It’s been five years since Gwyneth Paltrow debuted her “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle. In case you memory-holed it, the $75 product not only broke the internet and many, many brains. Now, for the first time, the actor and Goop CEO is sharing more about how it all came to be.
“That product is so fascinating because we were messing around with different scents one day. And I smelled something and I was like, ‘Oh, that smells like…you know,’” Paltrow said over the weekend at an event called the Mindvalley Manifesting Summit. (Lol… sure.) Its notes were geranium, citrusy bergamot, cedar, Damask rose, and ambrette seed. First, how very Los Angeles. Second, if I encountered a scent reminiscent of my vagina, I certainly wouldn’t talk about it, let alone hawk it. Send it to all of my exes? Maybe. Put it on the market? Never. Third, my vagina hasn’t even heard of an ambrette seed.
Paltrow then said her perfumer, Douglas Little, suggested they lean all the way in to the idea. Sure, blame your perfumer…
“I was joking. And then [Douglas] was like, ‘Oh, we should make that a candle and put it on the site,’” she said. “All of a sudden, it was literally on the website. … And then it took us a long time to live that one down.”
According to Paltrow, the candle (which, very notably, sold out) turned out to be much more than a joke. It was “punk rock.”
“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 said. “And I sort of loved this kind of punk rock idea; ‘We are beautiful and we are awesome and go fuck yourself.'” If there’s anything more narcissistic than a millionaire selling an over-priced candle that supposedly smells like her own vagina, it’s deeming the act “punk rock” in the aftermath.
- Anyway, the candle now sells for $400 on the resale market, so I guess it all worked out for her.
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