Gwyneth Paltrow says she 'doesn't give a f**k about ageing'

'This is supposed to happen. This is OK'

Gwyneth Paltrow is done caring about what people think of her. Image: Getty

At 51, Gwyneth Paltrow is done caring about her crow's feet or forehead lines – she's got more important things to spend her time on. 

Gwyneth Paltrow has long been the subject of public scrutiny. Too pretty, too earnest, too rich, too privileged, too clean, too…'Gwyneth’. 

Celebrity and multi-million dollar business or not – and valid criticism or otherwise – all the years of fierce headlines and ridicule certainly seem enough to weigh heavily on anyone’s mind. 

But at the age of 51, she no longer wastes time caring about what anyone thinks, especially when it comes to her appearance. 

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Since she launched Goop as a newsletter in 2014, and ultimately pioneered an e-commerce empire, Paltrow has become the face of wellness across most of the Western world. Bone broth, vitamin-infused IV drips and vagina candles are all part and parcel with the Goop-Gwyneth brand – quirks people love to mock with equal parts mirth and disdain. 

But in the past few years, the tabloids and trolls have also turned their attention to the way Paltow looks – who is, as we all are, ageing. Unlike much of her cohort, however, she’s taking a path of relatively low intervention. 

“I don’t do a ton of stuff, and I don’t put all those crazy filters on my pictures,” she tells Bustle. But she didn’t always feel so relaxed about the thought of getting older. 

“When I turned 40…I really flipped out,” she says. It was “so jarring, because that’s when I started to notice crow’s feet and this and that.

“It’s so interesting to me how until you have that, you somehow think you’re never going to have that. You think you’re going to be impervious, and it seems like this whole thing that other people are needlessly worrying about. Then you’re like, “Oh, my God, my face.”

“I am constantly in an exercise of embracing where I am and also embracing this painful thing of not being young and beautiful. Sometimes I almost think of it as a person that I’m hugging, like, ‘This is supposed to happen. This is OK.’

Fast forward 10 years, Paltrow says “I didn’t have that [fear] at all at 50.” 

“I was like, ‘I love my friends. I love my husband. I love my kids. Yeah, my job is hard. But this is good.’” 

“I don’t give a f*ck what anyone says about me, thinks about me, this is who I am. I felt like 50 was a deepening into myself. And, apparently, that just keeps getting better.”

It’s not a coincidence, either. Paltrow tells Bustle she actively stays away from the comparison of culture – refusing to view herself through the lens of people she sees online. 

“I’m never going to be able to look like X, Y, and Z, especially as I become 50, 55, 60. So it’s like: how do I feel? How am I holding myself? Do I like myself? What is my anxiety level? Am I strong?

“Yeah, I’m bummed that my stomach…elasticity’s going. But if I look at a 28-year-old model on Instagram and think my stomach’s supposed to look like that, I’ll just go into a depression. So I’ve really tried to divorce myself from that comparison.” 

Paltrow practises a form of radical self-acceptance oft-touted by the likes of the psychologists she profiles on Goop itself, and she practises it every day.

As the face of the brand, whether she wants to be or not, Paltrow regularly posts photos of herself that are never put through “that app” (she means Facetune), ones where she has visible blemishes like “my pimple and my wrinkles and my bags”. 

But instead of approaching these changes from a place of fear and anticipation of judgement, her response is simply “Whatever. This is how I look.”

Despite this radical self-acceptance, she isn’t planning on totally letting go and free-falling into ageing altogether. And she gives enough f*cks about it to cater to others who do too. 

The brand’s new Good.Clean.Goop range is an affordable line of skincare products, not intended to be “mass market” per se, but certainly to widen the accessibility of the brand. For context, most of Goop Beauty’s skincare products are above $100 – with the flagship GoopGenes range between $150 and $200 a pop.

The new line, on the other hand, is between $30 and $65, and it does include a ‘healthy ageing serum’. 

“Good.Clean.Goop is for a person who understands about the dangers that are in conventional products, somebody who is wellness-focused. I think from a values perspective and a lifestyle perspective, they’re probably similar [to someone who might buy Goop Beauty]. It’s just that the line is more affordable,” she tells Bustle. “I’m so passionate about what we do and being able to offer product that isn’t going to f*ck up someone’s endocrine system. 

As the living, breathing embodiment of Goop, you can be sure Paltrow will be taking the healthy ageing product for a spin instead of adopting Facetune practices late in life. But as for her ongoing plan to continue ageing gracefully? 

“I’ll probably try, knowing myself,” she says. “Or I might be like, ‘F*ck this.’ I might just disappear, and no one will ever see me again.” 

We guess that’s one way to protect your peace?

Originally published as Gwyneth Paltrow says she 'doesn't give a f**k about ageing'