If you’ve been following Gwyneth Paltrow on social media, you’ll know she’s digi-coined the term ‘boyfriend breakfast’ for when she makes weekly Sunday brunch at home, presumedly for her and her husband Brad Falchuk.

It’s a slightly cheugy, trad-wife esque hashtag, but it’s nothing to get upset about – and the meals always look fairly delicious. Even if Paltrow, who was a pious advocate of the Paleo diet for years, has only just started eating bread and cheese again. Her most recent offering was a ‘high protein skillet with sausages from the local butcher, white beans, spinach, cherry tomatoes and of course eggs’.

However, this weekend’s ‘boyfriend breakfast’ managed to make it into the headlines. Not because she offended Italians with her Tuscan-inspired white bean sausage skillet recipe she, but because she dared to stir the pot – literally – without her top on. Yes, in one clip from Paltrow’s reel, she is seen by the hob from behind in pyjama shorts and no top, and it has sent the internet into overdrive.

The Daily Mail was kind enough to note ‘fame and wealth aren’t sparing her the effects of getting older’. The article wasn’t about Paltrow’s body, but rather her ‘thin ponytail’, using it as an opportunity to bring up comments the actress has made about her hair loss in the past. ‘So many women I know are quietly dealing with hair loss,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried a handful of treatments over the years, nothing seemed to move the needle – not even injecting my scalp with actual needles.’

However, her daughter Apple Martin, who she shares along with son Moses with her ex-husband Chris Martin, was quick to notice Paltrow’s toplessness. ‘Did I steal your shirt by accident or…’ she joked. Others took the post a little too seriously, for it is social media after all, with one writing that it’s a ‘little dangerous’ to be cooking with no shirt on, adding ‘this is rich people faking life’. This user seems to ungenerously forget that Paltrow is a 52-year-old grown woman who probably has a strong grasp on health and safety, and that she cooks these types of dishes every single week.

Another user seemed personally offended by Paltrow’s lack of pyjama top. ‘Umm, but why no shirt in the beginning?’ she asked. ‘What does that have to do with the rest of the reel? What am I missing?’.

Allow us to answer that question. Paltrow is the proprietor of her own social media account where she shares personal and professional content with fans and observers. She has always leant into her almond mom, live, laugh, love persona, turning her love of wellness into a global business when she founded Goop in 2008. In 2020, the brand even started selling a candle called ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’. All of which is to point out that she is entitled to post whatever she wants and that she does not care what people think.

Not only this, but the clue is in the title. In making ‘boyfriend breakfasts’, the series implies Paltrow is cooking for her husband – in the morning, at home. This context makes her toplessness entirely explicable if not praise-worthy. Why shouldn’t she walk around her house in front of her own husband without her top on?

And finally, anonymous user, the mountainous Italian vistas featured in the reel and the ‘Tuscan-inspired’ dish indicate that Paltrow is on holiday. She and Falchuk are rumoured to have purchased a sprawling holiday home in the scenic Umbria-region of Italy in recent years and spend a great deal of their time there. She might not have nailed the recipe – one follower commented, ‘You are a wonderful woman but what you cooked looks horrible. I am from Tuscany, and I guarantee it does not exist! – but if you can’t take your top off on holiday, when can you?

The best response to Paltrow’s breakfast, however, came from her Hollywood friend and fellow wholefoods enthusiast, Jennifer Garner, who simply asked, ‘Can I be your boyfriend?’. Fortunately for the trolls and nudity police, this comment received almost 5,000 likes in less than 24 hours. Given that the Shakespeare in Love actress spends every Sunday morning labouring over delicious dishes like Persian caramelised onion omelettes and Japanese miso soup with salted salmon, it’s not hard to see where Garner is coming from.

Paltrow has an entire Instagram highlight dedicated to her breakfast series – a few strange comments about the audacity of her bare back or her ponytail aren’t going to stop her. Perhaps we should all take a leaf out of Paltrow’s book and carve out more time to make lavish breakfasts (pyjamas not compulsory), go on holiday as much as possible (this one is a little harder to instigate) and relish in the inevitable, ludicrous backlash from trolls on social media.