Gwyneth Paltrow On What Happens To Your Identity When You’re Not ‘F**kable’

Gwyneth Paltrow opened up about her looks, the aging process and struggling with her identity as she gets older on a recent episode of Goop’s new podcast, “The Beauty Closet.” 

“I’ve always felt so funny about my looks,” the “Iron Man” actress told Goop editors Jean Godfrey-June and Megan O’Neill. “I think that it’s very rare to think that you’re a beautiful person, and so, I feel like every other woman — like, I don’t see that when I look in the mirror.”

The Goop founder added that though she doesn’t always see herself as beautiful, other people have “considered” her that ― which she says is a “weird thing to be” as she gets older. 

“I think when you come to age, if you have this broad identity as that, what does it mean to get wrinkles and, like, get closer to menopause, and all these things?” she pondered. “What happens to your identity as a woman if you’re not fuckable and beautiful?”

There are upsides to getting older though, as Paltrow said she feels “less judgmental” about herself, as opposed to when she was younger and “trying to please” people all the time. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still struggle with losing parts of her identity. 

“It’s like ― you feel so good, you know who you are, hopefully, you value the relationships in your life and your work and your contribution to the world,” Paltrow said.

“But then you’re like, ‘Wow, I have crow’s feet. Damn!’” she quipped. 

And as she gets older, Paltrow is experiencing lots of new things ― like being in  her first “adult relationship” with now-husband Brad Falchuk, a TV producer.

The Goop founder spoke about the difference in her new love with couples counselor Esther Perel in an interview with The Sunday Times last year. 

“Now, for the first time, I feel I’m in an adult relationship that is sometimes uncomfortable, because he sort of demands a certain level of intimacy and communication that I haven’t been held to before,” she said. “What came up in the first couple of years of our relationship was how incapable I was in this realm, how I feared intimacy and communication.”