There was a time when, whenever the gossip mags wrote about Jennifer Aniston, they’d always preface her name with ‘Sad’. Sad Jen Aniston – it became one of those three-part names, like Sarah Jessica Parker or Sarah Michelle Gellar, only condescending rather than smug. For someone who was allegedly one of the most desirable women on earth, this must have been extremely annoying, recalling the line purred by the courtesan played by Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film Shanghai Express: ‘It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.’ It took more than one man to change Aniston’s moniker to Sad Jen: Brad Pitt, John Mayer and Justin Theroux, for starters.
By making it ‘Instagram official’ with someone called Jim Curtis last week, 56-year-old Aniston is probably hoping to ditch her pole position as the most desirable wallflower in town. However, can I be the only cynic to suspect that we haven’t seen the last of Sad Jen? For ‘wellness coach’ Mr Curtis (who has reportedly encouraged the already terminally self-obsessed Aniston to ‘look inward’ – unfortunate suggestions of a colonoscopy there) has a distinct whiff of snake oil about him. Or rather, of woo-woo.
What’s woo-woo? I know that Spectator readers are an elevated lot, and that some of you might have missed it. Boiled down to its sticky residue, it’s extreme silliness masquerading as spirituality. Zack Polanski – The Tit Whisperer – claiming that he could enlarge the size of women’s breasts by hypnotising them was peak woo-woo. (A more lecherous take on ‘wizards’ who do ‘reverse ageing’.) Woo-woo is especially attractive to disappointed women of a certain age: see crystals, goddess workshops and having a shaman on Skype speed-dial. Gong baths, forest baths, any bath that doesn’t feature water; meditation, mindfulness, manifestation, the word ‘creatrix’. Don’t forget ‘cacao ceremonies’ on Brighton beach where menopausal women pay other menopausal women to make them a hot chocolate in a flask while they watch the sun rise. Then there’s signing up to a women’s weekend retreat to ‘honour the feminine divine’ in lieu of having hot sex or a good box-set to watch.
Then there’s woo-woo which both sexes can make equal fools of themselves over: ‘Freedom from Ego’ workshops (which generally mean acquiring heaps more to show off about), taking ayuhuasca in Hackney, biodynamic farming, mistaking the Druids for hippies rather than warriors and, of course, past-life regression. A couple I used to know told everyone they met that in a past life; the woman was apparently the husband’s mother in ancient Rome. They said their ageing whippet was also with them in Rome, which explained why, at 8,000 years old, he sometimes struggled on his daily walk.
Until she saw sense and started showing off what her mama gave her again on The Celebrity Traitors, the most flagrantly silly face of homeland woo-woo was probably Charlotte Church, who turned her very big house in the country into a ‘wellness retreat’ complete with a shower which the singer described as akin to a ‘very large and unusual-shaped vagina’ (did Zack Polanski design it?) and a ‘womb room’. According to planning documents, Church aimed to create ‘a system of non-hierarchical participatory democracy’ inside the property. ‘The Dreaming’ was due to open in 2022 – but was postponed due to a problem with too much sewage, which unkind souls might say is the overriding impression that one got from the whole daft enterprise.
Lots of woo-woo is easy to laugh off – but some of it can be positively harmful, both to individuals (particularly immature ones) and society. I’m thinking in particular of the Church of Trans-substantiation (pronouns are the new star signs) in which a male merely uttering the words ‘Man – I feel like a woman!’ may gain him access to the most intimate of female spaces. The growing indulgence of ‘witchcraft’ as a lovely cosy nature-worshipping hobby, and indeed as a legitimate religion, might ring a few alarm bells if we weren’t all so busy being suicidally inclusive. Some years ago I remember being rather shocked to read that a practising Satanist was serving on a submarine; a Ministry of Defence spokesman at the time stated that the Navy was an equal opportunities employer and did not discriminate against specific religious beliefs: ‘He went to his commanding officer with a request to practise his beliefs on board his ship and it was granted.’ Which is all very well, but in a crisis at sea I wouldn’t want my life to depend on someone who worshipped Lucifer. Surely he’d be hoping for mayhem, disaster and death rather than all hands on deck?
Basically woo-woo proves the old G.K. Chesterton quote: ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.’ But one can see why high-maintenance women might go for men like Mr Curtis. After the parade of go-getting career-driven arch-narcissists Aniston has been left high and dry by, it might be refreshing to look into the limpid eyes of some smooth-talking guru who only wants to talk about The Wonder Of You. On the other hand, knowing how prevalent stealth-narcissists are on the dodgy borderline where self-care meets self-advancement, there’s an equal chance that Dr Love is simply staring into your eyes in order to see his own reflection.
After the parade of go-getting arch-narcissists Aniston has been left high and dry by, it might be refreshing to look into the limpid eyes of some smooth-talking guru who only wants to talk about The Wonder Of You
Falling for a snake-oil smoothie is, I suppose, the modern equivalent of those women who used to fall for vicars, and hang around making themselves useful in church in the hope that earthly love might eventually get a look-in. Which brings us neatly to what the future might hold for woo-woo. We associate it with youthfulness – but this doesn’t take into consideration the YouGov poll this summer which found that belief in God has doubled among young people in the past four years, with more than a third of those of 18 to 24 now being Believers.
You might think that this could be explained by the growing Muslim population of Britain, but the Telegraph spoke to a number of C of E clergy who maintained that they were seeing far more bums on seats recently. The Revd Marcus Walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, said: ‘There are all sorts of things that seem to be bringing young adults to church, but the most important seems to be a thirst for God – by which I mean that they seem really interested in the intellectual and spiritual side of religion. Humanism and New Atheism rely on a presumption that enlightened humanity will advance inexorably towards liberal democracy and great prosperity; the last 25 years have shown this to be bunk. We’ve had wars, financial collapse, incompetently handled global plagues. On top of this, the modern managerial world is trying to kill all the ways in which human beings interact socially. Church provides people with a place to meet and make friends across generations. This is like gold in a world where anything that looks like fun is shut down by HR busybodies. All this may have led to a rediscovery of what it means to be human and how we interact with the world, now and eternally.’
If the young really are starting to leave ‘spirituality’ on the side of their plate and turn back to straightforward religion, it can only be a good thing. Perhaps in a decade’s time, all this meditation, mindfulness and manifestation will be seen for what it is – old-fashioned eccentricity with a self-improving spin. Personally, the only Woo Woo I’ve got time for is this one: ‘Mix vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice, and garnish with a lime wedge.’ Cheers!
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