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Be STILL, commoners. All you ordinary humans, juggling such pedestrian concerns as budgets, belly fat and inadequate thighs — Gwyneth Paltrow is having a bad month.
The starving goddess — a lady of 40 who smokes tobacco (no calories!) and often exists on juices of kale and lemon — may have, finally, gone off the deep end.
A new survey in Star magazine ranks Gwyneth as The Most Hated Celebrity in Hollywood, quite a feat when you consider she’s outpaced even Lindsay Lohan (No. 16), Chris Brown (No. 20), the despised Anne Hathaway, Taylor Swift and hideous Kim Kardashian.
But the ridiculous habits of the Oscar winner (for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love’’), which she promotes with near-religious fervor on her lifestyle Web site, Goop.com, have been accumulating, like the angry burn marks on her back from a once-favored health fad, acupuncture cupping.
Now, her neuroticism has exploded in our faces, like the ravings of some crazy-pants aunt, with this month’s release of Gwyneth’s new cookbook — and I use the term loosely, because cooking requires the preparation of actual food.
Some credit-card holders were willing to overlook Gwyneth’s obscene, $458,003 list of spring’s must-have essentials (what working woman should live without a $5,495 Valentino Rockstud python trapeze bag?) which she championed on her smug site. But few could get past a $300-a-day diet that cuts out most foods mere mortals ingest to stay alive.
And then, a crisis erupted. Even accepting that Gwyneth, as a friend suggested, is a “rich, white woman with an eating disorder turned into a branding opportunity,’’ critics, from here to her home in London, could not abide the idea that she might subject her children, son Moses, 6, and daughter Apple, 8, to her punishing daily regimen.
In her book “It’s all Good,’’ Gwyneth, who’s dabbled in juice cleanses and cupping — burning one’s flesh with heated glasses as therapy for back pain — says the act of not eating saved her from something she thought was a stroke. It turned out to be a migraine and panic attack.
But rather than boost her bony self with a cheeseburger (No! Red! Meat!), Gwyneth responded to her body’s cry for help with the “Elimination Diet.’’ She removed every, last yummy food from her repertoire, including coffee, alcohol, dairy, eggs, sugar, corn, shellfish, fish, wheat, meat and soy.
One perfect vice remained: “My one light American Spirit cigarette that I smoke, once a week, on Saturday night,’’ she said in the May issue of Harper’s Bazaar. Obsessed with “finding the balance between cigarettes and tofu,” she’s scorched her perfect face with lasers and used the Botox needle — which made her look “crazy . . . like Joan Rivers.’’
There are cures for such breathtaking narcissism, Gwyn. Fight a disease. Go to work. Eat.
Without a hint of anxiety, Gwyneth wrote that her husband, rocker Chris Martin, and her kids also took part in her wacked-out elimination scheme.
“Every single nutritionist, doctor and health-conscious person I have ever come across . . . seems to concur that [gluten — a protein found in wheat, barley and rye] is tough on the system and many of us are at best intolerant of it and at worst allergic to it,’’ she wrote, with a certitude that would make Anthony Weiner proud.
“Sometimes when my family is not eating pasta, bread or processed grains like white rice, we’re left with that specific hunger that comes with avoiding carbs,” she admitted. No carbs for kids?
Last week, Gwyneth went into full panic mode. After revealing that she might be depriving her young ones of sandwiches, Gwyneth blamed the media for attracting attention to her own ravings.
“What it is,” she told Dr. Oz, “is that my son has very bad eczema and he’s allergic to gluten and he’s allergic to cow dairy.’’
She said she occasionally feeds her “normal kids’’ Oreos!
On “Good Morning America,’’ she responded to critics who say her bare diet is pricey — Yahoo.com said it would cost $300 a day for Gwyneth’s disciples to feed a family.
“That is insane!’’ she said.
Experts are not enthusiastic.
Registered dietitian Laura Lynn Iacono told me that, despite Gwyneth’s claim that “many of us’’ can’t tolerate gluten, you’d better make sure your kid is truly allergic before trying to make do without.
“Things like bread or pasta help produce glucose, which is an energy source to the brain,’’ said Iacono, in private practice after 15 years at New York Hospital.
“It helps kids concentrate in school. Cut out the nutrients, it will deter growth.’’
Use caution when following Gwyneth. I’m sure mealtimes are a real laugh riot at the Paltrow-Martin abode.
Memo to Madge: Out of Africa!
Madonna can cross saving Africa off her to-do list.
The war of words continues between the pop singer, 54, and Joyce Banda, the president of Malawi, a country still angry that Madonna snatched up two children like human trinkets. Days after returning from Malawi, the Material Moron called Banda a liar.
“I’m saddened that Malawi’s President Joyce Banda has chosen to release lies about what we’ve accomplished, my intentions, how I personally conducted myself while visiting Malawi, and other untruths,” she wrote on the Web site of her charity, Raising Malawi.
Her Madgesty was royally peeved when she and her 15-person entourage were stripped of their VIP status as they left Malawi, frisked at the airport, and forced to line up with the masses. Banda railed that Madonna expected “star treatment” and endless gratitude for taking Malawi’s kids off the country’s hands.
Madonna should try another continent. Or stay home.
Tiger’s gal is Vonn trapped
Tiger Woods is again accused of cheating — not on his new squeeze, Olympic gold-medal skier Lindsey Vonn, 28, but Friday as he dropped the ball in the wrong place at the Masters golf tourney. Injured in a ski accident, Vonn, the sunny Coloradan, hobbled on the Georgia course in a knee brace to cheer on her often-grumpy beau, 37, who lost anyway.
Is this a sad ploy to cleanse Woods’ rotten reputation as golf’s greatest womanizer? Or is the divorced Vonn head-over-heels?
She deserves better than a serial rule-breaker.
Put your bat away, Weiner
Many readers were appalled that delusional ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, the perv who wants to be mayor, posed in a Met cap in a self-serving New York Times Magazine article.
“We Mets always forget how lousy we played last year and dream that this year we will make it to the World Series,’’ wrote a Manhattan fan. “Dream on, Tony.’’
OWS proves crime pays
The city has agreed to pay some $365,000 to Occupy Wall Street, including cash to replace bikes, electronic equipment and books damaged or never returned in the 2011 raid that cleared out crime-ridden Zuccotti Park. Of that staggering amount, $186,500 was to go to self-styled civil-rights lawyer Norman Siegel, Occupy’s chief ambulance chaser.
Nice way to fleece the taxpayer.