Holly Willoughby channels Gwyneth Paltrow with ‘orgasm anxiety’ blog post

‘This Morning’ presenter has been cultivating a wellness brand that offers advice on everything from sex to ‘energy forecasting’

Holly Willoughby appears keen to follow in the footsteps of Goop founder and actor Gwyneth Paltrow, as her lifestyle brand Wylde Moon shares a new blog post addressing “orgasm anxiety”.

The ITV star, 42, launched the project in 2021, with the Wylde Moon website regularly posting recipe ideas, style and beauty tips. There is also a section dedicated to crystals and astrology, with a recent post offering a numerology “trick” that claims to show readers how to “forecast their personal energy” for each decade of their life.

Since its launch, Wylde Moon has often been compared to Goop, the lifestyle and wellness brand created by Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow known for controversial posts about “yoni eggs”, vagina steaming, and supplements that claim to “support women’s desire”.

“As yet, on our list, there's no vagina steamer,” Willoughby joked in 2021.

The latest website update was written by author Kate Lucey, who writes about the anxiety that can be caused by an inability to reach sexual climax.

“We’re all friends here, so I’m going to get straight to it; do you ever find yourself feeling frustrated, stressed, or anxious because you just can’t seem to reach orgasm?” Lucey begins.

“Or maybe you can have a wonderful time when you’re on your own, but with a partner you never quite manage to experience the same feelings? You’re not alone.”

Lucey goes on to reference the pressures imposed on our sex lives by pop culture, claiming that viewers are bombarded by TV shows and films depicting characters with fantastic sex lives.

“When a show or a film has a scripted sex scene with a straight couple, all it seems to take is a man unzipping his fly for a woman to start to feel herself in the throes of orgasm (which, to be fair, could be a reasonable representation of shagging the Duke from Bridgerton…),” she wrote.

“Jokes aside, though, all these gasping gals don’t do much to reassure people who actually find it quite a challenge to orgasm.”

The article goes on to reference statistics around orgasms, noting that only around 50 per cent of women will climax during sex, and that anxiety is often the culprit.

Lucey also spoke with a sex and sexual health expert, who discussed the complexities of orgasms and offered advice on how best to achieve them.

Last year, Willoughby interviewed Paltrow for a podcast episode, in which they discussed fame, motherhood, Goop, and “the true value of women supporting women”.

The beleaguered presenter is currently on a scheduled break from This Morning, following a summer of turmoil amid the fallout from her former co-star, Phillip Schofield, who admitted to lying about his affair with a younger ITV colleague in May.

Last week, a “large number” of ITV’s This Morning employees, past and present, raised claims of “toxic working cultures”, bullying, discrimination and harassment to parliament.

The damning allegations were revealed by a cross-party group of senior MPs scrutinising the under-fire programme following Schofield’s high-profile exit from the show.

Willoughby is due to return to This Morning on 4 September.