奥斯卡影后帕特洛的养生商业帝国

On a Monday morning in November, students at Harvard Business School convened in their classroom to find Gwyneth Paltrow. She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all, using her phone, as they took their seats along with guests they brought to class that day — wives, mothers, boyfriends. Each seat filled, and some guests had to stand along the back wall and sit on the steps. The class was called the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports. The students were there to interrogate Paltrow about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business, and to learn how to create a “sustainable competitive advantage,” according to the class catalog.

去年11月某个周一的上午，哈佛商学院的学生们走进教室后，发现格温妮斯·帕特洛(Gwyneth Paltrow)已在那里。她坐在他们的一个课桌后，一点也不融合，她正在用手机，学生和他们那天带来旁听的客人——妻子们、母亲们、男友们——随之陆续落座。教室里座无虚席，有些客人不得不沿着教室的后墙站立，或者坐在阶梯教室走道的台阶上。这堂课的题目是“娱乐、媒体及体育产业”。根据课程目录，学生们在这堂课上要向帕特洛询问她创办的生活时尚与健康产品电商企业Goop的有关问题，并学习如何打造“可持续的竞争优势”。

She moved to the teacher’s desk, where she sat down and crossed her legs. She talked about why she started the business, how she only ever wanted to be someone who recommended things.

她从课桌后走到讲台上坐了下来，一条腿压在另一条腿上。她讲述了为什么做起这门生意，并表示最开始时，她只不过是想当一个向他人推荐产品的人。

The first iteration of the company was only these lists — where to go and what to buy once you get there — via a newsletter she emailed out of her kitchen, the first one with recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins. One evening, at a party in London, one of the newsletter’s recipients, a venture capitalist named Juliet de Baubigny, told her, “I love what you’re doing with Goop.” G.P., as she is called by nearly everyone in her employ, didn’t even know what a venture capitalist was. She was using off-the-shelf newsletter software. But De Baubigny became a “godmother” to Paltrow, she said. She encouraged her vision and “gave permission” to start thinking about how to monetize it.

公司最初的运作只是提供一些清单——去哪儿，到那里后买些什么等等，她从自己的厨房把这些清单发给那些订阅电子邮件简讯的人，第一份清单里有火鸡通心粉和香蕉坚果松饼的食谱。一天晚上，在伦敦的一个派对上，收到这些订阅邮件的人之一、名叫朱丽叶·德·鲍比尼(Juliet de Baubigny)的风险投资人对她说，“我喜欢你用Goop做的事。”GP——帕特洛手下几乎所有的人都这么叫她——当时连风险投资人是什么都不知道。她用的是现成的订阅邮件发布软件。不过，德·鲍比尼成了她的“教母”，帕特洛说。德·鲍比尼鼓励了她的设想，并对她开始思考如何从中获利“表示认可”。

By the time she stood in that Harvard classroom, Goop was a clothing manufacturer, a beauty company, an advertising hub, a publishing house, a podcast producer and a portal of health-and-healing information, and soon it would become a TV-show producer. It was a clearinghouse of alternative health claims, sex-and-intimacy advice and probes into the mind, body and soul. There was no part of the self that Goop didn’t aim to serve.

当她出现在哈佛商学院那间教室里的时候，Goop已经是一家服装制造商、一个美妆公司、一个广告平台、一家出版社、一个播客节目制作者，以及一个健康医疗信息的门户，很快还将制作电视节目。这里汇集了各种非传统的养生声称和对性爱与私密生活的建议，触及人的思想、肉体和灵魂。个人生活的每个方面都是Goop旨在提供服务的目标。

“I want to help you solve problems,” G.P. said. “I want to be an additive to your life.” Goop is now worth $250 million, according to a source close to the company.

