The all-female vanity mission 👽🚀
One giant ad for Blue Origin.
If I told you a pop star went to space to “pave the way for women” while NASA erased female astronauts from its history, you’d probably ask what dystopian novel I was reading. But this isn’t a story from an alternate universe—it’s happening IRL.
On Monday, April 14, Katy Perry, Lauren Sánchez, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, and Kerianne Flynn used Mother Nature’s precious resources to fly to the—wait for it—edge of space. Their joy ride lasted about 11 minutes before they touched down. (It’s taken me longer to drop off my son at preschool than it did for them to go and come back from space.)
Upon landing, Katy and Gayle theatrically kissed the ground and they, along with the rest of the crew, rang a victory bell like the women in Selling Sunset do each time they sell a multi-million dollar home.
“It's about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging,” Katy told reporters afterward, noting that she sang Louis Armstrong's “What a Wonderful World” during their emotional orbit. “And it's about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it.”
Now, you might be thinking, “Alyssa, what a historical moment! Blue Origin sent an all-female crew into space for womankind!!!” True, this is the first all-female space mission since Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo flight in 1963. It also marked history for Aisha, the first Bahamian woman, and Amanda, the first Vietnamese woman, to reach space. And while I admire the diverse representation helmed by the Jeff Bezos-owned company, especially as DEI initiatives are being dismantled because of his orange-faced buddy, it’s a false representation of feminism.
In fact, this feminist act feels like a distraction from the real-life atrocities happening to women (and other marginalized communities, for that matter), in which our rights are disappearing at lightning speed. We no longer have bodily autonomy, we no longer have equal rights in the workplace, and we are on the verge of losing the right to vote. I don’t know about you, but it’s kinda hard to cheer on the #girlbosses “making space for future women” in space when the women of Earth don’t have any.
Not to mention, the obscene amount of wasted resources used for this vanity mission is destroying the planet for future generations. (Ironically, their trip comes just one week before Earth Day.) What’s worse? Gayle said Blue Origin is trying to “figure out a way to harness the waste here and put it in space to make the Earth a better place.” What in the Wall-E is this?? Do you know how absurd (and harmful) that sounds—not just for us but for the galaxy?
The whole thing screams performative activism (which is sad considering Amanda is a civil rights activist and this has diverted attention from her work). It’s also odd to me that one of the driving forces of this feminist/activist narrative is to objectify these smart, successful women into sex pot space travelers. After all, their blue bodycon suits were designed to be “flattering and sexy.”
“Space is going to finally be glam,” Katy told Elle before their trip. “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.” Lauren added, “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!”
Now, I love makeup as much as any beauty devotee, but it feels weird to discuss glam when the point of the mission, according to them, is to “pave the way for women.” But in which direction…towards more oppression, towards more unrealistic beauty standards?
Pixel Flesh author Ellen Atlanta put it best when discussing the dichotomy of female “empowerment” in a patriarchal world: “If a master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s chains, then this feminism is a false promise. One that makes you feel in control of your own oppression whilst continuing to profit from your suffering.”
When you think about how Jeff funded the whole thing and used his fiancée and her friends as pawns for the trip, then it’s clear who shackled the chains and who sold it to us as jewelry for female liberation.
And I think that’s what bothers me most: the patronizing and pretending. You don’t get to tell me you’re exploring space for female prosperity when your entire get-up is designed for the male gaze, and you won’t even discuss the dangerous (and deadly) situations happening to women in your country.
And while I’ve seen many arguments about how we wouldn’t “criticize men if they did it,” I can tell you right now they wouldn’t have marketed it as a mission to put the “‘ass’ in astronaunt.”
In fact, William Shatner, who went to space for Blue Origin’s 2021 mission, discussed the weight of the experience and not in a cutesy “Live long and prosper” way.
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.
Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna…things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral."
So, yeah, kinda hard to criticize that “male” centric mission when the perspective is raw, it’s passionate, it’s emotional. It’s not taking a selfie in the sky, shouting, “Take up space.”
Let’s call this all-female trip for what it was: a joy ride, a vanity mission. It was a huge ad for the privately-owned company. It was a bucket list experience for the mega-rich and ultra-famous. It was good old-fashioned propaganda. It was an illusion that women could still have opportunities.
What it wasn’t was a giant leap for womankind.
This expresses EXACTLY how I feel about this joke of an ‘event’.
Brings thoughts of the airline “stewardesses” of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Independent career women dressed and trained to cater to men’s fantasies.