Two weeks ago, a friend sent me a video on TikTok that looked very much like an outtake from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. A gaggle of women, clearly fresh from the hair and make-up department and wearing matching midnight blue spandex spacesuits à la iconic cartoon trio from Totally Spies, hopped onto a spaceship for a blink-and-you’ll miss it zoom into the galaxy. I only recognized Katy Perry, but some of her cohort seemed hazily familiar. I chuckled at the video, because I immediately assumed it was AI-generated. I was even reluctantly impressed: somebody had obviously presented AI with a ludicrous prompt and it had risen to the occasion splendidly. Hours later, I found myself back on TikTok, and realised in horror that this was an actual thing, that had actually happened, in actual real life. You have to hand it to Katy Perry, who as the most famous member of the bunch is receiving the most press. Every time she seems to take her most embarrassing misstep, she returns with an even fiercer flop.
Since COVID, general feeling towards celebrities and the elite class has soured. You couldn’t really place the blame on an exact moment in time, but Gal Gadot and her assortment of celebrity mates crooning John Lennon’s Imagine a mere fortnight into lockdown always seemed to me significant domino in this line of disenchantment. (We were social distancing for two weeks, Gal. Why do you want us to imagine there’s no people?) The cannier of celebrities—or maybe their public relations teams—have caught onto this and seemed to conspire a pivot, striving to straddle a line between relatability and aspiration. Perry has never quite levelled up to her shrewd peers. But despite this, I was still blown away by her involvement in such a breath-taking misfire at empowerment and spirituality. I’m not surprised she and the women she took to the skies with are out of touch, but I am amazed that they didn’t have the sense to pretend not to be.
The eleven-minute “mission” (trip? Jaunt? Expedition?) was an initiative of Blue Origin, a Jeff Bezos-founded company envisioning “a future where millions of people will live and work in space with a single-minded purpose: to restore and sustain Earth, our blue origin”. Bezos has made the dubious claim that the rocket had no carbon emissions, with a variety of experts promptly calling into question the likelihood of this. BBC News almost immediately explored and critiqued the green credentials touted by the billionaire. Despite his philanthropic initiatives, Bezos has been embroiled in a number of controversies, from toxic work environments to tax avoidance to drastically underreporting Amazon’s carbon emissions. As with many billionaires, there’s an altruistic surface and a sinister underbelly. But as ruthless as I imagine him to be, I wouldn’t have expected the concoction of such a ridiculous scheme from him. Unless, of course, it was planned to go viral due to cringe in the age-old spirit of “all press is good press”. If that’s what he wanted, he succeeded magnificently.
Alongside Perry, the mission’s crew included journalist and Bezos’ fiance Lauren Sánchez, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, CBS Morning’s co-host Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and former rocket scientist for NASA Aisha Bowe. Sánchez spearheaded the mission/trip/jaunt/expedition, and hand-selected her crew. “All of these women are storytellers in their own right. They’re going to go up to space and be able to spread what they felt in different ways,” Sánchez told ELLE Magazine before the flight took place. An ambitious order for eleven minutes.
I don’t wish to disparage these women for their achievements. All of them have clearly excelled in their respective professions. I also don’t intend to undermine femininity or frivolity: I’m a big fan of glam, and the outfits and freshly blown-out hair were probably the best part of their venture to me. If you’re going into space, you may as well serve face. Considering the punishing lens women in the media are often under, I do try to approach stories like this with as much measure as possible. But I am fairly confident that, in a parallel universe where the mission/trip/jaunt/expedition took place with Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon, it would go down with the public almost the same way. Of course, boasting that this was only the second all-female space flight since Valentina Tereshkova’s in 1963, Blue Origin attempted to employ a veneer of female empowerment, a veneer flimsier than Gal Gadot’s ability to read a room.
Perhaps in 2014, when the Oscar selfie took the internet by storm, this may have been better-received. I doubt it. Even prior to the sullied feeling towards the rich and famous gaining traction, I struggle to imagine the most fledgling feminist finding the spaceflight to be empowering. And yet, they took to the skies seeming thoroughly convinced that the footage would inspire a frenzy of female admiration. Perhaps Perry thought by taking this step for us normies, she’d return to a planet much like that shown in the music video for her song Woman’s World, released last year. People were actually very ready to welcome the campy songstress with open arms and she was certainly primed for a comeback. Then she brought us a shallow, pseudo-liberating, clumsily executed, and melody-lacking flop produced by the same Dr Luke who Ke$ha had accused of sexual and emotional abuse. The album was duly universally panned. That’s partly why I was shocked she was on the flight; after the backlash, I’d imagined she, or a publicist, or her partner, or a friend, or a pet, or a bird in the trees would have raised concerns about the optics.