“我想帮你解决各种问题，”GP说。“我想成为你生活的添加剂。”与公司关系密切的人士透露，Goop公司目前的估价为2.5亿美元。

Goop’s first newsletter left G.P.'s kitchen in 2008, right when the economy was collapsing around us. It wasn’t just the homes people no longer owned and the jobs people no longer had. It was the environmental crisis. It was the endless exposure of corruption. Whom exactly were we trusting with our care? Why did we decide to trust them in the first place? Who says that only certain kinds of people are allowed to give us the answers?

Goop的第一封订阅邮件在2008年从GP的厨房发出，那正是美国经济崩盘的时候。那不止是人们失去了自己的房子、丢掉了自己的工作。还有环境危机，还有对腐败的没完没了的曝光。我们在照料自己上过去究竟信任了什么人?我们当初为什么决定相信他们?谁说只有某几种人才能告诉我们答案?

These phenomena gave an easy rise to Gwyneth Paltrow, who was at first curating teas and lingerie and sweaters she thought you’d like. But people were looking for leaders, and she was already committing public displays of ostentatious wellness: She showed up at a movie premiere with cupping marks on her back; she let bees sting her because I don’t know why. Suddenly Gwyneth Paltrow, the movie star, was a major player in an industry that was big business.

这些现象让格温妮丝·帕特洛轻松崛起，她最初不过是推荐她觉得你会喜欢的茶、内衣和毛衣。但人们那时正在寻找领袖，而她早已在公开场合炫耀自己的养生法：她背上带着拔火罐的印迹出席在电影首映式上;她让蜜蜂蜇她，我也不知道为什么。突然间，电影明星格温妮丝·帕特洛成了一个商机巨大的产业里的主要玩家。

The Goop campus in Santa Monica consists of four squat gray buildings, where in June a diverse group of about 200 young, exuberant, well-dressed people were working hard to plan the coming weekend’s event, the In Goop Health wellness summit. G.P. sat at her desk behind the glass walls of her office, which was spare and also decorated in shades of gray. Her golden hair fell over the paper she was reading. She was wearing a tank top, shearling-lined white Birkenstocks and Goop x Frame wide-legged palazzo jeans. Back when she wore them at Harvard, I’d never seen anyone else wear them. Now she was making them, and everyone else I knew was wearing the same style.

位于圣塔莫尼卡的Goop公司园区由四座灰色建筑组成，今年6月，二百来个形形色色、精力充沛、衣着考究的年轻人在这里努力策划即将到来的周末活动“In Goop Health健康峰会”。GP坐在自己四面都是玻璃的办公室里的办公桌后面，办公室装修简洁，点缀着不同深浅的灰色。她的金发垂落在她正阅读的文件上。她穿着一件挎篮背心，白色羊剪绒衬里Birkenstocks凉鞋，一条Goop x Frame阔腿牛仔裤。她穿这这一身在哈佛出现之前，我还从没见过别人有过这种打扮。现在她穿了这么一身后，我认识的人都这么穿。

We ate salmon hand rolls. She was trying to be low-carb today, but it wasn’t happening. There was too much going on. The wellness summit, a daylong immersion in Goop-endorsed products, panels, doctors and other “healers,” was a “heavy lift for the team.”

我们一起吃了三文鱼手卷。这天她本来的计划是少摄入碳水化合物，但没做到。有太多的事情。健康峰会就是整整一天浸没在各种Goop认证的产品、各种论坛、各种医生和其他“治疗师”当中，“对团队来说有点沉重。”

The summit is great, don’t get her wrong. All three so far have sold out, with tickets ranging from $500 to $4,500, the highest of which included two dinners with G.P. plus two nights at Casa del Mar. But lately she has been wondering if the summit does everything it needs to. She worries that she’s just serving the same customers over and over. She met a woman who took a very long bus ride from she thinks rural Pennsylvania to the Goop summit in New York in January. “Seventy-nine percent of our American customers aren’t in New York or Los Angeles,” where these summits are held, she said; they’re in secondary markets.

