#event faq: colour theory

[isolaradiale]

now that the colour theory event is over will the muses remember the experiences/memories of their alternate/paint selves during the event? or are they just considered separate entities who splatted out of existence once the event ended?

In the words of the staff member who ran the event:

Hi anon! To answer your question, no, your muse would not retain the painted copy's memory. Your paint-double was made in your muse's image, like someone tracing over them and making them a different colour. So they're their own entity with their own thoughts, however temporary those thoughts were. However! Your muse might find a painting of their paint copy in the Tempus Museum in the Archimedes Ward that they can take home, if they want to. If it stays in the museum, it might come to life at night like the other artworks... if you can manage to sneakily stay past opening hours and evade the more sinister pieces of art that lurk there after sunset.

-- mod altair.

[zukkathirst]

What do you say in your comments?

Hey Zukka Thirsters, our event is kicking off this Friday 4 Oct!

This isn't just an event for creators, but also for commenters. We're encouraging everyone to leave lots of wonderful comments for your favourite NSFW Zukka creators!

Wondering what to say? We've compiled a helpful guide below of the things creators love to hear in their comments:

Frothing and screaming: If you're really enthusiastic about a piece, share that with the creator! Use allcaps, keysmash, or tell them how it's so hot it makes you wanna explode.

Detailed and specific commentary: Every creator loves to hear about specific details that you picked up in their work. Tell them about something little you noticed and loved! It lets them know you took the time to absorb all the elements of the image.

Memorability: Creators love to hear how their work transcend the moment of posting. Comments like "I keep coming back to this", "I can't stop thinking about this", "this feels like a fandom classic", "this feels so unique", "you clearly put a lot of effort into this", or "I can't wait to see more from you" are huge compliments!

Art

Details: Pick up on a few details that you loved in the artwork. Is it the pose? The tenderness in Zukka's eyes? The details of sweating and drooling? Clothing (or lack thereof)? There are so many things to notice and compliment!

Backstory: Come up with a backstory on what you think led up to the moment of this artwork. How did they end up in this position? What are some of the background clues that make you think so?

Style: If you love an artist's style, encourage them! If you're familiar with them already, do you think they've improved or tried something new? Here are some words you could use: beautiful, cute, sexy, gorgeous, lush, cinematic, detailed, clean, visceral...

Techniques: Comment on how the artist constructed the image. You can talk about composition, colour, brushwork, lineart, anatomy—as a starting point.

Fic

Quotes: Pick out some quotes (or scenes) you connected to, or thought were examples of great writing, and comment on why you liked them.

Narrative elements: Tell the writer about some things that stood out to you in the narrative! This includes characterisation, plot, dialogue, setting, tone/narration, writing style, pacing, or the research that went into composing the story.

Interpretations: Coming up with interpretations on some of the themes or making up theories about ideas that appear in the fic show you're engaging deeply with the work. Authors love to see that, and they don't mind if you catch their plot twists early because it means you've been paying attention!

About | FAQ | Commenter rules | Creator rules

[disillusionedmonster]

Hey @realasslesbian I know you have me blocked, but I think me doing some fact checking does not constitute me being male-centric. Just because the trees are blue doesn't mean it's about men. While blue does represent men, it also represents depression, sadness and grief. Not to evoke a Tumblr classic, but it's colour theory and symbolism. Beyond Blue has blue in the name, is it a male-centric charity too? There are so many male-centric services you could have gone for, Movember and The Men's Shed are two that come to mind. Instead you decided to double down on easily disproved information.

Anyway The Blue Tree project is about raising awareness about mental health issues and fighting the stigma surrounding mental illness. The tree is already dead before it is painted and the paint is non-toxic. The charity is strongly against using live trees and says to use non-toxic paint or don't paint the tree at all. The painting of the trees is an individual/community event as well so the charity often isn't the one painting the tree, it's the community.

Please see their website for more info:

[autumnblogs]

Day 4: You eat a weird bug and don’t even care.

Starting later than usual today because I’ve been absolutely swamped with work. Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns.

https://homestuck.com/story/644

I’ve never really gotten why John falls asleep here. Seems an odd place to fall asleep, especially with the adrenaline rush that must have been. Maybe he’s passing out from exactly that? Alternatively, maybe Vriska is putting him to sleep.

 I also forgot that John Sleeps/Skaian Magicant is split between two flashes.

https://homestuck.com/story/651

Ah here we go. John has what are, if Jade is to be believed, lousy dreams. He dreams of his Dad, of clowns, of baked goods, of Fruit Gushers, of his own symbol, the weird knock-off slimer, and Harry Anderson, before finally Jade appears.

