NASA Vs. GOOP
I wish I could say this was a story about how Gwyneth Paltrow called up NASA and asked if they could get to work on creating a zero-gravity vaginal steaming booth for her. Rather, this is about NASA calling out the dubious claims of something dumb and expensive that was shilled on Goop.com.
This week, Goop promoted a cheap-looking wearable sticker called Body Vibes that claims to target imbalances in energy. They cost $60 for a pack of ten, and look like something you’d peel off a tomato bought from an Illuminati grocery store.
But how do they work? Allow Goop to educate you:
“While you’re wearing them – close to your heart, on your left shoulder or arm – they’ll fill in the deficiencies in your reserves, creating a calming effect, smoothing out both physical tension and anxiety. The founders also say they help clear skin by reducing inflammation and boosting cell turnover.
[Body Vibes stickers are] made with the same conductive carbon material NASA uses to line space suits so they can monitor an astronaut’s vitals during wear.”
Stickers. They claim stickers will do this. Gwyneth recently admitted she has no idea what the hell Goop is talking about. So energy-balancing arm stickers feels like something she would make up to troll her readers. But Body Vibes has a website and everything, and appears to be very real.
As for NASA’s thoughts on Goop mentioning them, a representative for their spacewalk office tells Gizmodo that they don’t use carbon material to line its suits, and its current spacesuit has no carbon fibers in it at all. Former chief scientist at NASA’s human research division Mark Shelhamer tells Gizmodo that space suits are not lined with carbon material, but if they were it would be for adding strength to the suit and not monitoring vitals.
Goop.com deleted the line about the stickers being made of NASA-grade material, and issued the following backpedal-y statement:
“The opinions expressed by the experts and companies we profile do not necessarily represent the views of [Goop]. Based on the statement from NASA, we’ve gone back to the company to inquire about the claim and removed the claim from our site until we get additional verification.”
NASA better save Goop’s number, because I doubt this is the last time they’ll have to correct something for them. One day, some pseudo-scientist is going to watch Aliens under the assumption it’s a documentary, start preaching about the skincare benefits of xenomorph saliva, and before you know it, it will be featured on Goop as the newest anti-aging miracle. And poor NASA will be like, “Okay, where do we even begin with this one.”
Pic: Instagram