Gwyneth Paltrow: Sexy Girl Deer

By Michael Murray & Eve Kendell | Think Pieces | November 29, 2010 |

By Michael Murray & Eve Kendell | Think Pieces | November 29, 2010 |

The following is a conversation between Michael Murray and Eve Kendell about the pros and cons of Gywneth Paltrow.

MM: Gwyneth Paltrow gets a bad rap. The truth is that she’s a brave actress, kind enough to have once had an assistant respond to one of 17 fan letters I sent to her. She is a beautiful creature, and if she were an animal I think she would be a sexy girl-deer that had magical powers.

She would help Harry Potter when he got in trouble.

She would maintain multiple residences, maintaining homes in Narnia, maybe Spain, and England, of course.

EK: As you seem like the sort of person who was home-schooled by well-meaning Wiccan ladies without the intrusion of television, meat, or the basic facts of life ‘til well past the age of 19, I bet you are really tapped into all sorts of things about The Magical that people like me would never guess. Things like The Titanic soundtrack, vols.1 through 9, and unicorns with names like Fire Eyes.

I completely agree with you on that animal thing though, because just like Gwyneth, deer are majestic and fine-boned and beautiful, and possess just the correct amount of actorly, lip-quivering feminine vulnerability during award show acceptance speeches to make people want to shoot projectiles at them too.

Recently I visited Gwyneth’s lifestyle website GOOP, which has the really deep tag line “nourish the inner aspect,” and it was magical. Even if on the surface, and everywhere else too, it appeared to be aggressively dull and precisely undifferentiated from other malnourished blogs dispensing lame diet and exercise advice while hawking $500 handbags.

Thanks to Gwyneth’s deer-like natural wisdom, I now know I only thought this because I am “bitter and unhappy with my life” and not at all because hearing otherwise sublime and sublimely privileged ectomorphic beauties prattle on obsessively and uninterestingly about their body image and all the hard work they do to change it, makes me want to take my brain out of my skull and suffocate it with a Swiss Exercise ball and 40 lbs of not necessarily organic hamburger meat.

Thanks again to Gwyneth’s unimpeachable reasoning, she cleared this one up for me too. “I think the people who are criticizing it or criticizing the idea of it, don’t really get it, because if they did, they would like it.” I can tell the movie Proof really rubbed off on her. I mean, you can’t really argue with that killer logic, can you?

MM: I think that if you were an animal you’d be a black-hearted death spider that oozed poison when people stepped on you.

I’d be a Dolphin, one that was fast and clever enough to evade Japanese fishermen yet compassionate enough to save their boats from sundering on the rocks in dangerous weather.

It’s the way I would roll.

Or swim.

Whatever.

Anyway, I can tell from the “bitter and unhappy with your life” response that you know as much about Gwyneth Paltrow as you do about Wicca. First of all, “Crafters,” as we are known, are allowed to watch TV and are in fact encouraged, after certain rituals, to eat animals.

But back to Gwyneth.

She dated Brad Pitt.

That’s like dating a lion.

You dated Dimitri, the guy that “ran” the DVD rental place Invisible Cinema. That’s like dating a Star Wars figurine.

She named her child Apple, which is insanely cool. You named your cat “I’m single and lonely,” which although accurate, is lame.

But I don’t want this to get petty and personal, that’s not my style.

Have you seen Shallow Hal? She wore a fat suit in that movie. That was brave, and then, to continue with the bravery, she showed us her perfect ass, a complicated metaphor for how gorgeous her soul was.



It was the work of a beautiful deer.

In Plath, she played a brilliant yet troubled poet. (Imagine Audrey Hepburn as a cutter.) This showed that she was deep. She also took off all her clothes, showing she was not frightened of exposing her vulnerability, on account of her beauty.

She’s fearless, Eve, brave enough to sing like an angel, as she did on “Glee” and in that awesome movie Duets. Have you seen Duets? You should, it stars Huey Lewis and Gwyneth as a couple of Karaoke grifters who turned out to be father and beautiful-fawn-like daughter.

It will touch your heart and please your ears.

And don’t go saying that she’s vain, as she just likes to share her gifts, as you do when you play Yellow on the Ukulele.

Speaking of which, did you know that Gwyneth Paltrow was married to that guy who was the lead singer of Coldplay? She was. That band was huge for a while, but then they kind of vanished. I think they might have been killed in a plane-crash-for-peace or something, but G doesn’t complain about her dead husband.

It’s just not her style.

You’re a hater, Eve, and Gwyneth is a lover, and it doesn’t matter that she loves herself, it just matters that she loves.

EK: I guess it’s true that I don’t know anything near as much as you about Gwyneth Paltrow, as I do not spend hours in the darkness cross-referencing things like “Paltrow” and “panties” and “right now” on Google.

But just in case you really do see me as a hater, I want you to know it was Gwyneth’s courageous portrayal in Shallow Hal of a fat but somehow still worthwhile human being that made me the empathetic person I am today. Because she is a serious method actor, Gwyneth actually wore her fat suit in public one afternoon and was touched to the core by the fact that nobody on the street would look her in the eye. This inspired me to wear a fat suit to a party once to see if people would love me for who I am on the inside, and not just for my jaw-dropping body. This is how I met Dmitri, who not only looked me in the eye but said really beautiful things to me like, “You maybe be a fat beef and have age spots on your face and hands, but at least your smile is right on.”

Anyway, that movie taught me a lot about real beauty. And Gwyneth too, I guess, because she says really honest and insightful things like “”Beauty fades! I just turned 29, so I probably don’t have that many good years left in me” and then blogs about the extreme cleansing fasts she is compelled to go on when her little son “pokes her in the tummy” and says mommy’s “fat.” You get the idea: Fat is okay, so long as it’s other people.

MM: You and Dimitri had a pretty good run for a while (it was nearly six weeks, wasn’t it?), but I guess it all went south after you stabbed him in the thigh when you started fighting about which “True Blood” character to name your pet fish after.

It was sad that, you two were good together.

But I guess you have your cats to cheer you up now.

That’s good.

Anyway, I don’t mean to be too picky here, but I have to point out that Gwyneth’s children refer to her as Mummy, not Mommy, as you had earlier written. They use little, British accents when they do it, too. Not only is this classy and regal, but it’s utterly adorable, like that YouTube video of the fat Japanese cat that’s always trying to get into a box.

You like cat videos, right?



Are you asking for another cat for Christmas?

Gwyneth Paltrow— a beautiful humanitarian— is asking for North Korea to shape up.

And Eve, she will probably get her Christmas wish, too. Given the opportunity, I bet that Kim-Jong il would make her his Dear Leader in a second!

I know I would.

EK: Truly, you are a moron, Murray, a bona fide moron.

Michael Murray is a freelance writer. He presently lives in Toronto. You can find more of his musings on his blog, or check out his Facebook page.

Eve Kendell is a writer, designer and Ukelele saleswoman and performer.