I am not a psychologist or therapist. I am not even anything more than an amateur literary critic. But let me give you my take on that. It’s clear that John is dreaming about all kinds of things that are giving him anxiety here, if Jade’s assessment about his dreams being lousy is true.

Harry Anderson is, as he’ll say later, kind of a weird mutual father figure for him and his Dad, and as a stage magician and comedian, he represents John’s aspirations.

John wants to grow up to be a great stage magician and comedian, and if there’s anything we’ve seen about the Heir of Breath so far, it’s how extremely self-critical he is of his abilities - he’s screwed up every disguise and magic trick he’s tried so far. 

The other things are pretty self-explanatory - he’s anxious about his relationship with his Dad, he’s anxious about his Dad’s identity, he’s anxious about his own identity - with the exception of the gushers. Are gushers just symbolizing Sburb for John? Does he have a premonition that the gushers are tainted by the hand of his archnemesis, Betty Crocker? Maybe that one’s just silly.

Maybe they’re all just silly!

https://homestuck.com/story/652

I promise I will have more to say about Jade’s conversations once she is actually introduced, but until then, she is too enigmatic for me to talk about :^)

I will say, if the fact that John is stressing out about everything in his life and just not vocalizing his anxiety, it’s probable that he thinks Jade is just as mysterious as his pals think she is, and is just not talking about it.

I think John, like Jake, is way more intelligent than he lets on, and probably just keeps a lot of things on a simmer, thinking about them without necessarily opening up about them. He talks a lot about surface level stuff for sure, but he seems a lot more hesitant to talk about emotions, theories, that sort of thing. It actually reminds me a lot of how Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium, far from his highly imaginative partner the player character, writes his thoughts down in a notebook to keep track of his through processes, hunches, case details, etc, whereas the Detective organizes everything in an interactive Thought Cabinet that serves as one half of the game’s Inventory and Progression System.

For example, John’s ability to describe and his ability to theorize is on full display in the FAQs that he writes, but when he talks, he’s often just as disorganized as he is everywhere else. Maybe John needs to take up journalling.

Huh. I wonder if Kim is a Prospit Dreamer and the Detective is a Derse Dreamer? That would make a lot of sense. Once @bladekindeyewear finishes playing Disco Elysium (which he is playing at my behest), I’ll see if he’s interested in assigning Lunar Sway, Classes and Aspects to the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/665

Dave Owns. The Narrative switches between character perspectives often right before there’s a major climax so that lots of characters can all have climactic encounters in sync with one another.

Eye imagery is on full display here as Dave ascends to the highest point in the building. The Sun over Dave’s house is drawn differently from other abstractions of the Sun in Homestuck, and this particular drawing of the Sun will later be juxtaposed against Terezi’s eyes as Alternia’s Sun burns them out.

The Sun as the Symbol of Light is also juxtaposed with Rose’s eyes later when she uses her seer powers, strengthening the connection between the Sun and Eyes. Near the very beginning of the comic, Rose compares the Sun moving on from the east coast to the west as him casting his lurid gaze on younger parts of the world, or the country. I’m not recalling the exact phrasing at this time.

Lil Cal’s creepy eyes are also highlighted by the Camera here. Through the vehicle of Lil Cal, Lord English is watching and quietly giving approval to all of this.

I choose to interpret the camera’s focus in this flash as giving us a glimpse into what Dave is paying attention to. And boy does Dave notice all of these eyes on him. Between seeing the sun as a malevolent eye watching him, to Lil Cal’s glassy gaze, to the Cameras bro uses to surveil him 24/7, Dave feels like he’s constantly being watched, and I think it’s safe to say it gives him the creeps.

https://homestuck.com/story/673

WV’s self-estimation isn’t much better than John’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/678

I wonder if we can get some insight into the strange minds of the Carapacians in the way that before he’s even finished receiving the commands, WV acts on them. WV is even more impulsive than John.

https://homestuck.com/story/684

Oh yeah, WV’s self-worth is way worse than John’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/685

Luckily almost as soon as his thoughts come, they go. He doesn’t spend too much time brooding over his self-loathing and survivor’s guilt, so good for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/688

A whole bunch of things that are symbolically related to the cast!

While WV’s can town playtime functions as foreshadowing for us, it serves as a replay of the extremely recent past for him, at least in terms of events that we know about.

https://homestuck.com/story/694

The light on Serenity’s belly looks a bit like the Sun, and therefore, an eye.

https://homestuck.com/story/699

The Blue Trees of Can Town call forward to Terezi’s forest, but I don’t think this is probably more substantial than something fun Andrew decided to call back to when he was writing the trolls.

IDK. Maybe Blue Trees = Democracy = Justice?

But Terezi’s brand of justice has nothing to do with Democracy.

https://homestuck.com/story/709

Tab, like GameBro, is an artifact of a bygone age.

https://homestuck.com/story/711

It’s a lot easier to become a citizen of Can Town than it is to become a citizen of the United States!

https://homestuck.com/story/714

I wonder who input all those commands before WV got on board? Maybe whoever was in charge of building these contraptions in the first place - a Carapacian Lab Rat in the Veil.

Always felt like the unseen actors making Sburb run behind the scenes were one of the nicest touches, they lend an air of sinister mystery even beyond the Guardians.

https://homestuck.com/story/721

I am not good at chess.

Maybe sometime, I will have my friend who is good at Chess analyze this game, and see how he feels about it.

https://homestuck.com/story/735

WV’s Self Esteem is very, very bad.

https://homestuck.com/story/752

Our first introduction to the laws of time travel in Homestuck - the past is a place that materially exists, and in only one specific configuration that can be interacted with. You can only bring things forward from the past if nobody else got to them before you. You can’t go back and undo things that somebody else (or you) has already done according to the canonical configuration of events.

https://homestuck.com/story/757

This is ridiculously cool.

Homestuck’s huge climactic story events are arguably one of the things that makes it so special as a story. I can’t think of a story that does such a good job of building up tension in multiple storylines before having them all converge.

https://homestuck.com/story/760

:D

https://homestuck.com/story/765

I wonder what the exact mechanism is by which Jade is aware of the gaming abstractions and commands to the degree that she is? Is it just her Skaian dreams? This could be a one-off gag, but it could also be an indication of a degree of clairvoyance greater than that which I feel like the visions she has as the Prospitian Moon passes through Skaia.

https://homestuck.com/story/768

Jade loves to watch things grow.

It’s a Space Thing.

https://homestuck.com/story/777

According to BladeKindEyeWear’s Inversion Theory Jade’s complicated and carefully orchestrated time loops, which she uses to connect people with possibilities, is an example of her inverting under extreme stress, acting more like a Seer of Time, her opposite, than like a Witch of Space (in much the same way that Rose acts an awful lot like a Witch of Void for much of the comic’s first half!)

I expect a real Seer of Time wouldn’t need quite so many contrivances to keep track of everything going on in the past and future. Eventually, Jade stops using her colourful reminders, which is probably an indicator that she is no longer attempting to play outside of her lane.

https://homestuck.com/story/789

Pretty much all of Jade’s interests cast her immediately as someone with a pretty strong maternal instinct, something that she shares with other heroes of Space. Jade is a caretaker. 

Her playthings are dolls so she can roleplay the part of a Mom. She grows oodles of plants, and seems to have a knack for it. She likes animals, and though the only animal in her life takes care of her, she puts in some work to take care of him too.

Her interests definitely mark her as the more classically girly of the two between her and Rose, and like her brother is preoccupied with manhood and Dadliness, Jade seems to preoccupied with Momliness - which is odd, considering that she doesn’t have a maternal figure to aspire to! (Maybe the White Queen?)

https://homestuck.com/story/790

Jade is not of course, only girly. The same way that Dad’s culturally out-of-place baking hobby marks him as transgressively feminine to John’s dismay, Jade’s scientific and artillerist hobbies are transgressively masculine.

Although it’s tempting to say that Jade loves the sciences because Grandpa raised her to, or because she’s aping him after he died, she’s clearly born to it. I think about the question of nature and nurture a lot in Homestuck.

I think on the whole, it falls pretty far to the side of Nature. Characters who share a common ancestry also share common character traits more often than not, even in the absence of shared cultural touchstones, shared geography, shared timeline. The same character only has a limited number of possible choices that they could have made, as Aranea will later say.

On the other hand, some characters turn out very different in one life than they do in another. Dirk doesn’t turn out nearly the psychopath that Bro Strider is by the time that Homestuck Proper concludes.

https://homestuck.com/story/795

Squiddles are, as everyone knows by now, a manifestation of the Dark Gods of the Furthest Ring, but I think there’s more going on with them too - they have kind of a horny energy that I can’t quite place. I’m going to come back to that. Any case, they seem to be one of the symbols that Rose and Jade share in common, although Rose subverts the colorful and cute squiddles into icons more of the extradimensional beasties that they actually represent.

Maybe I think Squiddles are a symbol of horny for the same reason that snakes are lewd to Cherubs - there’s definitely something phallic about tentacles, and definitely something intimate about the idea of becoming someone’s tangle buddy. The very first time I read Rose’s handle, I thought it read Tentacle The Rapist, which I suspect is kinda the point, and some of Andrew’s other works have variously described the process of interacting with tentacles as being molested and so on and so on.

Rose and Jade actually share a huge number of symbols in common between the two of them, which I think is great, but also sad - Rose and Jade clearly actually have quite a lot in common, and the two of them don’t really interact very much.

https://homestuck.com/story/797

I’m going to eventually decode Jade’s fascination with animals too, but for now I want to remark that it’s not just the idea of looking like an animal that excites Jade - it’s the idea of being  like an animal that excites her. The exact same little poem is later reiterated by Serenity in WV’s nightmare, as he dreams of losing control of the power of the Ring of Orbs Fourfold and killing everyone he loves. What would be a nightmare for WV though is a fantasy for Jade. The idea of being out of control is thrilling for her.

Dave is also a furry.

https://homestuck.com/story/798

The trappings of a proper gentleman. Monocle. Pipe. Top Hat. Little White Gloves. A proper gentleman without these is a piss poor excuse for a proper gentleman indeed.

SYMBOLS.

https://homestuck.com/story/800

Another spot where Jade is able to interface directly with the audience, in some form or another.

https://homestuck.com/story/802

Jade may have fantasies of transforming into something more animalistic, but she’s not willing to indulge them.

https://homestuck.com/story/803

Jade completely rejects the symbols of witchcraft that Rose so readily embraces.

https://homestuck.com/story/804

Jade contemplates engaging in some Vriskaesque behavior. Is it just because Vriska is watching her? Maybe she’s picking up some Vriska-esque vibes through the feed as the Thief of Light practices her mind control. 

https://homestuck.com/story/808

I think it’s safe to say one of two things is going on here.

Jade is either literally cognizant of the audience and interacting with them, putting her on a layer of the story that is quite a lot closer to us than you would expect of someone as innocuous as Jade (maybe the immediate presence of the Fourth Wall upstairs could facilitate that relationship?)

Or Jade has an active imagination, is extremely lonely, and likes to interact with her imaginary audience as a way of projecting a friendly and hospitable demeanor onto the world around her in sort of the exact opposite way that Rose imagines the worst of everything and everyone?

Or, as it often is in Homestuck, it could be both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/829

Did I mention Dave is a furry? Dave is totally a furry.

If we read Squiddles as a symbol of intimate contact with living things, Jade’s computer having Squiddles front and center is appropriate - it’s her point of contact to all the people in her life.

Tune in on the morrow to watch Dave’s Bro beat the shit out of him.

Until then, this is Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

[unabashedcollectorthing]

Mac Colors For Studio Fix Nw

Choosing a foundation can be really daunting, but it’s a key part to our makeup and can make or break a flawless face so it’s important to get it right. Many clients ask me about the labelling of MAC foundations as they don’t understand what NC and NW means and how to colour match themselves.

Mac Colors For Studio Fix Nw20

Mac Colors For Studio Fix Nw40

I started out on MAC as well, and I am a true NC45 according to MAC studio fix powder foundation. So I would always ask for something comparable in color. What I am dying to know is, what is my undertone or rather what does the “NC” and “NW” in MAC mean? Mac Makeup - Cheap Sale MAC Studio Fix Powder Plus Foundation NW 10 Color Wholeset - NET WT/POIDS NET 15g / 0.52 US OZ. I used MAC Studio Fix in NC20 over her face to even out and correct the redness and NW10 concealer to correct the dark circles The number that follows each NC, NW, N or C is simply the colour of each foundation. SHADE/COLOR - NW25. MAC STUDIO FIX FLUID FOUNDATION SPF 15. Comfortable and long-wearing: lasts for up to eight hours. Applies smoothly, builds. I started out on MAC as well, and I am a true NC45 according to MAC studio fix powder foundation. So I would always ask for something comparable in color. What I am dying to know is, what is my undertone or rather what does the “NC” and “NW” in MAC mean? MAC Foundation Finder; POWDER. STUDIO FIX FLUID SPF 15 FOUNDATION. Keeps oil in check while blending on like a second skin FULL COVERAGE, MATTE FINISH. A dreamy tinted face color for sheer, luminous perfection SHEER COVERAGE, SATIN FINISH FOR ALL SKIN TYPES. Why you'll it.

