-OPINION-
So, Blue Origin launched another one of its space tourism flights and the media lost its mind, as you probably know since, I feel like basically everyone has been talking about this story. Not because it was some groundbreaking scientific achievement (it wasn’t), or because we’re on the brink of colonizing Mars (also no), but because this particular rocket ship was full of “empowered women.” That’s right, Blue Origin sent these female celebrities which included Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez on a quick 11-minute suborbital hop, and the whole thing somehow became a celebration of feminism, diversity, and “making space” for women. This whole situation also brought light some very interesting discourse about this sort of non-academic modernistic version of feminism and its supposed recent rapid decline.
So, let’s just dive into this. First, “We’re making space for women.” That’s the phrase that kept getting tossed around by the passengers and their cheerleaders in the media: “We’re making space for women.” Now, this whole “space trip” was turned into some feminist girl boss movement because this was apparently Blue Origin’s first all female crew, it had been the first all-female crew since 1963 - all that stuff. So, when I first heard that all of this would be happening back when it was announced, I thought, y’know, they have to be training for months, they’ll be up in space for, like, a few days at least. But, no, they were up there for 11 minutes.
And for what? 11 minutes. 11 whole minutes of “space” that barely even qualifies as the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The rocket went up, they floated for, like, a minute, took a few selfies and a few videos, and came right back down. Boom. Done. Is that really history in the making? Or is it just expensive space tourism dressed up like a TED Talk?
Here’s the thing: I’m all for celebrating real accomplishments. SpaceX lands rockets backwards. NASA sent humans to the freaking moon when we barely had colour TVs. Those were achievements. But this? A handful of celebrities and influencers playing astronaut dress-up for 11 minutes? C’mon.
What’s really frustrating is the way they’re trying to turn this into some kind of historic feminist milestone. Perry, King, and Sánchez really made this into a much bigger deal than it was and into some political feminist movement for literally no reason. I cannot stress this enough, but you were “in space” for probably 3 minutes—your trip was 11 minutes long.
Now, all three of these women are basically the culprits into making this little 11 minute excursion into space a bigger deal than it was, but for the most part, the person I saw the majority of backlash against was—Katy Perry. And I agree. She was very over dramatic the entire time. Just take a look at this—this is when they returned to the ground if you haven’t seen this already:
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11 minutes guys. 11 minutes. I keep reiterating that because that’s just—insane. It’s hysterical to see these celebrities gone for 11 minutes, pretending they’re astronauts, when there are actual working astronauts who are up in space for months and they don’t even get on with this foolishness.
Now, part of this, I think was Katy Perry trying to gain back her fame. As we all know, her comeback album flopped big time, and her method to try to thrust herself back into stardom so far has been trying to play the feminism card. I’m sure we’ve all been unfortunate enough to hear Woman’s World. This whole feminist movement of going up to space has been a marketing ploy for her. I mean, she was literally up in space holding the setlist for her new tour.
But, in actuality, I think this is all just turning people against her even more. Why? Because it reeks of desperation. People aren't dumb—they can tell when someone’s being performative. Katy’s not breaking barriers, she’s just slapping a feminist label on everything to stay relevant. Going to space for 11 minutes while holding a tour setlist doesn’t make you a symbol of empowerment—it makes you a walking PR stunt. Fans want authenticity. Katy built her career on fun, upbeat pop music—not activism cosplay. When she suddenly shifts into full-on corporate feminism mode, it feels calculated, not inspired. That disconnect makes people roll their eyes instead of rally behind her. So instead of empowering, it just alienates. And, it ultimately just made this whole Blue Origin celebrity space trip situation even more of a PR nightmare.
So, Katy Perry seemed to have really caused this whole outcry, but here’s where I think Gayle King took centre stage. She seemed to have tried to do some kind of damage control it seems, and her response to the criticism? Misogyny. “You’re just being misogynistic by criticizing me,” basically. Take a look:
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First off, nobody’s calling it “just a ride” because you’re a woman—we’re calling it a ride because... it was literally a ride. An 11-minute up-and-down trip with zero orbit, zero long-term research, and about as much scientific output as a middle school science fair. Calling it a “journey” or a “mission” doesn’t change the fact that you were back in time for brunch. You filmed a few videos for social media, and that was it.
Now, she also brings up Alan Shepard. Yes, you duplicated Alan Shepard’s flight path. The difference is, Alan Shepard was doing it for the first time, as a test pilot, with limited data, etc. Y’all had GoPros, social media managers, and probably a catering team waiting for you. Let’s not pretend this was the same thing.
