In Pursuit of Clean Countertops

In Pursuit of Clean Countertops

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In Pursuit of Clean Countertops
In Pursuit of Clean Countertops
What Does Gwyneth Paltrow Have To Do With Clean Countertops

What Does Gwyneth Paltrow Have To Do With Clean Countertops

Taking Stock

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Sara Petersen
Oct 16, 2024
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In Pursuit of Clean Countertops
In Pursuit of Clean Countertops
What Does Gwyneth Paltrow Have To Do With Clean Countertops
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Like all good origin stories, this one starts with Gwyneth Paltrow.

I saw the Gwyneth version of Great Expectations when I was in high school and Gwyneth’s icy performance of cool (plus the fact that she played a star-crossed lover opposite the 90s fuckboy of my dreams, Ethan Hawke) made an indelible impact on me, which I wrote about here.

Largely thanks to this movie, and Gwyneth’s performance in it, I spent most of my twenties trying to be whatever the guy I was with wanted me to be (see here). It was all super chill and did great things for my sense of self.

Gwyneth became a mom in 2004, the same year I graduated college. The same year I’m ashamed to say sobbed my face off watching Garden State. The same year I took my BA in Theatre Studies from Emerson College and launched myself into the great abyss of adulthood. My grand plan was to “live my dreams” by which I mean I had no plan. I was the raw putty of young adulthood, thirsty for blueprints on how to be a person, achingly susceptible to aesthetic signifiers of a life well lived. Gwyneth became a mom at exactly the right time in my development to solidify “becoming a boho mom is the key to your happily ever after” as a wholly unexamined and misguided shortcut to self-actualization.

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