Remember Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina candle? The former actress-turned-entrepreneur — who’s, by the way, totally fine no longer making MCU movies — used to sell a line of candles called “This Smells Like My Vagina” on Goop. Two of them reportedly blew up on their customers. It was also a perhaps inevitable fixture of fun. Well, Paltrow noticed people dragging it, and now she’s defending it as a “strong feminist statement.”
“So many women have been raised, at least in my generation, to think there’s something wrong with themselves or that the vagina is weird or gross or something to be ashamed of,” Paltrow said in a video posted on Instagram Stories (which you can watch over at TikTok). “The candle is supposed to be a very strong punk-rock kind of F-you to anyone who ever made us feel like that.”
The candle, one could argue, gained extra significance last year, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, prompting a massive backlash against conservatives trying to replace women’s bodies. Paltrow argues it wasn’t right for the candle to become a joke.
“People tried to make it about something else, which is kind of a shame because it was really meant to be this strong feminist statement,” Paltrow said, adding, “But we no longer make the candle.”
It’s worth noting that the candle technically didn’t bear the exact scent of Paltrow’s vagina. Instead it was a mix of bergamot, geranium and cedar juxtaposed with damask rose and ambrette seed. Though the vagina candle is no longer for sale, Goop still sells a perfume called “This Smells Like My Vagina Roll-On.”
(Via HuffPost)