Gwyneth Paltrow reveals the part of internet culture she can’t wrap her head around
Gwyneth Paltrow has admitted she isn’t fully caught up to date with internet trends and needs her children to help her.
In an interview with Cultured Magazine, published on Tuesday 23 April, the Goop founder admitted that she sees memes on social media and goes to her two children, 18-year-old son Moses and 19-year-old daughter Apple – who she shares with ex-husband Chris Martin – for help.
“This one meme: ‘I’m baby,’” Paltrow explained as an example. “I’m like: ‘What the f***? What does that mean?’ And then everyone tries to explain what ‘I’m baby’ means. I finally got it.”
However, she might not have consistent access to Moses soon, as she noted he will be graduating from high school and starting his first semester of college in the fall. But, Paltrow said her daughter could help her keep up with the trends. “Luckily, I talk to my daughter multiple times a day, and I’m sure when Moses goes it will be the same,” she said.
“But in the meantime, until September, I have my son here to explain to me what all these crazy things that pop up are.”
Paltrow has previously admitted that she feels a “deep sense of impending grief” over the idea of being an “empty nester” while both of her children are away at school.
Speaking to theSunday Times, she described exactly what emotions she was going through. “On the one hand incredible sadness. A deep sense of impending grief. On the other hand this is exactly what should be happening,” she said of the change.
“Your kids are supposed to be, you know, young adults who can achieve and cope and make connections and be resilient. That’s exactly what you want. And that means they leave the house.”
Paltrow has also become a stepmother to her husband Brad Falchuk’s two children, Isabella, 19, and Brody, 17, which meant handling even more children leaving the nest.
She married the TV writer in 2018 after four years of dating. She was previously married to Coldplay frontman Martin for 10 years, before announcing their divorce in March 2014. Meanwhile, Falchuk shares two children with his previous wife of 19 years, Suzanne Bukinik. When Paltrow tied the knot with Falchuk, she welcomed Isabella and Brody into her family.
The former actress previously revealed in a since-expired Instagram Story what it’s been like marrying a spouse who already had two children.
“I did find it really hard at first,” the Goop founder admitted. “You know? There’s no book on this. Nobody tells us what to do. And in fact, all of the existing media around what a stepmother is casts us in this evil, villainous light.”
“It’s kind of like trying to avoid landmines,” she added.
Paltrow admitted that any change to a family can be difficult no matter who is involved, especially looking at each separate relationship within it. From her own perspective, she wasn’t sure what her stepchildren would make of her becoming a person they had to see on a regular basis, and just being a new person to them in general.
To solve this problem, she stopped thinking of Isabella and Brody as her husband’s children and started thinking of them as her own. “But you know for myself, the minute I decided and fully embodied the idea that my step-kids were my kids and I loved them just as much, and I gave them the same rules and boundaries and just kind of wholeheartedly went for it, the easier the whole thing got,” she said.