The optics were this: reeking of performativity, the group boarded the ship like they were readying themselves to burst out of it en-masse once high enough, to then Kill Bill the harmful radiation affecting the ozone layer. Instead, they bobbed ineffectually inside, mugging at the cameras, wide-eyed, breathless, toting personal mementos. Look, I’m sure it was a humbling moment, peering down at the earth from so high above. I can understand their wonder. I just can’t fathom why they expected it to be inspirational.
“Taking up space!” the group cheered, a mantra repeated when they returned to land eleven minutes later. Flinging themselves from the ship, they struck power poses and burst into noisy, extravagant tears. They saluted the sky and kissed the ground. It was clear the team of women had bought into the notion that the world would react with fervent applause. King, probably imagining the story to be profound, recalled afterwards how Perry burst into an acapella version of What a Wonderful World on their way down, finished by the singer dreamingly gazing at the landscape rushing towards them and remarking, “I haven’t sang that song in years”.
A panel discussion was hosted afterwards, wrapped in a bubblegum-pink facade of superficial girly pop-feminism. I—and most others—was confused by the sanctimonious, self-satisfied discourse bestowed upon us viewers as if they were a pack of wise storybook owls. “We’re making space,” Perry said, with the honeyed, emotionally wrought, yet oddly vapid tones of a Yoga instructor at The White Lotus. “I hope [people] can see the unity that we modelled, and replicate that, and understand that we weren’t just taking up space, we were making space… for the future.” Lauren Sánchez underscored how the event made her feel, “connected. More connected than you realize”. They referred to each other as “celestial sisters”, bonded by this singular experience.
As of yet, it’s still unclear what they modelled. They certainly took up space, in the literal and figurative fashion. Making space? Where? The average woman on the street is as likely to find themselves in the next Blue Origin ship as they are to sprout wings themselves. Female astronauts who have studied assiduously for years do not seem to have received anything of worth from what has boiled down to a catastrophic publicity stunt. Personally, the only thing I felt upon realising the footage was real (oh, how I wish it was AI) was mirth, mingled with disgust. The estimated cost of the mission/trip/jaunt/expedition is between $200,000 and $500,000, and a further estimated cost of $150,000 to reserve a seat. It’s difficult to ascertain whether the attendees paid this fee. Either way, it was an exquisite and unnerving show of wealth, wrapped up in a bow of platitudes and presented to a planetful of people facing climate catastrophe, tariff chaos, and social oppression.
Valentina Tereshkova’s three-day stint in space in 1963 was, and still is, hailed as a landmark achievement and an inspiration for women worldwide. Tereshkova, a textile factory worker and amateur skydiver prior to joining the Soviet space program, orbited the Earth 48 times solo. That single trip logged more flight time than had been amassed by all American astronauts who preceded her. Dubbed an international role model following the feat, Tereshkova received masses of letters and telegrams from all corners of the world. Women in particular reacted with acclaim and excitement, as the event sparked a wave of think pieces, academic articles, and news stories celebrating the sense of visibility and symbolic progress it projected around the world. 61 years ago, Tereshkova’s journey achieved what Bezos and company wanted: she reached women of all ages, and she expanded the idea of the spheres in which women can take up space.
Almost all coverage of the Blue Origin mission/trip/jaunt/expedition, from Loose Women to The New York Times, has noted that a billionaire-funded parade of women taking a brief joyride to the edge of space does little to advance real progress or meaningfully shift the needle for women’s equality. The people involved in the event—most of whom would claim to be liberal—have undoubtedly wreaked havoc on the climate already, and now they’ve indulged in another upper-crust experience completely inaccessible to us mere mortals. And absurdly, they expected us to be thrilled by it. I haven’t yet watched the latest season of Black Mirror, but despite its good reviews I wonder if Charlie Booker ought to hang up his hat. His dark reflection of our society keeps being outdone by the grotesque reality. I imagine Saturday Night Live will parody the space-excursion, but at the same time, how much further can they go? It’s already satire.