别理解错了她的话，峰会办得非常好。三场活动的票全部售罄，票价从500到4500美元不等，最贵的一档包含了与GP共进两顿晚餐、以及两晚滨海之家(Casa del Mar)酒店住宿。不过，最近她有点儿担心，峰会是否把该做的事都做到了。她担心自己只是在一次又一次地为同一群消费者提供服务。她见过一位女士坐了很久的公交车，从她认为是乡下的宾夕法尼亚州到纽约来参加1月份的Goop峰会。“我们的美国客户中的79%都不在纽约或洛杉矶，”她说，(那两个城市是举行峰会的地方)，他们是在二级市场。

So how do you bring them in? There have been pop-up Goop stores everywhere from Dallas to Miami. There would be a digital pass to the summit. But you can’t taste a plate of ancient grains and avocado in citrus dressing on a computer. You can’t feel someone push warm oil with a jade roller over your skin through an iPad. You can’t eat a piece of chocolate that will supposedly not just regulate your hormones but restore your sex life — chocolate! — on your phone. You can only watch some panels and one-on-one conversations. So she’s thinking they might take the thing on the road. Can you believe this? She was incredulous. She still remembers sitting in her kitchen in London, celebrating a day when $45 had come in because of an advertising partnership.

那你怎样把他们吸引来呢?从达拉斯到迈阿密，到处都有临时冒出的Goop门店。将来会有参与峰会的数字途径。但你不能在电脑上品尝一盘古老谷物和佐柑橘调味汁的牛油果。你不能在iPad上感受有人用玉石磙子在你皮肤上把暖暖的精油推开的感觉。你也不能在手机上吃一块巧克力，据说，这种“巧克力!”不仅能调节你的荷尔蒙，还能恢复你的性生活。你只能看些论坛和对谈。所以她在考虑，他们也许用路演的方式办这个峰会。你能相信事情发展到了这一步吗?她表示不可相信。她还记得当年坐在伦敦的一个厨房里，为一单广告合作进账45美元庆祝的那天。

The newsletter was at first kind of mainstream New Age-forward. It had some kooky stuff in it, but nothing totally outrageous. It was concerned with basic wellness causes, like detoxes and cleanses and meditation. It wasn’t until 2014 that it began to resemble the thing it is now, a wellspring of both totally legitimate wellness tips and completely bonkers magical thinking.

那些订阅邮件最初只是主流的新时代运动(New Age)的某种推进。里边有一些古怪内容，但没有荒诞不经的东西。它关注一些基本的养生之道，比如排毒、净化和冥想。直到2014年它才开始有了今天的样子，既有完全合理的养生窍门，也有彻底疯狂的奇想。

Goop knew what readers were clicking on, and it was nimble enough to meet those needs by actually manufacturing the things its readers wanted. When a story about beauty products that didn’t have endocrine disrupters and formaldehyde got a lot of traffic in 2015, the company started Goop by Juice Beauty, a collection of “clean” face creams and oils and cleansers that it promised lacked those things. When a story about “postnatal depletion,” a syndrome coined by one of the Goop doctors, did even-better-than-average business in 2017, it introduced Goop Wellness, a series of four vitamin “protocols” for women with different concerns — weight, energy, focus, etc. Goop says it sold $100,000 of them on their first day.

Goop很清楚读者点击了哪些内容，也足够灵敏地通过实际生产那些读者想要的东西来满足这些需求。当2015年的一篇讲不含内分泌干扰素和甲醛的美容产品的文章获得了巨大流量后，公司便开始推出Goop by Juice Beauty系列美妆产品，包括各种“纯净”的面霜、卸妆油和洁面液，保证不含那些物质。另一篇关于“产后体虚”(这是一名Goop医生创造出来的症状)的文章在2017年创造了高于平均水准的业绩，公司推出了Goop Wellness，分别针对有体重、精力、注意力等不同担忧的四套维生素“医疗方案”。Goop说，推出的第一天就卖出了10万美元的产品。

The weirder Goop went, the more its readers rejoiced. And then, of course, the more Goop was criticized: by mainstream doctors with accusations of pseudoscience, by websites like Slate and Jezebel saying it was no longer ludicrous — no, now it was dangerous. And elsewhere people would wonder how Gwyneth Paltrow could try to solve our problems when her life seemed almost comically problem-free. But every time there was a negative story about her or her company, all that did was bring more people to the site — among them those who had similar kinds of questions and couldn’t find help in mainstream medicine.

