Examine the Goop Gift Guides With Me

As obvious as this may sound, there are few things I love more in this world than a gift. I love giving them, I love receiving them — I just find it a delight to be on either end of the process of thinking about a person you love, then getting them something that you think will brighten their day. 

I also love seeing the stupid stuff that rich people get up to. 

This week, then, contained my own personal Best Time of the Year: the moment when Goop releases its annual holiday gift guide. Gwyneth Paltrow can always be relied on to suggest truly nutso things to indulge in, so, for the past several years, I have religiously trawled her Goop guides to see just how ridiculous her gift ideas can get. Will she recommend a $12,000 gold candle snuffer? A private jet trip you can only access by signing away the naming rights to your firstborn child? 

I must know — so when I saw the 2025 guide this morning, I dove in. As is usually the case, there are some items on here that I can actually understanding wanting: a luxury hotel stay, a cashmere sweater, etc. But most are, per Gwynnie custom, insane — and, this year, I decided they call for a blog post. 

Goop organizes its gift guide into categories: gifts for a hostess, gifts for men, etc. So I will review the items in the same way. I'm skipping over plenty of stuff entirely: the Wellness guide (either you can buy that stuff at Walgreens or you don't need it), the Under $100 guide (most of it's reasonable), the jewelry (we get it, necklaces cost more than a car sometimes), and most travel experiences (because again, this is what people should spend their riches on). But, for the rest of the list, I have thoughts. Read on to see what they are. 

The "Forward to Your SO" Guide 

Goop has done this guide nearly since the beginning, and I have to say, Gwyneth and I have very different definitions of "gifts to ask for from your partner." My "Forward to Your SO" gift list is the same list I send to anyone else who needs it, with maybe, like, 3% more spice. Is one of the romance novels on my list slightly hornier than the others? Guess I'll ask my boyfriend for that one instead of my sister. Job done. 

Villa in Antibes, €64,000/night. Goop says this one is perfect "for the couple who likes to travel with friends." At nine bedrooms, you could squeeze 18 friends in here, but it would still cost them €3500 per night per person!!! If a friend group exists that's open to this, I honestly don't want to know.

Vintage Shell-Shaped Butter Dish, $450. Gwyneth calls this "the gift that says 'I love you butter than anyone.'" If you love me butter than anyone, buy me actual butter. My regular Kerrygold is like $7 a pack now, so a high-end butter like a Bordier is literally a luxury item. Just get me that! Step away from the single-use kitchen tool that is probably held together with asbestos and lead!

Vespa in Primavera Red, $5,799. My only note on this was "kind of sick tbh," and you know what, I stand by it. Live your Lizzie McGuire Movie dreams. 

Anya Hindmarch Pills Box, $450. I need you to know that there are no fewer than three pill organizers in this gift guide. Why are they so obsessed with pillboxes? Why is this one on the romance guide? Does this have to say "Penelope's Prescriptions" on it like the one shown in the photos? I do not need the TSA thinking I stole my prescription meds from some woman called Penelope! 

The Beauty Gift Guide 

Aire 360 Ceramic Air Styler Blowout Kit with Carrying Case, $299. On the one hand, my brain is exactly broken enough to think this is a decent price for a high-end, multi-use hair tool. On the other hand, the only tool I use on my hair is an $18 Conair dryer I bought at Walmart in 2015. *shrug* The duality of woman.

Vintner's Daughter Active Botanical Serum, $740 for 100 ml. I genuinely don't know what this is. Why are we even considering spending $740 for a skin product packaged in a hay-filled box that looks like the manger Jesus was born in? IS that the manger that Jesus was born in? That would at least explain the price tag!

Coquille Mirror, $2800. Nothing says "eat the rich" like a three-inch-high hand mirror that costs more than my monthly rent. 

Louis Vuitton Cosmetic Lipstick Pouch, $605. I want to be very clear that this is a bag only large enough to hold one tube of lipstick. It is two inches high by four inches long. YOUR LIPSTICK DOESN'T NEED ITS OWN BAG! WHAT ARE WE DOING????

Aventis Comb, $126. Do no one else's hackles raise upon reading the phrase "made from horn"? Are we doing poaching here? I have concerns. 

