By Afroditi A. Karagianni,
“I went to the hospital once, am I now a surgeon?”: Here is the first thought. With all the fuss being made, I suspect you have probably heard of the Blue Origin Space Mission, which recently took place somewhere near Texas. More specifically, on April 14, 2025, Katy Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez (the pilot), Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen and Kerianne Flynn were all passengers aboard Blue Origin NS-31—a suborbital spaceflight mission operated by Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos. The mission lasted 10 minutes and 21 seconds and was executed using a reusable Blue Origin rocket. Despite the heavy advertising, the flight received mainly negative backlash from the general public—which, to me, is entirely justified.
To give you a little insight, the flight was marketed as a radical feminist act, thanks to its all-female crew—the first since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963—and its motto, “Take up space”, referring to women’s need to advocate for themselves and stand tall. In space, what basically happened was that the crew floated around, listened to Katy Perry sing Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World a cappella, admired the moon and the spectacular space view, and returned to Earth to share their moment of ”enlightenment”. For instance, Katy Perry stated that the trip gave her a “strong sense of connection between people” and a profound “feeling of love”.
To begin, I can’t help but think this trip cost a ridiculously high sum of money, yet ultimately yielded no significant data or contribution to our understanding of space. To me, space exploration must aim to expand human knowledge and help us understand the universe and our place in it. This trip not only failed to offer any worthwhile insight—since, unlike traditional astronaut-led missions, the NS-31 crew didn’t perform any experiments—but also required an outrageous amount of money to take place.
Although its cost was not officially made known to the public, people estimate it to have been more than 10 million dollars. In truth, a sum of the like could have been utilized here on earth more wisely, to perhaps aid nonprofit organizations or voluntary groups with vital causes, like improving healthcare systems, minimizing world hunger and improving people’s living conditions. At the same time, space should not be available for casual visits, since each space trip has a destructive environmental impact. Without a shadow of a doubt, the decision of this launch coming to life was taken super light-heartedly, a reality that is deeply saddening, considering the earth’s critical condition. In addition, with our planet slowly dying, careless space-tourism trips are (beside from unsustainable), disrespectful to the rest of the human population, and especially those that care about their environmental impact and struggle to reduce it on a daily basis.
Furthermore, I find that using the word astronaut to describe multimillionaires like Katy Perry or Lauren Sánchez people that have no actual connection to the field, is utterly insulting to real world astronauts. The latter typically spend many years in training, conquer knowledge governing complex mathematical and physics-related concepts, are highly skilled professionals and dedicate their lives to helping mankind expand its knowledge and understanding of space. In what world can a person this capable compare professionally to a wealthy person who bought their way up an eleven-minute space promenade?
Truth be told, some women among the flight crew have achieved highly impressive things and are related to the field (such as Aisha Bow, a former NASA rocket scientist, entrepreneur and a prominent advocate for STEM education and diversity -among other things-, or Amanda Nguyen, who interned at NASA in both 2011 and 2013, where she conducted research on exoplanets at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a civil rights activist, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and the founder of Rise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for survivors of sexual violence), but that is certainly not the case for all of them. As I see it, the women involved who actually worked hard to take part in such a mission deserved to be amongst a better flight crew and ultimately, their participation in this mission does not do them any justice whatsoever.
Finally, I find the fact that this trip was marketed as a huge feminist act immensely disturbing. Personally, I feel that it had more to do with status, privilege and connections rather than feminism. At its core, this was an unremarkable, entertainment-oriented trip in which some celebrities bought their way into and utilized to achieve their personal brand’s expansion (for example, Katy Perry revealed the setlist for her upcoming “Lifetimes Tour” from up there). As I see it, calling this space trip a female empowering and inspiring mission, or a “milestone for gender representation in space” (like Bezos’s company described it) is nothing more than a marketing scheme and a highly unsatisfying excuse for its creation.
Basically, by utilizing feminism and gender inclusivity, some billionaires aspired to excuse their careless decision to take part in a space joyride (which is a prime example of feminism-washing). How does the sight of wealthy women holding hands and repeating “take up space” benefit the array of everyday women who suffer from society’s deeply rooted patriarchal beliefs and practices? Did this trip really empower us or made our lives better? Ultimately, its whole feminist spin feels very performative and inappropriate, made people feel even less connected to each other and even more aware of the existent class divide (to disagree with Perry’s previously mentioned claims regarding love, unity etc.).
Honestly, if I were to choose empowering role models that aided the progression of the feminist movement and positively impacted society through their contributions, people like Perry, King or Sanchez would definitely not spring to mind. As far as astronauts are concerned, women- pioneers in their field like Valentina Tereshkova, Peggy Whitson and Mae Jemison heavily influenced the way the industry views female scientists, inspired other women to follow their footsteps, made amazing scientific contributions and achieved remarkable, extraordinary things overall. Furthermore, female scientists like Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Katherine Johnson all made groundbreaking discoveries, that have dynamically shifted humanity’s views on our world, improved people’s living conditions and ultimately pose as figures that continue to inspire millions of women worldwide. And as for the feminist movement, women such as Simone de Beauvoir and Malala Yousafzai have profoundly changed society with both their ideas and actions, have managed to create -actual- space for women’s voices to be heard globally and constitute powerful, influential women that we can all look up to.
In a world full of pressing problems, it is high time we called out elitist, recreational practices that cause irreversible harm while masquerading as acts of activism or inspiration. When it comes to feminism and empowerment, I believe women know how to recognize those who genuinely deserve their admiration—and that true change stems for powerful actions and societal shifts, rather than empty, unconvincing displays. Ultimately, it’s the everyday, down-to-earth women who are best positioned to improve our world and fight for gender equality on their own terms—and that, to me, is both promising and inspiring.