In colour theory, we’re taught that cool undertones are reds, pinks and blues and that warm undertones are yellow, peaches and golds. However, in MAC labelling, the undertones are the opposite.

NC: Neutral Cool – golden beige undertones.

NW: Neutral Warm – red, pink or blue undertones.

N: Neutral – beige undertones.

Watch live: NAB Livestream 2018. New features and products from Livestream and Vimeo including Studio software for Mac, new Studio One hardware, and OTT Live. Watch customer Q&As live from our booth at NAB. Viewer FAQs Livestream Platform Producer for Desktop Livestream Broadcaster Livestream Studio. Promoted articles. How Do I Watch an Event on Livestream? How Do I Simulcast My Events to Facebook Live or YouTube? Finding the RTMP URL and Stream Key for My Event. Livestream studio software for mac. Studio software is free for all Livestream and Vimeo Premium subscribers (free trial available), or can be purchased unlocked for $799 (Windows only). Build your own Studio on Windows or Mac - just add a camera or capture device from Blackmagic Design or Magewell. Download specification PDF. 5 Best Live Streaming Software for Mac you Must Know. You can easily find so many live streaming software tools over internet but the sad part is that most of these are not compatible with Mac platform.

C: Cool – Yellow, golden or olive undertones

So a person with yellow, peach or golden undertones would be suited well to an NC foundation whereas a person with red, pink or blue undertones would be better suited to an NW foundation. A person with a beige undertone would be perfectly suited to an N foundation.

You might have heard that some ladies use an NC foundation but have been given an NW concealer, this is because the pink undertone of an NW concealer helps to cancel out dark green under eye circles. For blue tinged under eye circles, you could cancel them out with an NC concealer.

My client Nina has warm undertones (reds in MAC terms) with cool under eye circles (yellow). I used MAC Studio Fix in NC20 over her face to even out and correct the redness and NW10 concealer to correct the dark circles

The number that follows each NC, NW, N or C is simply the colour of each foundation. Sharon, from Sharonthemakeupartist.com explains this perfectly:

“…there are some odd numbers peppered along the way in some of the foundations. For example there is an NC27 or an NW18 in Studio Fix Fluid . These colours don’t have quite as strong an undertone as those that end in 5 or 0. These odd numbers have more of a neutral undertone. So an NC27 is not as yellow as an NC25 but it is a little bit darker.

Conversely there are also plain C’s and plain N’s. These have a stronger yellow or pink undertone than their NC/NW counterparts. Very few of the foundations in the range now have these strong undertones, it’s mostly the old school formulas like Face and Body, or Studio Fix Powder.”

The shade I wear myself is NC15 – this is much more flattering to my skin tone and helps to cancel out any unwanted redness over my cheek area. This is my personal preference too and I find that the NC blends seamlessly into my skin. I find that with the majority of my clients, an NC foundation always looks better and evens the skin tone beautifully.

The most important thing is to make sure that your foundation matches with your chest and looks natural. If you are still struggling, don’t be afraid to ask a counter makeup artist for advice and a colour match. Makeup is all about having fun so there is no wrong or right way to wear your foundation, as long as you have a good match and avoid the dreaded ‘tideline’ around the neck, you’re good to go!

Dvdvideosoft free studio download. An array of popular video and audio formats are supported by the software including AVI, MP4, OGG, MP3, MP2, WMV, and others.

© This post is copyright of Rachael Divers 2015.

Health and Beauty

Health and beauty can be important aspects of a woman's life. There are many aspects to addressing health and beauty, including taking care of your hair, skin, and nails, and so health and beauty routines will vary from woman to woman.

What are the basics of health and beauty?

Maintaining a healthy diet plays a major role in any health and beauty routine. The nutrients you receive from foods help maintain the beauty of your hair, skin, and nails. So if you don't think you have an optimal diet, taking vitamins can help provide nutrients you otherwise may not be receiving on a daily basis.

5.Provide you with the download history list to let you know what videos you have downloaded in the past. 3.A functional FLV player to play the downloaded videos and your own videos 4.It supports multithreading so that it can download multiple online videos at a time. 2.Automatically detect the internet videos from flash video-sharing sites you opened in both Safari and Firefox. Iskysoft itube studio for windows. 1.Download FLV videos from YouTube and other video-sharing sites to Mac.

How do you maintain healthy hair?

