welcomes Paltrow’s arrival as a taste arbiter. Ben Barna of BlackBookMag.com, which bills itself “the insiders’ guide to style and culture,” vented: “That’s what we do, Gwyneth! How would you like it if we started doing yoga?” Paltrow’s selections are criticized as already overly exposed. After she ran a list of her favourite New York restaurants, which included several of Batali’s, the New York Daily News shot back with a list of overlooked Brooklyn spots, sniping “News flash, Gwyn: New York doesn’t start at the Bowery and end at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side.” Her research has also been mocked: “Is Gwyneth Paltrow a Momofaker?” asked New York magazine’s food blog “Grub Street” after she wrote about how to secure a reservation at red-hot Momofuk restaurants, which don’t take them. Her recommendation of New York’s Greenwich Hotel, a new Robert DeNiro venture, was made without ever having stepped inside. “It looks good on the website anyway,” she wrote.

Among women, Goop has become a flashpoint: they love it or hate it, or, more commonly, love to hate it. Her recipes are healthy, easy and flavourful, but so are Jamie Oliver’s. Her “detox” diet has become a cause célèbre: those who didn’t slavishly follow it, ridiculed it: “She may call it ‘detox.’ I call it ‘starvation,’ ” wrote one commenter on the Washington Post’s website. This looks like something posted on an anorexia website.”

Female journalists have devoted miles of column inches to gleefully slagging the venture as a vanity project: “Why is it called Goop?” asked Elizabeth Renzetti in the Globe and Mail just after it launched. “Perhaps ‘Any Old Load of Rubbish’ and ‘Learn From Me, Ungrateful Peasant’ were both taken.”

Paltrow has emerged as a Marie Antoinette-style figure, a relic from the old regime who’s tone-deaf to the new. (For a website whose motto is “nourish the inner aspect,” there’s a lot of focus on “outer stuff.”) Her attempts to bond with the lumpenproletariat can read like satire. She describes a US$1,850 Hermès watch: “The ultimate anti-credit crunch present,” adding wistfully, “. . . but a girl can dream.” Buying a Chanel minidress is justified as a future heirloom: “This is the dress you save up for and pass down to your daughter because it never goes out of style.” Some of her London hotel recommendations, such as Blakes, where rooms run $600 a night, “are on the pricey side,” she admits, but she’s working on it: “My Goop girls are doing some research into some more affordable places.”

Unlike Martha and Oprah, Paltrow lacks the common touch. Even more grievously, she underestimates her audience’s intelligence. Etalk host Elaine Lui responded to Paltrow’s lineup of safe classics on her reading list, among them Jane Eyre, The Sun Also Rises, and Anna Karenina, with contempt on her blog Laineygossip.com: “It looks like a copy of Mr. Walter’s recommended reading guide from 10th grade.”

Levy “unsubscribed” to Goop last week after scrolling through Paltrow’s book picks. “I didn’t find anything wrong with it,” she says diplomatically. “I’m trying to pare down my email inbox.” Still, she expresses concern for Goop’s viability. “To take on a brand that’s attached to one person is a little precarious at this point in time, especially if you’re a person who wants to have your privacy,” she says. She believes the appetite for celebrity picks has limits: “There’s no one celebrity that I can name that I would want to follow for everything,” she says. The massive success of DailyCandy.com, sold in 2003 for US$3 million, then flipped in 2008 for US$125 million to Comcast, she says, stemmed from its focus on what was being recommended, not who was doing the recommending. The Obama presidency has furthered this shift. “It’s not the ‘All about me show’ ” anymore, she says. “Bush was ‘All about me.’ ”

In response to her critics, Paltrow expresses sympathy: “People get a hit of energy when they are negative and it is very detrimental for them,” she told USA Today. “They do not understand why they do not have a happy life. That kind of stuff is just noise to me. I feel sorry for them.” As for everyone else, let them read Goop. M

UPDATE: Paltrow’s latest missive, issued January 29, ties nicely with her upcoming cookbook, My Father’s Daughter, which celebrates the importance of family dining. Her family dinner menu that’s “great for a Sunday” is (almost literally) stunning in its simplicity. With not a whit of apparent irony, Paltrow explains how placing butter, garlic and Parmesan cheese on a baguette and placing it in the oven will yield “garlic bread.” Culinary purists will be surprised that a foodie like Gwyneth endorses the use of a garlic press, though possibly she’s just trying to make life a little easier for the masses. Fortunately, she does regain some cred with her recommendation of Maldon salt atop frozen peas.