Goop变得愈是怪异，它的读者就愈是欢欣鼓舞。然后，当然，它也会受到更多批评：主流医生指责它是伪科学，像Slate和Jezebel这样的网站说它不再搞笑——不，它现在很危险。其他地方的人想知道，格温妮丝·帕特洛自己的生活看上去几乎没有任何问题，简直到了可笑的地步，而她究竟要怎么解决我们的问题。但是，每当关于她或她公司的负面报道出现时，这一切确实会令更多的人浏览这个网站——其中包括那些有类似问题，而且无法从主流医学中得到帮助的人。

With assaults coming from all sides, Goop began to dig its heels into the dirt, not only because dirt is a natural exfoliant and also contains selenium, which is a mineral many of us are lacking and helps with thyroid function. Now Goop was growing only more successful. Now Goop was a cause, and G.P. was its martyr.

受到各方攻击的Goop，开始把脚跟扎进泥土里，这不仅因为泥土是天然的去角质物质，而且它还含有硒，这是我们许多人缺乏的矿物质，有利于甲状腺功能。现在Goop反而更加成功了。现在Goop成了一种事业，而GP是它的殉道者。

That issue, like the second issue (the one with a cover photo of her and Falchuk and the words “In Deep”), was $15 on newsstands and a product of a partnership with Condé Nast. At first, it seemed like a perfect fit. “Goop and Condé Nast are natural partners, and I’m excited she’s bringing her point of view to the company,” said Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s artistic director and editor in chief of Vogue, when the deal was announced in April 2017. The print product would be a collaboration — Goop content overseen by a Vogue editor.

那一期的《Goop》杂志和第二期一样(封面是GP和佛查克[Falchuk]的照片，上面写着“深入”)，在报摊上售价15美元，是它与康泰纳仕(Condé Nast)合作的成果。起初，合作似乎很完美。“Goop和康泰纳仕是天生的合作伙伴，我很高兴她能把自己的观点带给公司，”2017年4月，康泰纳仕艺术总监兼《Vogue》主编安娜·温图尔(Anna Wintour)宣布这项合作时表示。合作内容是印刷制品——Goop提供内容，由一位《Vogue》编辑负责监制。

It didn’t work out. “They’re a company that’s really in transition and do things in a very old-school way,” G.P. said. The parting was amicable. “But it was amazing to work with Anna. I love her. She’s a total idol of mine. We realized we could just do a better job of it ourselves in-house. I think for us it was really like we like to work where we are in an expansive space. Somewhere like Condé, understandably, there are a lot of rules.”

最后没有成功。“他们是一家真正处于转型期，并以非常老派的方式做事的公司，”GP说。分手是友好的。“与安娜合作真是太棒了。我爱她。她是我的偶像。但我们意识到，我们在自己机构内部可以做得更好。我认为就我们而言，我们真的喜欢像我们现在这样，在一个宽广的空间里工作。而像康泰纳仕那样的地方，可以理解，他们有很多规则。”

The rules she’s referring to are the rules of traditional magazine making — all upheld strictly at an institution like Condé Nast. One of them is that they weren’t allowed to use the magazine as part of their “contextual commerce” strategy. They wanted to be able to sell Goop products (in addition to other products, just as they do on their site). But Condé Nast insisted that they have a more “agnostic” editorial approach. The company publishes magazines, not catalogs. But why? G.P. wanted to know. She wanted the Goop magazine to be a natural extension of the Goop website. She wanted the reader to be able to do things like text a code to purchase a product without even having to leave her inert reading position and wander over to her computer. A magazine customer is also a regular customer.

