Gwyneth Paltrow's insanely profitable empire of quack remedies has had some serious lowlights: it wasn't just squirting coffee up your asshole, or vaginal steaming and smoothie dust: really, the lowest of the lowlights was a concerted effort to convince women to insert $66 jade eggs into their vaginas because, supposedly, this was a widespread practice from "ancient China."
Update: An earlier version of this article credited Ms Paltrow with inventing the fictitious ancient Chinese practice of keeping jade eggs in one's vagina; it turns out that this legend was plagiarized from other sources."
This is at least three kinds of stupid:
1. It's an appeal to antiquity: "the misconception that ancient practices or beliefs are superior to modern ones (related to appeal to authority and appeal to tradition)."
2. It's racist, casting "ancient Chinese" as a kind of mystical elf who could access all kinds of wisdom thanks to their fey bloodlines.
3. It endangers women's lives: "Jade is porous so leaving the egg in one's vagina during sleep could allow bacteria to get inside and cause bacterial vaginosis or even Toxic Shock Syndrome, a life-threatening complication caused by bacterial infections."
But now, we know about a fourth way in which it is stupid (which, honestly, I think everyone had guessed, but now we have proof): people in China didn't put jade eggs in anything, ever.
