Sex is a “beautiful thing”, declared the Pope this week. From this remark I think we can safely assume that His Holiness hasn’t encountered Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand new Instagram sex guide. Because frankly it’s enough to turn anyone off.
The actress-turned-dildo-mogul has just launched “Goop Sex”, an online venture dedicated to helping us improve our sex lives. Or, as Ms Paltrow puts it in her latest newsletter: “Something we believe at Goop is that true fulfilment comes from really knowing yourself and feeling comfortable enough to show up in the world and in your relationships as your whole self. An important pillar of this is how we feel about our sexuality.”
This mission statement gives a perfect flavour of what follows. Because all of it is written in the same toe-curlingly worthy style. As a result, the sex tips could hardly be less sexy.
“Sexological bodywork, or somatic sex education,” we learn, “is a healing modality that sits at the intersection of erotic and therapeutic touch.” Not exactly the language of insatiable lust. I can’t imagine this is how Rod Stewart used to chat up his groupies. “All right, darlin’. Want to come backstage, and heal the modality of my intersection?”
At times, Goop makes lovemaking sound like a corporate team-building exercise. For example, when it advises the reader on how to become “a stronger, more confident sexual communicator”. Professional sex therapists are invited to share their wisdom – but they too speak in this mysterious jargon. One says she helps clients to “decompartmentalise sexuality and make it something they bring to their everyday life”. What she means by bringing sexuality to “everyday life”, I don’t know, but hopefully she isn’t thinking of jumble sales, or parent-teacher meetings.
The sex therapists also offer to “create a safe space where learning can happen in a more experiential way” (again the language of corporate team-building), and urge couples to “bring the more deeply vulnerable and dreamy parts of yourself. Be curious and imaginative, as if you’re developing a story together.” Developing a story? What sort of story? A screenplay for the next series of Line of Duty?
It all seems quite baffling. And not remotely erotic. But then, perhaps this is part of Gwyneth Paltrow’s ingenious business plan.
Put her customers off sex, so they have to buy Goop’s vibrators, instead.
Why we just can’t stomach calorie counts
A year has now passed since the Government started forcing chain restaurants to print calorie counts on their menus. If the aim was to transform us into a nation of fighting-fit gym bunnies, clearly it has failed. But the law hasn’t merely been ineffective. It’s been actively malign. Because new research suggests that it has harmed people who are recovering from eating disorders.
In a survey conducted by Beat, an eating disorder charity, 80 per cent of respondents with illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia said that being confronted by calorie counts on menus had set back their recovery. This is hardly surprising. Recovery requires them to conquer their obsession with the number of calories they consume. This thoughtless law makes it all the more difficult.
Our politicians, however, show no sign of ditching the policy. In fact, one of them actually wants to extend it. Labour’s Liz Kendall, the shadow minister for social care, has called for calorie counts to be added to beer taps in pubs. I’m not sure how she thinks this would work in practice. Possibly she imagines that hordes of rowdy young men will swagger up to the nation’s bars on a Friday night, but then, horrified by the number of calories in a pint of lager, order a round of Perrier or San Pellegrino.
Why have MPs become so keen on this sanctimonious nannying? I don’t think it’s because they care about our health. I think it’s just a sign that they’ve run out of ideas. They haven’t got a clue what to do about the things that really matter: how to revive our stagnant economy, or tackle illegal immigration, or make Brexit a success. So they’re reduced to fiddling around with petty, pointless little things like calorie counts – just so they can tell themselves they’re “doing something”.
This new research into eating disorders should be a lesson to them. In politics, something is not always better than nothing.
These Catalans are crazy
Catalonia has become so badly overrun by wild boar that the local authorities are now desperately urging the public to eat them. But, before they begin, I must give the Catalans a word of warning.
Whatever you do with wild boar, don’t roast it.
The temptation is bound to be strong. Like everyone else in Europe, they will have read the comic book adventures of Asterix the Gaul. Asterix, Obelix and their fellow Gaulish warriors eat roast boar in every story. It’s the staple of their diet. And the drawings always make it look deliciously succulent.
In reality, though, the people of ancient Gaul didn’t live off roast boar. It was just a bit of creative licence by Asterix’s creators, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. They found it visually amusing to depict a grown man eating a pig whole.
Once Goscinny and Uderzo became famous, however, they started to regret their decision. This is because, at practically every dinner held in their honour, the organisers would serve them roast boar. And they discovered that it tasted horrible.
“Thinking it would please René and me, people went mad on preparing roast boars for us,” lamented Uderzo at the age of 80, in one of his final interviews. “And wild boar, when it’s roasted, is inedible because it’s so tough.”
But of course, they couldn’t possibly say anything, for fear of offending their hosts. So they had to carry on chewing the hideous thing.
How they must have wished they’d made Asterix eat a nice ribeye steak.
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