Why I’m Glad Gwyneth Paltrow Didn’t Stump for Clinton

Gwyneth Paltrow, political enigma. Image by getty images

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy November 22, 2016

Sisterhood readers will know that I’m mildly obsessed with the question of whether various lifestyle icons will take an anti-Trump (or pro-Trump!) stand. If you’re selling something — particularly something geared towards an audience of white women with conventional tastes — chances are you’re not storming any barricades. Fine. But maybe you’d make a statement of some kind?

On the Cut, Allie Jones picks apart Gwyneth ‘Goop’ Paltrow’s stance or lack thereof when it comes to The New Fascism. As per the Page Six story Jones cites, Paltrow refused to say, after the fact, whom she’d voted for, instead producing very on-brand platitudes. But Jones points out that Paltrow used a pantsuit-centric election-day Instagram photo, and that she’d supported Obama and other Democrats in the past. Moreover, Jones also points to rumors that Paltrow had wanted to host a fundraiser for Clinton, but Clinton didn’t want Paltrow’s support.

Jones suggests that Paltrow’s non-endorsement is either an egotistical grudge (“Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t forget.”) or a privileged celebrity inhabiting a bubble (“It does not really matter what multimillionaire Gwyneth Paltrow thinks about Trump’s ascendancy; she’s going to be fine regardless.”) I have a different theory: Optics.

Could you imagine the think-pieces we’d be getting if Paltrow had been a Clinton surrogate? Remember the Lena Dunham finger-pointing? Imagine that anti-limousine-liberal (and misogyny-tinged) backlash times a billion. Think of the headlines we were spared! It would have been, ‘Gwyneth Paltrow, Poshest Celebrity Ever, Lost Clinton the Election’. It would have been that and nothing else.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO