Time Magazine’s current issue has a larger story about celebrities who have launched their own lifestyle brands. That’s the trend now, from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop to Jessica Alba’s Honest Company to Reese Witherspoon’s Draper James and Blake Lively’s Preserve. We are living in the golden age of rich celebrity women telling us what to buy, how to dress, what to eat, where to vacation and how to diaper our children. I’m covering Blake’s interview separately, because it was just too eye-rolly to pass up. Gwyneth deserved her own post too, because Goop was the first of this current “celebrity lifestyle site” trend. You can read the full Time Mag piece here. Some highlights:

Gwyneth on the appeal of Goop: “It’s funny, because when I started the business I didn’t think of it as an extension of myself in that way. I started it to answer my own questions and to aggregate information. I didn’t think of it that way at the time. Now I can look back and say, If you look at the careers of successful people in the entertainment industry, [they] heavily leverage their lifestyle to their advantage. This has happened with more and more thought as I’ve gone along. Initially it was kind of an accident. The world is just changing so much, with social media and the expectation that privacy is a thing of the past. People do want to understand who they align with. If it’s somebody who is on Goop for the celebrity aspect of it, they’re going to find things, for better or worse, that align with me and my values and my tastes.

Whether it’s easier to communicate through Goop: “Yes, that’s true to a certain extent. I’m not interested in building a celebrity business. I want Goop to be its own brand that can thrive and scale without my involvement at some point… I think with the press, of course I can communicate certain things directly to the world, and I have on a couple occasions. The press is its own animal and is going to do what it’s going to do on the side. I’ve never absorbed that. In this day and age, a lot of press seems very all over the place. Yes, you could use your site as a way to communicate with fans, and yes, I have done that, but that’s not really the intention.

Whether she looks at other actresses’ lifestyle sites: “This is a very interesting question, because I wonder if George Clooney would be asked about Puff Daddy’s ancillary liquor line. I’m fascinated how the media in particular are so confounded by entrepreneurial women doing something outside of their box. Jessica [Alba], especially, who’s a friend of mine—our businesses could not be more different. There’s not a lifestyle piece to her business. The fundamentals of our sites are very different. Reese launched—our businesses have similarities, but hers has retail. People are grasping at straws to tie us together and I get it, because it makes a good story, but I’m slightly offended by this sort of generalization that happens with myself and Jessica and Reese and Blake. Yes, there are similarities. But there aren’t stories in TIME written saying, “Wow, look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, who did x, y, and z!”

But there is a trend of actresses-branching-out-to-lifestyle: “I wrestle with it. I feel there’s something slightly misogynistic about it. This is a common theme. I think Reese and Jessica and I—I don’t know Blake Lively, and I don’t know if Jessica and Reese know each other—I’m friends with both of them and I speak to both of them and I want to do everything I can to support their businesses. I’m not articulating it well, because I haven’t completely worked out what it is, but I feel very proud when Jessica was on the cover of Forbes. I think that’s amazing. You can quantitatively say, “Look what she’s done, she’s been able to conceive of a business and scale it to that size, in that amount of time.” But we have such different businesses.

Changing the narrative: “You just keep going in hopes the story becomes not people pitting women against each other, which is not founded in truth. There’s no competition. None of us think we’re in each other’s space. I don’t know how you do it! You just get to f—ing work! I think we’re in a funny time for women. We are more and more the breadwinners in families across America or contributing equally; there’s a shift happening sociologically and psychologically. People are wrestling with this new archetype of being a woman with a brain who’s also sexual and trying to do more than one thing at a time. I also feel proud. Why would I not want to do that, if it’s a passion?

[From Time]

I want to see Gwyneth’s face when she says “I don’t know Blake Lively.” Don’t you? Does that make me a horrible misogynist? Here’s the thing, and I can’t believe I’m defending Gwyneth Paltrow, but here goes: I think she’s trying to be a nice person by defending the individual visions of the women who took Gwyneth’s Goop model and tweaked it in different ways. Gwyneth’s right in that Jessica Alba’s company became something entirely different, but Reese Witherspoon’s Draper James and Blake’s Preserve are merely versions of Goop. And that’s not on Gwyneth. She grew Goop.com from a silly, out-of-touch newsletter about her life into a silly, out-of-touch lifestyle site, e-commerce site and growing multi-platform brand. It is misogynistic to ask Gwyneth to judge the women copying (with minor tweaks) her model. Now, all that being said… every one of these women owes a huge debt of gratitude to the OG, Martha Stewart.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.