How Carlin Ross, the Woman Who Orgasmed on the Goop Lab Netflix Show, Came, Saw, and Conquered

Carlin Ross spreads her legs and moves the lamp deeper between her thighs.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” a voice just over her shoulder says.

“It is,” Ross agrees, staring at herself in a mirror, transfixed. She drops her hands, delicately, smoothing them over the outline of her vulva.

For just $12.99 a month, you can join the millions of people who’ve watched Ross touch herself on camera whenever you want. But if you’ve devoured Love Is Blind or Tiger King, you’ve already shelled out for Ross’s show-and-tell. She’s on Netflix.

How did a fast-talking New Jersey mom who was raised a Christian fundamentalist wind up teaching Gwyneth Paltrow the difference between a vulva and vagina?

Carlin Ross is the woman who was filmed having an orgasm on The Goop Lab, Netflix's TV show with Gwyneth Paltrow about her lifestyle empire, Goop. Ross and her coconspirator, the famed 90-year-old sex educator Betty Dodson, school Paltrow and her Goop employees on human biology, sexism, and self-doubt, and then Ross demonstrates as Dodson coaches her to an orgasm, using a special technique. The camera crew—and anyone who has a Netflix password—has full permission to look on.

How did a fast-talking New Jersey mom who was raised a Christian fundamentalist wind up teaching Gwyneth Paltrow the difference between a vulva and vagina? How did a former property lawyer help Goop—a women’s lifestyle brand famous for dubious claims about women’s genitals—create a revolutionary piece of sex education? What was she doing last month at a Walgreens in suburban Jersey ringing up a carton of cigarettes, a packet of condoms, and a box of hearing aids?

Ross is a nice lady from the suburbs who has a serious sweater collection, a kid, and a dog. Still, the answer to all of these questions is that she does what she wants and doesn’t take any shit. (Also, the condoms were for sex toys that she hands out during workshops; the cigarettes and hearing aids were for Dodson, who has taken to smoking and drinking Champagne in her 90s.)

Ross spits facts and talks about sex education like a rapper—because she can and because she feels she has to.

“I really believe that not telling young women about their bodies or giving them access to health care is systematic abuse at the level of genocide,” Ross says, a few minutes into our interview.

“You have to love your body to have an orgasm,” she says. “You have to feel entitled. The most unattractive man in the world still feels entitled to an orgasm. But women, we always feel like, ‘Maybe if I'm skinnier?’”

And: “If you’ve had an orgasm, you’re not a virgin.”

And: “Sexual freedom for women is a life goal, my reason for being.”

And on the controversies surrounding Goop: “There are so many controversies out there; it just seemed like a pimple on the ass of controversy.”

She has to be this succinct. In her decades as a sex educator, she has answered thousands of questions on her and Dodson’s site. “There are only really 10 to 15 questions, and they all boil down to the same thing,” Ross says. “‘Am I normal?’”

Rest easy—the answer is yes.

Ross grew up on the South Shore of Long Island with religious Christian parents who didn’t believe in TV, but did believe in a somewhat radical message of body acceptance—though raised almost a half-century apart, both Ross and Dodson credit their openness around sex in part to their parents walking around their homes naked. It was an abstinence-only education, but one that also involved her mother calmly explaining that the purpose of the clitoris is for sexual pleasure. It was a loving, “Amish-lite” life. And then she went through puberty.

“When you’re a girl, right, everyone listens to you in your family, and your family friends, everyone is nice to you,” Ross says. “And then you get your breasts, and all of a sudden your standing changes, and you become something else. You’re supposed to regulate male sexuality, and your dad’s friends are saying fresh things to you, and groping on mass transit happens.”

Ross’s experience is almost universal for girls. But she was shocked that no one had prepared her for it. “I felt very betrayed.”