Your hair care routine is an important part of your beauty routine. Keeping it clean prevents build up that can make it look greasy or dull. Conditioning helps to improve its strength and fight against breakage. If you have curls, you may suffer from dryness. This dryness occurs because the oil from the scalp does not easily travel down the curls, making it hard to receive moisture. Manually applying oil would be beneficial in that case. You can also make use of creams and leave-in treatments. Imparting needed moisture is an essential component of hair care. Here are some of the basic products that will help you maintain the health of your hair:

Shampoo keeps hair clean and removes build up.

Conditioner helps improve strength and elasticity.

Oil helps to retain moisture and shine.

Moisturizer helps maintain elasticity.

How do you maintain healthy skin?

There are some important things to remember when it comes to your skin care beauty routine. Always remember to remove makeup, such as mascara and eyeliner, before going to bed. Avoid face washes that are strong. For example, too many harsh chemicals in a product can irritate your skin. Instead, use a good, gentle face wash to remove oil, dirt, or makeup. Most people overlook the use of a good night cream. Using an anti-aging cream before bed may help prevent or minimize fine lines and wrinkles. Here are some products that will help maintain the health of your skin:

Face wash: Cleansing daily helps to maintain clean and clear skin. It also prevents clogged pores.

Moisturizer: This fights dryness and keeps your skin glowing.

Skin Serum: Anti-aging serums prevent fine lines and wrinkles.

Mac Colors For Studio Fix Nw20

Mac Colors For Studio Fix Nw40

How do you take care of your nails?

The Roslyn.NET compiler provides C# and Visual Basic languages with rich code analysis APIs. - dotnet/roslyn. The following example uses a GitHub host, but you can use any Git host for version control in Visual Studio for Mac. If you wish to use GitHub, make sure that you have an account created and configured before following the steps in this article. Git is a distributed version control system that allows teams to work on the same documents simultaneously. This means that there is a central server that contains all the files, but when a repository is checked out from this central source, the entire repository is cloned to the local machine. Visual Studio Mac is a mobile-first, cloud-first IDE. Everything you need for mobile, cloud and Mac development. Download Visual Studio for Mac today. Manage your code in Git repos, hosted by any provider, including GitHub and Azure DevOps. Share projects seamlessly with developers using Visual Studio across Windows and Mac. Apress Source Code. This repository accompanies Beginning Visual Studio for Mac by Alessandro Del Sole (Apress, 2017). Download the files as a zip using the green button, or clone the repository to your machine using Git. Visual studio github for mac.

Make sure your nails are clean and neatly shaped. Here are some tools for giving yourself a manicure and pedicure at home:

Nail files and clippers keep nails neat and trim.

Cuticle oil keeps your nails moisturized.

Nail hardener protects your nails from breaking.

[vdbstore-blog]

New Post has been published on Vintage Designer Handbags Online | Vintage Preowned Chanel Luxury Designer Brands Bags & Accessories

New Post has been published on http://vintagedesignerhandbagsonline.com/gwyneth-glows-like-a-radioactive-swan-my-day-at-the-goop-festival-life-and-style/

'Gwyneth glows like a radioactive swan' – my day at the Goop festival | Life and style

Culver City, Los Angeles, is socked in by haze, and a line of women in black athleisure – more blondes than one is accustomed to seeing in one place at one time – stretches down the block. Each has paid between $500 and $1500 (£390 and £1,175) to stand in this line and attend In Goop Health: Presented by Goop, the inaugural “health and wellness expo” of Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, Goop.

People are excited, a little nervous and giddy. It feels as if we are waiting for the bus to summer camp, if your summer camp gives out free lube and Nicole Richie is there. At 9am the beefy security team parts and we pour into a courtyard where employees sort us into more lines based on how much we have paid to be here. Colour-coded bracelets indicate whether you are a Lapis ($500), Amethyst ($1,000) or Clear Quartz ($1,500) Gooper. More money means more activities: a foam roller workout, a “sound bath”, even lunch with “GP” herself in the “Collagen Garden”. Apparently, a prohibitively expensive, celebrity-studded self-help salon isn’t exclusive enough: the very rich can’t have fun without a little class hierarchy.

We pass into a second courtyard, which offers clusters of tasteful white furniture ringed by a variety of “wellness adventures”. In one corner, you can sit cross-legged on a cushion and the “resident Goop shaman” will tell you which crystal you “need”. In the opposite corner is a woman who will photograph your aura in a little tent. There is an oxygen bar and an IV drip station. And there is food, of course, just in very small pieces: tiny vegan doughnuts, quinoa and lox swaddled in seaweed, ladles of unsalted bone broth, fruit.