Reiki Infused Energy Head Spa Session, $555. I can't lie to you: I would spend my money on this if I were rich and stupid. I went to a head spa for the first time this year and loved every relaxing minute of it, so that plus some dubious healing work that should allegedly make me feel refreshed and like slightly more of a functioning human being? You Gooped me, gal. 

The Men's Gift Guide 

Theragun Mini 3.0, $219.99. If we did not already have something very similar to this in our home, this would be probably the item from this list that I would be likeliest to buy. One's muscles do be hurting sometimes, and $220 is a sum I could actually envision spending to fix it. Congrats to Gwyneth on a Genuinely Good Idea!! 

Tread Portable Pizza Oven, $549.99. I am instantly suspicious of the word "portable." Please set your own home on fire with your crazy oven box. Do not endanger my life by bringing it to mine. 

The Teppanyaki, $449. This is stupid. No one needs to own this. I would buy it.

Springbok Shaving Set, €1118. Again, girlypop, arrrrre we doing poaching? There are a weird number of animal horns in this gift guide! I have concerns! 

Ram Desk Lighter, $753. A) Animal horn round 3. What are we doing? B) This is a flammable shofar that you can't even use as an instrument. Do not like. 

Force of Nature Meats Ancestral Blends Box, $218. I shouldn't be surprised that the beef tallow organ meat people have come for Goop, yet somehow I am. If your man is the kind of person who'd enjoy this, I do not like your man. 

Walden Cold Plunge Concept, $15,000. This looks like something my veterinarian grandfather would have used to bathe and/or euthanize animals in 1955. Also, why is it called a "concept"? It physically exists. On paper it has a purpose. I think we're past the point of it being "a concept" and into the realm of it being "a thing." For $15,000. 

Porsche Ice Driving Experience, price upon request. Come onnnnn, tell us what it costs! How much are rich people paying to *checks notes* drive a quarter-million dollar car at racing speeds across terrain that regularly causes accidents even among four-wheel-drive vehicles moving at 30 miles per hour? You know, I think the orcas that keep sinking billionaires' yachts came up with this. 

Louis Vuitton Babyfoot Foosball Table, price upon request (pictured). This looks like a Monsters Inc. character who matriculated to Monsters U from a tony private boarding school in Switzerland. I'll take two. 

The Bon Vivant's (Host's) Gift Guide 

The Seasonal Diffuser Set, $216. I promise you can get this at Walgreens for $39.99. 

Noma Taste Buds Membership, $790. A quarterly delivery of funky inventions from Noma's test kitchen, this again falls into the category of "things I would buy if I were rich." Would my taste buds probably be too boring to enjoy most of them? Yes. Would I get them anyway? Absolutely. 

Starry Starry Night Winter Candle, $175; Not a Creature Was Stirring Candle, $125; Pasta Water Candle, $70. A candle is a great host gift. If I invited you to my home and you showed up with a candle priced up to, say, a splurgey $50, I would say wow, thank you so much, I love you. If you showed up to my house with a candle priced over $100, I would say girl, why did you not give me that money in cash? I am too poor to consider a candle a good use of a literal dinner-and-a-show amount of money! Oh, and if you came to my house with a candle that smells like pasta water, I would kick you out. 

Brunello Cuccinelli Playing Cards, $930. You know, we actually don't criticize rich people enough. 

Tilda Ash and Kindling Bucket, $395. This looks like a toilet. If someone takes a poo in this (or the $1300 firewood basket that goes with it) and now you're stuck dealing with that in your home, I'm sorry but you deserve it. 

Hermès Jukebox, price upon request (pictured). In theory there's a fairly fine line between this and the aforementioned Monsters Inc. foosball table, but in practice, I love that and I hate this. There is whimsy here, but it has been corrupted. Burn it in a fire. 

The Pleasure Seeker's Gift Guide 

First of all, it's always felt to me like this should be the one that you "forward to your SO." It's the slutty gift guide! Who else are you sending it to, your mom? If so...yikes! 