她说的规则是指传统杂志制作的规则，像康泰纳仕这样的机构会全部严格遵守。其中一条是，Goop不得使用该杂志作为其“情境商业”战略的一部分。Goop希望能够推销自己的产品(包括其他产品，就像他们在自己的网站上做的那样)。但康泰纳仕坚持认为，他们应该用一种更加“模棱两可”的编辑方法。公司出版的是杂志，不是产品目录。但这是为什么?GP想不明白。她希望《Goop》杂志能够成为Goop网站的自然延伸。她希望读者能够做一些事情，比如用短信发出一个代码就可以购买产品，甚至不必离开惯常阅读的位置走到电脑边去。一本杂志的顾客，同时也是普通的顾客。

But the other rule is — well, the thing couldn’t be fact-checked. Goop wanted Goop magazine to be like the Goop website in another way: to allow the Goop family of doctors and healers to go unchallenged in their recommendations via the kinds of Q. and A.s published, and that just didn’t pass Condé Nast standards. Those standards require traditional backup for scientific claims, like double-blind, peer-reviewed studies.

但另一条规则是——这件事通不过事实核查。Goop希望《Goop》杂志在另一个方面也像Goop网站一样：让Goop旗下的医生和治疗师可以通过问答形式，不受质疑地发布各种建议，然而这种做法不符合康泰纳仕的标准。它的标准要求文章能够得到科学观点的传统支持，比如经过双盲实验和同行评审研究。

A gynecologist and obstetrician in San Francisco named Jen Gunter, who also writes a column on reproductive health for The Times, has criticized Goop in about 30 blog posts on her website since 2015. A post she wrote last May — an open letter that she signed on behalf of “Science” — generated more than 800,000 page views.

旧金山的妇产科医生珍·甘特(Jen Gunter)亦在时报撰写一个关于生殖健康的专栏，自2015年起，她在自己的网站上批评过Goop上的约30篇博文。她去年5月写的一篇帖子——是一封她以“科学”名义发表的公开信——带来了超过80万的浏览量。

As of June, there were 2.4 million unique visitors to the site per month, according to the numbers Goop provided me. The podcast, which is mostly hosted by Elise Loehnen and features interviews with wellness practitioners, receives 100,000 to 650,000 listens per week. Goop wanted to publish articles about autoimmune diseases and infrared saunas and thyroids, and now it can, on its own terms — sort of.

根据Goop提供给我的数据，截至6月份，该网站每月有240万名独立访问者。它的播客主要由伊利斯·罗伊南(Elise Loehnen)主持，采访健康卫生领域的从业者，每周有10万至65万名听众。Goop希望发表关于自身免疫性疾病、红外线桑拿和甲状腺的文章，现在，在某种程度上，它可以按照自己的方式行事了。

After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, G.P. made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from Condé Nast to run the Goop magazine. It hired a man with a Ph.D. in nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former Stanford professor. And in September, Goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.P. chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”

经过太多次的文化风暴，并且考虑到投资者的想法，GP做了一些改变。Goop聘请了一名律师审查网站上的所有观点。它从康泰纳仕挖来了一名编辑，管理《Goop》杂志。它还聘请了一位拥有营养科学博士学位的人，以及一位曾在斯坦福大学担任教授的科学与研究总监。到了9月，唉，Goop正在招聘一名全职事实核查员。GP选择将这些视为“成长中必不可少的烦恼”。

But something strange happened. Each of these pronouncements set off a series of blog posts and articles and tweets that linked directly to the site, driving up traffic. At Harvard, G.P. called these moments “cultural firestorms.” “I can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash.