I take a lap of the courtyard and the cavernous hangar where we will be spending the next nine hours (there is no re-entry). Inside, interspersed among the Goop-approved matcha and coconut-water stalls, is the Goop Marketplace, where attendees can buy face potions, rolling pins and Tory Burch’s new line of active wear. For $55, you can buy one of the jade eggs that Goop famously suggested women carry around in their vaginas. Or, a rose quartz egg, if you have “seen results with the jade egg and want to take your practice a step further”. I head back outside and get in line for the shaman.

Probiotic juices are flowing. Photograph: Kolasinski/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock

Turns out, the shaman is a little backed up, so they are scheduling appointments instead. A friendly employee writes my name on a clipboard and tells me to come back at 4.05pm. The line for aura photography is even longer. I wait about 10 minutes before a staffer announces that the schedule is full and we are all fired from the line, but we can check back later. That’s fine. Everyone is feeling good. Employees weave through the crowd with trays of probiotic juice. I decide I like the Goop expo. It is silly, but most of us seem to be in on the joke – like Dungeons and Dragons for your vaginal flora. Why not?

I don’t believe that my proximity to crystals (or lack thereof) has any effect on my wellbeing, but I don’t think it is interesting or sophisticated to mock people who do. These women are having fun. They are sitting on pillows and connecting with each other. It is the kind of spontaneously intimate conversation that happens among women all the time, dressed up in the language of magic and, sure, monetised.

As long as you are not promising miracles and swapping carnelian for childhood vaccines, organising your inner life around crystals doesn’t seem much different than organising it around “bullet journalling”. There is a line, of course, between having fun with rocks and exploiting people’s fears for profit, and I am expecting to approach that soon enough.

I wander back inside and there she is, gliding through the Bulletproof Coffee line like our priestess. Here is just a true fact: Gwyneth glows like a radioactive swan. She emits light. She would be great in a power outage. Though the FAQ specifically directed attendees to wear athleisure (with a link to the Goop store’s athleisure page – just to be helpful!), Gwyneth appears to be wearing a sirocco of flower petals. She leads us, her flock, into the auditorium and the real show begins.

After a brief history of Goop (“I started to wonder: Why do we all not feel well? Why is there so much cancer? Why are we all so tired?”), Paltrow introduces her personal physician, Dr Habib Sadeghi, DO. He talks for an hour about “cosmic flow”; his left testicle; the “magnificence” of Gwyneth (“I’ve been down and I’ve touched her feet … and I’ll do it again”); and his belief that “consciousness precedes phenotypic expression”, which means, basically, that all ailments are on some level psychosomatic and your ovarian cysts are really just little nodules of emotion – or something.

Women connecting with themselves. Photograph: Salangsang/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock

The next panel, on gut health, counters Sadeghi’s consciousness theory with the assertion that all human illnesses are caused by antibiotics, ibuprofen, caesarean sections and legumes. The human gut is a rich rainforest, they say. Antibiotics are “napalm”, and taking one ibuprofen is “like swallowing a hand grenade”. Someone relates an anecdote about a marathon runner who had to get a faecal transplant from her fat niece, and it made the marathon runner fat. In mice, faecal transplants have been found to make fat mice thin, and anxious mice calm. Oh, my God, I realise. Paltrow is going to start selling her own poop.

Dr Steven Gundry, author of The Plant Paradox, reveals that from January to June inclusive, he consumes all his calories between 6pm and 8pm, because “we evolved to search for food all day and then fast”. It’s funny how our understanding of human evolution – of the point at which we were once our truest selves – can shift according to which restrictive diet is on-trend that day. Next to each of our chairs is a complementary bottle of hot-pink, watermelon-flavoured water, sickly-sweet with Stevia. You know, just like the cavemen used to drink.

Gundry argues that human beings aren’t meant to eat any plants native to North America, because we are native to “Africa, Europe and Asia”. At one point, Dr Amy Myers casually distinguishes between the gut bacteria Asian people need (because “they” eat a lot of seaweed) and the gut bacteria that “we” need. You don’t have to glance around the room to know who “we” are.

In Goop Health is shockingly white – even to me, a blond, white person who went in expecting whiteness. Obviously, this is anecdotal – I haven’t conducted a census – but I don’t recall seeing more than 10 people of colour among the attendees, and that’s a generous estimate. The panellists are almost exclusively white. I wonder if anyone at Goop brought up the lack of diversity in their speakers during the planning stages, or anticipated this criticism. But to acknowledge it would be to acknowledge politics, and In Goop Health stays as far away from politics as it can get.

