The space farce

Save most of your scorn for Jeff Bezos, not Katy Perry.

An audio version of this article (by me) is available here:

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos rocketed six women into space this week for just under 11 minutes in a spaceship that looked like a penis and their hair and makeup remained perfectly intact. Hurray! (And yes, I have structured that sentence with Bezos as the subject on purpose.) It was the first time that a spaceship has left Earth’s atmosphere without a man onboard since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during her successful 1963 solo(!) mission.

The all-female crew of this launch consisted of pilot and Emmy Award-winning journalist Lauren Sánchez; pop star Katy Perry; journalist and CBS co-host Gayle King; former NASA aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe; civil rights activist, Nobel Peace Prize-nominee and bioastronautics scientist Amanda Nguyen; and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

This could have been a big deal. The crew has cultural, professional and scientific clout. It could have offered the opportunity for reflections on women’s historic, present and future role in space exploration; on the ethics of space travel and tourism in a climate-threatened world; on the obscene price tag of space exploration during a cost of living crisis; and on humankind’s place in the universe. The crew could have mused on why space science matters when things here on Earth feel utterly fucked.

Instead, Perry said: “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”

What a Wonderful World

I wasn’t going to write about this as I’m tired of women being gleefully torn apart online. For me, the main issue here is clearly Bezos, not Perry, yet she seems to be bearing the brunt of the world’s scorn… and I can kind of understand why.

She admitted to singing What a Wonderful World in orbit without irony. Considering I die a little inside whenever someone suggests a sing-along or, heaven forbid, pulls out a guitar uninvited, being trapped inside a rocket with Perry crooning would make me instinctively smack the ejector pod button, come what may.

She also said, “It’s about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging. This is all for the benefit of Earth”, which is utterly meaningless, untrue and nonsensical.

How does space tourism for the mega-rich benefit Earth? How is this trip helping to ‘make space’ for women when only last month anti-DEI initiatives instigated by Bezos’s pal Trump, saw NASA scrub from its website its goal of putting the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon? How does this flight counteract NASA having to delete online comic books about the first woman on the Moon? How does it reassure staff told to delete mentions of women and indigenous people in leadership positions from the agency’s website?

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If you enjoy my work and would like to leave me a tip, I’d hugely appreciate it. I need to buy some of the fake eyelashes the women discussed using on the spaceship.

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The role of women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ communities within space exploration is being systematically erased from history by the same government that (anti-abortionist) Bezos helped into power. A rich man paid for this diverse group of women to go into space while simultaneously undermining their role in the field’s future. They didn’t launch on a rocket built by a woman, nor use the platform to address inequality in STEM or the undermining of hard-won gains. Instead, they dressed in tight-fitting blue spacesuits and discussed feeling ‘glam’.

Perry has received the most ire because she embodies a consumerist femininity that aligns perfectly with the patriarchal capitalism Bezos peddles. (She even advertised her upcoming tour while in the shuttle capsule.) If Perry hadn’t gone another woman with similar obliviousness and marketability would have replaced her – because Bezos is no fool.

This was a performative publicity stunt that sought to deflect attention from myriad complaints about misogynistic, prejudicial and ‘toxic’ practices in Bezos’s companies, including within Blue Origin itself. It not only trivialised genuine moves towards gender parity within the industry, but made a mockery of the serious work of female space scientists and experts.

Bezos is the real villain. Let’s concentrate our energy there rather than on a pop star who is just fannying about. Perry is a distraction from the real issues: that space tourism is being promoted as aspirational; that this was dressed up as feminist progress at the same time as leaning heavily on the appearance of the women, so equating attractiveness with achievement; that it was paid for by a man who has helped get anti-DEI Trump into power – a man whose companies have been accused of harming women; that it was brazenly cynical and hypocritical considering what’s happening to women within the wider world right now. (Do they think we can’t see through it or do they think we just don’t care?)

And, most of all, it proves that – seemingly now more than at any other moment in recent history – those with the loudest voices are those most removed from reality.

Just One More Thing

As mentioned, the sentence at the start – in which Bezos is the subject – was intentional. I could’ve written: “All-female crew blasts into space.” All too often, women are defined by their relationships to men. (Amal Clooney is still constantly described as George Clooney’s wife, even in articles about her groundbreaking human rights work.) Yet, this wasn’t a story about pioneering women. This was Bezos showing off his wealth, power and hubris. That’s why he is the subject here – of the sentence and of my scorn.

*Sorry for the lack of newsletter last week. I was on holiday! Normal service has resumed.

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*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into dozens of languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.