Kiki de Montparnasse Advent Calendar, $1285. There is no advent calendar in the world worth $1285. And if there were, it certainly wouldn't be a sex calendar! If you're enough of a godless freak to be counting down the days to Christ's birth with a gift box full of sex aids, at least have the decency to make it yourself by just writing down different sexual favors on paper and putting them in a package you bought yourself at the craft store. You do not need to spend money on this! 

BonBon Originals Signature Tin, $65. We're really stretching the limits here of what I know Gwyneth means by "pleasure seeker," but I can't lie to you, those gummy fish are good. Go ahead and get this one for your mom — just don't tell her where you found it. 

Tomentosum Geranium Candle, $284. If you ever have the audacity to buy a $284 candle, it had better be the size of a 40-gallon drum. 

East Album Loving You, $460. I need you to know that this is an empty photo album. Rich people have to be stopped!!!

Never Have I Ever Game, $35. What the hell, sure. 

Joue Avec Moi Dice Set, $780. First of all, Kiki de Montparnasse truly is some kind of psyop convincing women they need to spend the equivalent of a small country's GDP in order to be sexy. You don't. Step away from the French lingerie. And second of all, these are just three little dice with sex ideas on them! Someone is selling this at Urban Outfitters right now for $25. If you see everything going on in the world and still think this is a good thing to spend $780 on, you do not deserve to see heaven.  

The Traveler's Gift Guide 

Long Haul Toiletry Bag, $690. A toiletry bag: fine gift for a traveler. This toiletry bag: stupid. Remember, you are a normal person. Whoever you're buying this for, at fanciest, probably carries an Away clamshell carryon that costs $300 and carries a full week's worth of belongings. Their current toiletry bag is a Clinique freebie that their mother got with the purchase of two skincare items in 2006. Upgrading it should, at maximum, cost you 40 bucks. 

Folding Beach Cart, $399. Is this what beach carts cost? Having no cart-needing children (and indeed rarely going to the beach), I don't know what one would normally pay for this. I worry it may in fact be $400, and I'm too afraid to Google it. 

7-Day Pill Compact, $26. I say this as the partner of a cancer patient: How many boxes do you need to store your pills??? If Gwyneth Paltrow reveals in six months that she's secretly dying of something, the absolute glut of pillboxes in this gift guide will have been our first clue. 

The Comb Keychain, $42. Setting aside the fact that this costs ten times what a comb should, I, uh, don't really want to do my hair with a comb that smacks against my front door or my car dashboard every time I use my keys. Either my travel brush can come with a case, or I can wait until I get home. 

Fieldbar Drinks Box, $229. You don't need to spend $229 on a cooler, but this one is cute. It arbitrarily passes the test for "luxury item Sarah finds acceptable." I will not be taking questions. 

Loro Piana Passport Cover, $600. If you have enough money to consider dropping $600 on a piece of leather to put your passport in, could I suggest that you instead give it to me, a person who could buy two full months of groceries with that amount of money? Thank you! 

Lymphatic Onesie, $198. Go into your closet, put on the skinny jeans and going out tops you wore to your college bar in 2012, and you will achieve the same head-to-toe compression effect that this garment does for absolutely free. Save your money and put it instead toward 1/3 of a passport cover! 

Happy gifting, my friends. 

Domerberry Album Review: The Life of a Showgirl

Greetings, my Swiftie countrymen. Did you think you'd gotten through a Taylor Swift album rollout without a Domerberry post? Were you assuming I'd broken free of the Faustian deal binding me to release a thousand-word essay in exchange for each new set of Taylor tunes? 

If so, my friends, you were wrong — I was just slow and lazy this time. 

In truth, I can't let a Taylor album pass me by without taking the chance to yap about it — and, with The Life of a Showgirl, there is much to yap about. 

If I'd written this post based on my actual first-few-listens impressions, it would be a very different post than what you're going to read today. Taylor had given us a lot to get excited about before this album dropped: the visuals (the endless mother-bleeping visuals), the podcast chatter, the tracklist, even some preview lyrics. With all that taken together, I was expecting a shiny, flashy, dance-pop album. It's no secret here that I worship at the altar of Swedish hitmakers — let us not forget I flew to Sweden basically just to visit the ABBA Museum — and I expected that my boi Max Martin would, in concert with Taylor, produce a showgirl-worthy hits album for the ages. 