Pushed by an “innate sense of justice,” she decided to become a lawyer. “I was attracted to law because it was like armoring. And I wanted to prove that I could play with the boys and I could win,” she says. Ross was consumed by an obsession with fairness, a sense that “you can’t just let everything get by you.” But she also happily cops to a nuance you won’t find in many law school application personal statements: “I always aspired to being a shallow, rich woman!” she says, laughing. “It’s a kind of power. In New York you see it: the women who walk around town, and you see one and think, Everyone listens to her.”

She worked for the civil rights bureau of New York’s attorney general. She moved into property law. She became general counsel for an early internet service provider that raised $1 billion on Wall Street, where she was the only woman executive. She dyed her hair black and cut blunt bangs and wore black Prada suits and boots. When people saw her coming, they moved out of her way. She was respected. She worked around the clock. “When you’re a woman, you have to work harder,” she says. “You can’t make a mistake, ever.”

The work was intoxicating, but the coworkers were taxing. Her coworkers used little things about her to make her feel diminished. “I have this birthmark, it looks like a hickey, and I would always have to cover it up,” Ross says. “And then my blouse would go up and they’d get all excited, and I’d have to explain, ‘It’s not a hickey.’” This became so constant that she looked into getting laser removal. “Things like that—always having to downplay your looks, dress in a certain way, be in control, never make a mistake….” Women who have worked in male-dominated fields know this lifestyle. It's exhausting.

The dot-com bubble burst. Ross was working on mergers for an early internet broadcasting company—a precursor to the world of vlogging. Since they couldn’t pay her, she asked to trade her work for their women’s lifestyle platform, which dealt with sexuality in a frank, feminist way. She saw, in the adolescent internet, an opening for women to explore their sexuality in a way that had never existed before. She knew that women, like her, reasoned, “I’m not going to go into a sex shop where people can see my car outside and some guy in leather chaps is gonna try to sell me a dildo.” But they would use the internet. It would be a revolution.

With enough anonymity—not being watched, not being observed—women would flock to sex resources. That’s what she told the New York Times, anyway. In a feature. On the front page. The buzzy article launched her out of law and into the world of sex education. She started one of the earliest podcasts, interviewing feminists and sex educators. She and Dodson went into business together. Sex changed, just as she had predicted it would, and they helped change it. Sixteen years after the article in which she told the Times, “Women have a voice now—‘This is what I want and this is how I want it,’” Ross would solo-orgasm on Netflix. For her, anonymity was long over. For women watching at home, her public orgasm was a tiny (but deeply felt!) revolution.

Ross never looked back at her high-profile law career, after going into business teaching sex with Dodson. “I know this is horrible, ’cause I have a four-year-old son and I’m crazy about him,” she says. “But I was just tired of dealing with men all the time. Their perspectives, and their viewpoints, and always having to argue my case—I was just tired of it.”

When she worked with male executives, she had to constantly moderate her outfits, her hair, her behavior, her speaking voice. In contrast, when she first came to Dodson’s apartment, Ross remembers that Dodson greeted her at the door wearing “a cutoff T-shirt with a grease stain down the front that showed Rosie the Riveter holding a Hitachi Magic Wand.” (Dodson has a policy that her Manhattan doormen should let any women up to her apartment, no questions asked. When I arrived to interview Ross—back when interviews took place in person—the doorman took one look at me and said, “You here for Betty?”)

Ross and Dodson first met when Ross decided to interview the sex pioneer for her podcast. During the interview the women spontaneously agreed to be business partners. They celebrated over cocktails and crafted a prenup, in case of a business breakup. They spent six months traveling as a test of their compatibility, starting in Copenhagen, where Ross assisted Dodson in leading a workshop for 13 sexologists. (Ross says Dodson’s only instruction was “Bring a raspberry robe.”)

“We have women that think they pee from their clitoris. And they’ve had children.”

