Upsetting Day: The Goop Mother's Day Gift Guide

Everyone has probably heard of Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, where she sells lousy health advice and snake oil she claims will cure your depression. Sorry, the government told her to stop selling that, so she recently took a hard pivot into sex toys that look like they could be tasteful abstract sculptures. Here, let’s play a game real quick: Goop Sex Toy or Abstract Sculpture?

I know anything is a sex toy if you try hard enough and believe in yourself, and you could probably fit any of those sculptures into any orifice you want. Coward. You horny coward. But for safety, the key is 1.) Sculpture 2.) Sex toy 3.) Sculpture 4.) Sex Toy 5.) Sculpture 6.) Sex toy. The convenient thing is the sculptures from Amazon and the sex toys from Goop are the exact same price!

Since Goop is heavily geared toward women, every year they release a Mother’s Day Gift Guide, and every year I check it out so I can feel sad. Mothers deserve better than a $400 stone serving bowl or a $200 lube warmer. This year I’m going to do the moms of the world a favor and give you Hotdog-approved alternative products that you can purchase instead.

Therabody SmartGoggles deliver three “totally soothing sensations: air massage, gentle warmth, and pleasant vibration.” I’ve never considered massaging my eyes, but if I did, none of those words seem like ones I want next to “eyeball.” I think Gwyneth Paltrow might be slowly assembling an Iron Man suit designed to make every part of your body orgasm.

Ok, so technically, this doesn’t include the sun-blocking part, and I’m not sure if we can call them glasses? It’s more of a stylish face hat? Actually, I can see a scenario where purchasing these for someone might count as homicidal intent. If you asked them to put on these glasses and then do a cool stunt on their motorcycle, you could probably go to jail. So, only get this for moms whose motorcycle is currently in the shop. This is something you’d make if your boss was Gwenyth Paltrow and she posted “faces need more fingers, faces need more fingers” in Slack.

I figured Goop would put at least one vibrator on their Mother’s Day Gift Guide because that seems to be a huge part of their brand now, but I was wrong! They didn’t just put one vibrator in their Mother’s Day Gift Guide. That would be weird. They put fourteen vibrators in their Mother’s Day Gift Guide. You have to wade through like eight sex toys before getting to a single candle or perfume bottle. There isn’t a single picture frame on there, but there are fourteen vibrators. It’s as if Gwenyth Paltrow said during an all-hands meeting, “This year Mother needs to cum, get it wet, give it to mommy.”

Now, I know I said repeatedly that this is a Mother’s Day Gift Guide, but Goop makes sure to mention at the beginning that these are gifts “to honor the friends, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and teachers who have shaped us, supported us, and fed us.” That means they made sure to include at least two vibrators for every kind of Mother for a combined total of $2,026 worth of sex toys. Also, I lied. They only recommended thirteen vibrators. One of those is an abstract sculpture because I am a mischievous sprite.

Few things can provide as much joy as a baker’s dozen of high-end sex toys, but if anything can compare, I think it’s probably a flame thrower. That crotch level stream of fire is how a mother will feel after experiencing enough combined vibrational horsepower to power a small theme park. Did you know that anyone can purchase a flamethrower for any reason with no permit or training? That means your mom can start as many fires as she wants for the price of about 3.5 vibrators ($600). And if she’s brave enough, she can still fuck it.

Actually, we agree with this one. A fistful of loose pills is a great present for anyone!

Wait a second; these are supplements containing “herbs, adaptogens, phytonutrients, and vitamins to help women “approaching, in the throes of, or just past menopause.” That’s no fun. The obligation to take pills is not a good gift. That’s thrusting a new daily responsibility on your mom. Plus, I’m not sure Gwenyth Paltrow does a lot of clinical testing after she gets these from her uterus witch. Consider going back to Plan A: many dildos.

I know that rich people’s cheese is a little different from the Velveeta singles I was raised on, but in my experience, you don’t even need one knife for cheese. The cutlery industry executive who invented special fancy knives for something that’s more fun to eat by wadding into your mouth by hand must have gotten such a big bonus that year. Cheese should be eaten like a dog that found a piece of fried chicken on the sidewalk. Ravenously, from the end of a taut leash, Gwenyth!

These particular knives are “handmade from start to finish by a single craftsman in the Tuscan countryside.” Gwenyth, these are three inch little things for fanning out a tube of cranberry goat cheese, not the forbidden weapons of an ancient samurai. If I’m spending $466 on a knife, it better be able to hack through a wooden crate in a chopping competition.

After blowing $466 to watch three pathetic knives shatter against a wooden crate I went looking for official Forged in Fire: Knife Or Death merch. But apparently, the History Channel’s position on that show is that it never existed. Anyway, if your mom likes knives so much, she’s probably a huge Forged In Fire fan. Sometimes you want to go to the beach, but you also want to remind people that you love knives. For knife super fans everywhere, these Forged In Fire flip flops allow them to show their toes and their extreme knife nerdiness. It’s so truly weird these fucking things are here:

The Healthyline Rainbow Mat is…look, sometimes the descriptions of Goop products provide more questions than answers. I can tell you for sure that this mat has a variety of crystals in it. Those crystals are in some way… electrified, I think? Which is good; you want that because electric debuffs combo well with yoga flame. They also say the mat is “nicely suited for any practice involving your chakras.” Another fact mentioned repeatedly in its item description is that it’s non-refundable. Whatever these crystals do when they touch your chakras, Gwenyth Paltrow does not want them back afterward.

Ok, so your mom likes to exercise? What better way to build core strength than an alligator wrestling class? I, for one, find it difficult and tedious to exercise, but when the stakes are exercise or die, I still don’t enjoy it, but I always get my steps in. It turns out there are multiple places that offer alligator wrestling classes, most of them, unsurprisingly, in Florida. You can really wander into any swamp; hand a man fifty dollars, and he will let you attempt to dominate one of nature’s last living dinosaurs. That fucking rules!

The reviews say gator wrestling is fun, but you have to take that with a grain of salt, considering how the reviews were all written by people willing to have Amateur Alligator Wrestling Incident printed on their death certificate. I guarantee you your mom will find way more inner peace from making a nine foot gator her bitch than she ever would from a $2,000 yoga mat.

So this Mother’s Day, when you’re considering what to get your mom, think the Hotdog way. After all, do you want your mom to be a pill popping, flamethrowing, alligator-dominating badass with sweet glasses and knife enthusiast shoes? No, I didn’t write this gift guide as a hint to anyone I know personally. How dare you suggest that.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Josh Fabian, the flamethrower wieldin’ gator wrasslin’ dildo slangin’ motherfucker every mother wants this Mother’s Day.

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