但是，奇怪的事情发生了。所有这些决定的声明都引发了一系列博客帖子和文章，以及直接链接到该网站的推文，从而推动了流量。在哈佛，GP将这些时刻称为“文化风暴”。“我可以把这些眼球化为金钱，”她告诉学生们。Goop学会了一种特殊的黑魔法：把互联网上的辛辣批评，以及围绕着GP本人一直存在着的、我们应当称之为文化矛盾心态的东西聚拢起来，并把它们变为现金。

You couldn't win with everyone. Or maybe it’s just that G.P. disrupted the contract between the celebrity and the civilian who is observing her. In a typical women’s magazine profile, the implicit pact is that the celebrity will not make the woman feel bad by implying that the woman could have what the celebrity has if only she would work: “It’s all in my genes, what can I say!” the celebrity proclaims. But G.P. was different. She would talk openly about the food habits and exercise obsessions that allowed her to look the way she did. People think they want celebrities to speak honestly, but we’re not really that happy when they do.

你无法赢得所有人。或者GP只是破坏了名人和观察她的普通人之间默认的约定。在一篇典型的杂志女性专题报道中，隐含的约定是这个名人不能去暗示，女人只要肯工作，就能得到这个名人所拥有的一切，从而让女人感觉很糟糕：“这一切都在我的基因里，我还能说什么!”名人们总是这样宣称。但GP是不同的。她会公开声称，是饮食习惯、以及她对锻炼的执着，才让她看起来是现在这个样子。人们认为他们希望名人说话诚实，但是当名人真正诚实的时候，我们却并不那么开心。

She didn’t know why people felt the way they did. She said the decision to stop acting and pursue Goop was not difficult, but it had nothing to do with her reputation. “I really liked acting,” she told me. “But at a certain point, it started to feel frustrating in a way not to have true agency, like to be beholden to other people to give you a job, or to create something, to put something into the world.”

她不知道人们为什么会有这样的感觉。她说她做出停止表演并发展Goop这个决定并不困难，但这与她的名声无关。“我真的很喜欢表演，”她告诉我。“但到了一定时候，那种没有真正的中介的方式会让人非常困扰，就比如要欠某人的人情，因为对方给了你一份工作，或者要创造某种东西，给世界带来某种东西。”

What can she say? It’s hard to talk about herself like this. How can she really understand who she is in the culture anyway? She’s the only one who can’t see herself clearly. All she knows is what she hears, and she once heard that she eats in front of the mirror naked.

她能说什么?像这样谈论她自己很难。她怎么能真正理解她在文化中到底是什么?她是唯一一个无法看清她自己的人。她所知道的一切都是她听来的，有一次，她听人说她会裸体对着镜子吃东西。

She doesn’t understand it. She doesn’t think she’s perfect. She is the way she is because of hard work. How could people hate her for that? It’s just hard work. It’s just intention. The content is free, and it’s all right there. Go to her website. Do some meditation. Just eat more produce. Take some time for yourself. Hydrate.

她不能理解。她认为自己并不完美。她之所以成为这样，是因为她努力工作。人们怎么会恨她呢?只是努力工作而已。这只是好心。内容是免费的，就摆在那。去她的网站。做一些冥想。吃更多农产品。花一些时间在自己身上。补水。

We’re so hard on one another, G.P. said. We’re so hard on ourselves, too. “That’s all we do as women,” she said. “We just kick the [expletive] out of ourselves. It’s like that inner critic is so vicious, and it’s like: Why do we do that? It’s so nuts.” She continued: “People say that there’s no link between emotions and consciousness and physical illness. And yet look at the plethora of autoimmune diseases around you. One man to 10 women have autoimmune. We literally have turned on ourselves.”

我们对彼此太苛刻了，GP说。我们对自己也太苛刻。“这就是我们身为女性所做的一切，”她说。“我们只是[此处略去脏字]爆发。内心的批评是如此恶毒，感觉是：我们为什么要这样做?太疯狂了。”她继续说。“人们说情绪与意识同身体上的疾病之间没有联系。然而，看看你身边那么多的自身免疫性疾病。男人和女人患上自身免疫性疾病的比例是一比十。我们真的是在自己打击自己。”