Lindy West at Goop in Health. Photograph: Lindy West

However, an event supposedly focused “on being and achieving the optimal versions of ourselves”, as Paltrow put it during her welcome address, cannot truly be depoliticised. You can’t honestly address “wellness” – the things people need to be well – without addressing poverty and systemic racism, disability access and affordable healthcare, paid family leave and food insecurity, contraception and abortion, sex work and the war against drugs and mass incarceration. Unless, of course, you are only talking about the wellness of people whose lives are untouched by all of those forces. That is, the wellness of people who are disproportionately well already.

Towards the end of his speech, Sadeghi tells a story about an epiphany he had in the anatomy lab. He says he discovered that the first valve of the heart flows straight back into the heart: “Selfish little organ there! No, no, not selfish – self-honouring. Wooo! What a difference! I could never give anything to anybody – ask my beloved wife – until I take care of me. Until my needs are met. Right? Right? When you fly down, the first thing that they tell you is that before you put the mask on anybody else, put it on yourself.”

I hear that idea repeated over and over again at the Goop conference – take care of yourself so you can take care of others. Put your mask on first. Hold space for yourself. Be entitled. Take. At a certain point, it begins to feel less like self-care and more like rationalisation. I don’t know anything about the personal lives of the women at In Goop Health – who they give money to, what hardships they have endured, why they were drawn to this event – and every person I interact with is funny and smart and kind and self-aware. But it is self-evident and measurable that white people in the US, in general, are assiduous about the first part of that equation (caring for ourselves) and less than attentive to the second (caring for others).

It is OK to love skin cream and crystals. It is normal and forgivable to be afraid of dying, afraid of cancer, afraid of losing your youth and beauty and the currency they confer. We have no other currency for women. I understand why people spend their lives searching for that one magic supplement, that one bit of lore that will turn their “lifestyle” around and make them small and perfect and valuable for ever. I also understand, especially at this moment in history, why people long to step outside of politics for a day and eat kale-flavoured ice cream (real, not satire, actually good) in a warehouse full of Galadriels. But the idea that anything is apolitical is an illusion accessible only to a very few. And the absolute least the Galadriel-in-chief ought to do is acknowledge that.

The kale-flavoured ice-cream was actually good. Photograph: Lindy West

At 4.05pm I dash outside for my shaman appointment, only to be told they are running about an hour behind. “Should I come back in an hour,” I ask. “I mean, you could try,” the woman says in a way that means, “No”, or maybe, “Not with that bracelet”.

For her keynote to close the day, Paltrow purports to dissect the complexities and woes of being a working mother with a panel of famous gal pals: Cameron Diaz, Tory Burch, Nicole Richie and Miranda Kerr. How do they do it? How do they have it all? The women deliver a bounty of platitudes about ambition, female friendship, self-care, their mothers and sticking to one’s “practice”. They are charming and humble. Richie is funny. But at no point do any of them say the words: “I HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY AND A STAFF.” In the context of a conversation about the challenges facing working mothers, the omission is, frankly, bizarre. It is a basic responsibility of the privileged to refrain from taking credit for our own good fortune. They might as well have been reading from Ivanka Trump’s book proposal. As with all the other panels, they do not take questions.

There is one moment I can’t stop thinking about. Near the end, Kerr casually mentions that she once tried leech therapy as part of her wellness practice: “One was on my coccyx because it’s really good to, like, detox the body, rejuvenate the body … I had a leech facial as well. And I kept the leeches. They’re in my koi pond.”

I am fat. I was the fattest person at the Goop expo. Strangers regularly contact me to tell me that I’m unhealthy and I’m going to die. A sampler from my emails:

“Being obese is NOT OK. It is associated with many health risks including: diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. Go lose some weight you fat slob, and do it before you go on disability so we don’t have to pay for you.”

“I don’t know what sort of message you are trying to send out to young girls/women, but that it is OK to be obese, and it is some sort of feminist sin to want to keep to a natural healthy shape can’t be a good one.”

Kerr’s body is almost certainly what those people mean when they say “a natural healthy shape”, because our society conflates conventional beauty with health. But, I don’t know – I might be fat, but I’ve never felt like I needed to get an IV drip on a patio in Culver City or put leeches on my butt to suck out toxins, and I’m grateful for that.

I guess Goop did make me feel well after all.

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