And that's...not really what we got with this. The first thing I heard from this album, bizarrely, was "Wi$h Li$t," when it came on via shuffle in an Uber on release morning — and my prevailing reaction was, "Oh no." That one, of all tracks, I expected to be a particularly brash, fun pop number (two dollar signs in the title!), but instead it's a slow jam about suburban heterosexuality! Imagine my dismay. 

The rest of the album, once I got to listen, was similarly jarring in its departure from expectations. There were songs I liked, but none were what I expected, and it took me a while to patch over that dissonance. 

Today, with a week of listens under my belt, I can tell you that I do quite like the album (with a couple of notable exceptions). It's certainly not the dud that I feared it was when I first heard "Wi$h Li$t," and which some corners of the internet still seem to believe it is. It's just a record with a marketing problem — and a reminder that this era of promo photos and pre-release teasers can come with a downside if what's promised doesn't match what's delivered.

With all that discussed, it's time for my traditional rundown of Tracks For Which I Have Strong Feelings or Good Jokes. Happy reading, my friends, and happy showgirling. 

The Fate of Ophelia. Good song, but, uh, little dark! Before you met famous himbo Travis Kelce, you were going to kill yourself? Feels strong to me, but hey, I guess I don't know the life of a showgirl. 

Opalite. Do you hear that? It's the sound of collegiate a capella singers everywhere foaming at the mouth over the "I can bring you lo-o-ove" buildup at 3:10. You know what though? It's a great song — let the children have it. If the Undertones had sung this in Washington Hall in the early 2010s, I would've gone feral. 

Eldest Daughter. LET DOWN. As an eldest daughter (factually and spiritually), this was my most anticipated song on the album, because I frankly expected it to have the swaggering energy she gave to "Father Figure" instead. Discovering that this number is in fact a sad girl ballad was the second-most depressing thing about this album. 

Ruin the Friendship. And here we have the most depressing thing! I shudder to imagine what the people of O'Hare saw on my face when I figured out that the protagonist here is deceased (RIP, king). My boyfriend put it best at the end of this song when he said, in the voice of Travis Kelce, "Taylor, I'm scared. Can we go back to the songs about our dicks now?" 

Also, in case there are any teenagers reading this, I have to say: This song is bad advice! The track record for high school friendships is much better than for high school sweethearts, and also, kissing someone who isn't expecting to kiss you is sexual assault! Sometimes it's okay to not do what Taylor says! 

Actually Romantic. Having a nemesis is one of life's great joys, and this song knows it. Anyone who's too upset about Charli XCX to enjoy this song is allergic to fun. 

Wi$h Li$t. Well, folks, we've found it: the point where I stop relating to Taylor Swift. The idea behind this number is romantic — I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings, for instance — but the delivery of it here is giving trad wife. If my options are block full of children or Real Madrid contract, sign me up for soccer camp. And leave those dollar signs out of this! 

Wood. Brave statement ahead: This is the best song on the album. People really lost it when this song came out because of what a "departure" it was for the typically buttoned-up Taylor Swift, but I don't think it is! This is Taylor being horny, but in a very Taylor way. She whispers "thighs" like it's a cheeky secret. She says "the curse on me was broken by your magic wand" — a winking lyric that she would absolutely have written at 20 when she was publishing "Enchanted" and, behind closed doors, writing "I can see you up against a wall with me." On top of that, this song isn't just thirsty for the sake of it. It tells a real, lyrically consistent story: I used to rely on all these superstitions, but I don't need to anymore because I have a love story that makes its own luck. Taylor could have written this song at any point in the last 20 years; she just needed age — and a partner she trusts — to actually put it out into the world. 

Yesterday alone, I probably listened to this album 10 times (thank you Taylor for hearing the criticism that TTPD was too damn long). I am grateful for new Taylor music in a year that's been slow on new albums that interest me. But, next time, I'll have to remember to not put much stock in whatever promo seems to suggest. Sometimes the girl just wants to put on hot little outfits and do a photo shoot, connections to the music of the album be damned. And you know what? That's show biz, baby.