And that bit about “have you been to space?”—come on. That’s not an argument, that’s a cop-out. Criticism isn’t invalid just because it’s coming from the ground. I don’t have to be a chef to know when the food’s undercooked, and I don’t have to go to space to tell when something smells like a PR stunt.
Now, of course, she wraps it all up in the feel-good feminism bow: “young girls are watching,” “this shows them what’s possible.” But here's the thing—representation is great when it’s paired with actual substance. Watching a bunch of famous millionaires strap in for a few minutes of weightlessness isn’t inspiring—it’s elitist. It doesn’t say, “You can do this too,” it says, “You can do this too... if you have millions of dollars and a publicist.”
Gayle wants to frame any criticism as misogyny, and sorry, but that’s just lazy. This isn’t about gender—it’s about authenticity and making everything men versus women is just harmful because there already seems to be a gender war going on right now. People can smell when something’s forced, when it’s marketed, when it’s trying way too hard to be “meaningful.” This wasn’t some groundbreaking moment for women in STEM—it was a group of celebrities on a glorified space carnival ride. Call it what it is.
Now, here’s where we get into the broader topic in this whole situation. The decline in this sort of pop modern feminism. The answer to the question is, yes, people are waking up to it. Even mainstream media outlets—yes, the ones that typically trip over themselves to applaud this sort of girl boss performative feminism—aren’t covering this story with the same breathless excitement we’ve seen in the past. The tone’s off. The enthusiasm feels forced. Some of them didn’t even bother reporting it. Why? Because there’s a growing awareness, even among the average person flipping through morning news, that this isn’t empowerment—it’s marketing.
This kind of “feminism” isn’t rooted in any sort of intellectual rigor or push for equality. It’s not about opportunity, education, or capability. It’s about image. About optics. It’s feminism that fits neatly into a press release or a social media caption—nothing deeper. And people, especially younger women who don’t see themselves represented in millionaire celebrities flying above the clouds for fun, are over it.
You can see it in the way the online response has been shifting, too. Twitter, TikTok, Reddit—where you’d usually see waves of “Yes, girl boss!” comments—was filled with eye-rolls, memes, and people pointing out how utterly hollow the whole thing felt. There were former fans calling it cringe. There were women, actual working-class women, saying, “This isn’t what empowerment looks like to me.” Because it’s not.
And that’s the turning point right there.
Modern pop feminism—the kind that turns PR stunts into “milestones”—is eating itself. It’s becoming so inflated with self-congratulation that it’s losing any connection to real life. Real feminism used to mean fighting for voting rights, for access to education, for career opportunities. Now, we’ve achieved that stuff and for the most part, started to make up causes to fight for. Now, it’s become branding. It’s a theme you can slap on any product, performance, or promo tour. Launch a perfume? Feminism. Get a bad review? Misogyny. Go to space for 11 minutes with a tour setlist in your hand? Apparently, that’s history.
But here’s the thing: when everything is feminism, nothing is. That’s why even people who would normally align with these celebrities are distancing themselves from this stunt. It’s not controversial. It’s embarrassing. It’s why women who work in actual STEM fields rolled their eyes at this. It’s why actual astronauts didn’t comment. Why the average woman, working her job, balancing life, raising kids, or pursuing a career, whatever—looked at this space story and thought, “This is what they think empowerment is?” We all thought that as a collective.
We’re hitting a saturation point. People are craving substance again. They want values, not virtue signalling. They want action, not aesthetic. And this kind of empty, sparkly “girl boss” branding isn’t fooling anyone anymore—not even the people it’s supposedly meant to inspire.
So if anything good came from this ridiculous rocket ride, it’s this: it exposed just how tired this version of feminism has become. Not because people hate women, not because people are being misogynistic, not because people don’t want progress—but because people do. Real progress. Real meaning. Not millionaires playing astronaut for a day and expecting the world to applaud like they broke the glass ceiling.
It’s time to stop clapping for the bare minimum just because it’s advertised as feminism or another popular cause. We don’t need more stunts. We need real standards.
This feminist flight is the perfect symbol of our modern culture: it’s loud, flashy, self-congratulatory, and ultimately meaningless. It pretends to be about empowerment while being 100% about marketing and virtue signalling. And the people watching from the ground? We’re not buying it. Not everything needs to have a cause behind it.
We’re not against women in space. We’re not anti-progress. We’re just tired of empty gestures wrapped in identity politics. The average person is exhausted by the performative nonsense. We don’t need space tourism to become the next battleground for woke virtue signalling. Just send real astronauts to space, and let that be enough.
Because in the end, it wasn’t about exploration. It wasn’t even about women. It was about attention—and they got it.