Gwyneth Paltrow tells critics of her $75 vagina candle to “go fuck yourself”

Gwyneth Paltrow has defended her $75 (£56) vagina candle, telling critics to “go fuck yourself”.

The star launched the now-discontinued product, titled ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’, a few years ago on her website Goop, which drew much press attention at the time.

Opening up about the product at the 2025 Mindvalley Manifesting Summit, Paltrow shared how the candle came about, recalling that they were “messing around with different scents one day”, adding: “And I smelled something and I was like, ‘Oh, that smells like… you know.

“I was joking. And then [perfumer Douglas Little] was like, ‘Oh we should make that a candle and put it on the site’,” she added. “And I thought he was kidding, and I was like, ‘Yeah definitely. That sounds like a winner right there’.”

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“And then all of a sudden, it was literally on the website. And then we broke the internet again. And then it took us a long time to live that one down.”

Paltrow then added: “But I kept it on the site because there is an aspect to women’s sexuality that I think we’re socialized to feel a lot of shame. And I sort of loved this kind of punk rock idea, ‘We are beautiful and we are awesome and go fuck yourself’.”

Goop has subsequently launched products such as the ‘Hands Off My Vagina Candle’, which donated a percentage of its sales to the ACLU Foundation’s Reproductive Freedom Project to mark Roe v. Wade’s anniversary in 2022. The site has also released ‘This Smells Like My Orgasm’ and ‘This Smells Like My Prenup’ candles.

In 2021, a north London resident called Judy Thompson revealed that the vagina candle that she had purchased burst into flames in her living room.

“The candle exploded and emitted huge flames, with bits flying everywhere,” she told The Sun. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The whole thing was ablaze and it was too hot to touch.”

She added: “It was scary at the time, but funny looking back that Gwyneth’s vagina candle exploded in my living room.”

In other news, Paltrow was recently criticised by experts over “irresponsible” comments she made regarding intimacy coordinators, where she suggested she felt “very stifled” by the presence of one on set.

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