I hope she's reGOOPerating from her ordeal. (via Getty)
To be honest, my knee-jerk reaction to the news that Gwyneth Paltrow gave up on Mario Batali's #FoodBankNYCChallenge after four days was to make some smart-ass comment along the lines of "I guess it's kind of hard to find decent free-range de-glutenized quinoa puffs for under $60 a pound." But then I decided that no, I'm not going to do that. So, sadly, you won't get to read that joke. Instead, you'll have to read my experiment with a thing I recently heard about called "empathy."
Because here's the thing: Gwyneth Paltrow can tend toward the sillier end of the humanity spectrum, but she's still a human. And she did actually take time away from planning Portuguese pheasant roast dinner parties for her coterie of movie stars, astrophysicists and world leaders long enough to try living on $29 for one week, like the people in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program do. Nobody made her do that. And four days is still four days longer than most wealthy celebrities spend trying to understand what this country's poor go through. Plus, the very fact that you're reading about SNAP on a blog that specializes in videos of cats farting the theme to Game of Thrones means her efforts were not in vain.
Okay, it is a bit comically Paltrow-esque that she gave up, in part, so that she could eat a "half a bag of black licorice" (which I'm assuming was saffron-infused), but that doesn't really take away from the fact living on less than $30 is just about impossible. (And don't think that many SNAP recipients wouldn't kill for some saffron-infused black licorice now and again.) That she didn't go a full week doesn't show what a phony she is so much as it shows what bullshit our tax-funded federal aid actually is.
Speaking as somebody who has taken this challenge (albeit inadvertently) on several occasion during my 20s and 30s, I'll tell you that if I'd had the opportunity to pull the rip cord after four days, I would have, too.