It was a Bodysex workshop—Dodson’s signature workshop, which is shown, in parts, in the Goop episode. Based on the women’s consciousness-raising groups of the ’60s, the workshop is a two-day self-pleasure extravaganza—not an orgy, but a group education experience—that Ross describes as “the best cocktail party you've ever been to with the most interesting women in the world.” The leaders answer the door naked (“We don’t ask them to do anything that we don’t do first”), and spend time walking the women through their anatomy in a mirror and doing “genital show-and-tell,” admiring each other’s labia.

“There’s a range of vulva styles, and everyone thinks there’s something wrong with them because in porn there’s only one,” Dodson says. But, at Bodysex, “you see the variety, and it’s all beautiful.” The anatomy lesson is helpful too—“We have women that think they pee from their clitoris,” Ross says. “And they’ve had children.” On the second day of the workshop, the women work toward orgasm during “erotic recess,” using Dodson’s technique. “It’s very stimulating to hear the authentic sounds of other women experiencing pleasure,” Ross says. But “it’s not a circle jerk, it’s not like a big group sex party.” They’re apart, but together.

After that first workshop, with the 13 Danish sexologists, Ross was hooked. “This is what I want to do,” she remembers saying.

For Bodysex workshops, women come from around the world. They take breaks to snack on chocolate, and to urge one another through orgasms. They share their feelings. They call each other “sister.” And after decades of these workshops, one day, The Goop Lab, Netflix's new, Paltrow-helmed series, called. Ross and Dodson leaped at the chance to get their message to a larger group. Ross pitched the idea of a genital show-and-tell and orgasm airing on the show. And Paltrow loved it.

How does Ross, who has devoted her life to teaching women to undo shame around their body, feel about Paltrow, who has been accused of fostering outright ignorance around women’s bodies and specifically genitals? Again, she spits facts.

“All my medical friends hate her, but I’m like, ‘At the same time, that’s on you for not creating a wellness category.’ How come M.D.s aren’t teaching you about nutrition or your gut health or constipation?” she asks, building steam. “Have a baby and realize they don’t hit on anything having to do with your sexuality, anything to do with getting your pelvic floor back in shape—nothing. They ignore it. They act like it doesn’t exist. And then when someone comes up to serve the market, you’re pissed off?” She shakes her head.

So if Paltrow wants to be an ally—even temporarily—in the war for women to know their own body, so much the better. “Doctors leave people hanging out to dry, and they’re the only ones that have the information,” she says. “Get off your ass.”

Since her climactic Netflix appearance, Ross now gets so many letters from women (and people of other genders too) that it’s hard to keep up. She and Dodson will keep running Bodysex—Dodson says she’ll do them until she dies—but their wait list fills months in advance.

So Ross shares her top three tips for sex and self-pleasure. Don’t forget—the department of health says your safest sex partner during the pandemic is yourself. Women’s sexual freedom! Take it from Ross: It’s a reason for being.

• “The number one sex toy is oil-based lubricant. It will increase your sensation and your pleasure, it’s simple, and it will make everything more fun. If you really want to have partnered sex or masturbate for long enough that you’re having multiple orgasms and you have these heights of pleasure, spit won’t work—you need lubricant.”

• “Orgasms are work! Don’t think you’re gonna touch yourself for two seconds and you’re going to have an earth-shattering orgasm, or you’re going to tense all your muscles and have this pleasure. Pleasure is work, orgasm is work, you have to keep on going.”

• “Don’t neglect your mind—your fantasy. Let yourself go. That’s a function of loving yourself, letting go of shame. Be a pervert. There’s nothing you can think that’s wrong. Have fun. Get twisted. Roll off in your mind. Lose track of time. There’s no thought police, so have at it. And you’re never gonna want to fantasize about your partner! It’s boring, because you have it. You want to fantasize about your sister-in-law, your brother-in-law, the next-door neighbor, the UPS guy!”

Happy fantasizing, friends. Grab a raspberry robe and your innate sense of justice, and roll off in your mind.

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.

Originally Appeared on Glamour