Feminism Without Substance: The All-Female Spaceflight That Wasn’t
When Katy Perry descended from Blue Origin’s rocket after her eleven-minute venture to space, she was understandably exuberant. “You never know how loved you are, until the day you launch” she told the assembled press. Her comment was likely meant to express gratitude and wonder. But to many observers, it sounded less like the awe of a pioneer and more like the post-holiday musings of a returning gap year student. In that moment, the enormity of what spaceflight once represented seemed to collapse into a soundbite.
It was not just Perry’s comment that drew criticism. The entire launch, heralded by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin as the first all-female space crew since 1963, was engulfed by backlash almost as soon as the rocket touched down. Critics pointed out that it was a well-orchestrated marketing blitz masquerading as feminist progress. As Liz Carolan wrote for the Irish Times, “The Blue Origin flight this week was spectacle disguised as progress, inclusion and ambition slimmed down and squeezed into a sexy space suit.”
Photograph: Blue Origin Handout
The all-female crew included six high-profile women from media, politics, and entrepreneurship. But the most prominent name was Perry, whose celebrity status ensured the flight’s cultural saturation. It might have been billed as a celebration of women in space, yet the result was a brief performance that eclipsed the stories of countless women whose contributions to space science have shaped our understanding of the universe. In the effort to make a splash, the mission reduced decades of progress to optics.
The promotional material surrounding the launch was drenched in the language of empowerment. Yet as Carolan noted, “the flight… was billed as the first all-female crew to travel to space since 1963,” but the effort leaned heavily on superficial gestures. The space suits were redesigned by Monse, a fashion house linked to Oscar de la Renta, and profiled in The New York Times Style section. One of the designers explained the challenge was dealing with “no precedent” for female suits, because “all the references are men’s spacesuits.” While this insight reflects genuine concerns raised by campaigners like Caroline Criado-Perez regarding male-centred design in safety gear and tools, the follow-through was revealing. The same designer said the suits were designed to be “flattering and sexy” and to make the women look “very slim.” Pockets were excluded because they appeared “too bulky.”
This absurd attention to aesthetics over function perfectly encapsulates the disconnect between real inclusion and its marketed imitation. Rather than breaking barriers, the flight seemed intent on reinforcing them. Perry herself, in a moment of levity that backfired, quipped that she was putting the “ass” in astronaut. It was a comment that drew widespread ridicule, not because humour has no place in science, but because the joke stood in for substance.
Such optics are not new. In fact, the mission’s defenders pointed to the 1963 flight of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, as precedent. But even this comparison reveals the persistent problem. Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times over three days, alone. Her selection was politically motivated and heavily symbolic. She was described at the time as “Gagarin in a skirt” – a phrase as patronising then as it is now. As Carolan puts it, her mission “was less about scientific advancement and more about cold war optics.” Sixty years on, one has to ask how much has really changed.
In truth, the Perry flight does little to advance women’s roles in space exploration. It is a distraction from the very real threats to public space science. “Just as surface-level feminist speak is not a replacement for addressing entrenched gender inequality,” Carolan writes, “privatised space travel is not a replacement for the kind of space science that public institutions like Nasa and the European Space Agency do.”
This is especially relevant given the recent defunding of public science institutions. NASA’s former chief scientist Dr Katherine Calvin, who focused on climate science and sustainability, was removed by the Trump administration. “She will not be replaced,” Carolan explains. “The entire office of chief scientist has been eliminated, and it is likely to lose at least half of its science budget, while government contracts to private space travel companies increase.” This is the true crisis in space science – not that celebrities are going to space, but that scientists are being quietly pushed out of it.
Commercial space tourism, for all its technological achievements, is not space science. As Carolan wryly puts it, “Space tourism is to space science what snorkelling is to deep sea marine biology.” The former is a thrill; the latter is the pursuit of knowledge that benefits all of humanity. And yet it is the thrill that grabs headlines.
The danger is not just that we are distracted. It is that we forget. Public memory is shaped by visibility. If Perry’s eleven-minute flight is remembered as a watershed for women in space, then the contributions of pioneers like Sally Ride, Peggy Whitson, and Christina Koch risk being sidelined. Whitson spent 665 days in space, the most of any American astronaut. Koch took part in the first all-female spacewalk and is now set to orbit the Moon as part of Artemis II. But none of these milestones came with designer suits and coordinated Instagram posts. They came with sacrifice, study, and an unrelenting commitment to science.
To be clear, the problem is not Perry herself. She has every right to explore space if the opportunity presents itself. The issue lies in the cultural machinery that elevates her brief joyride above the work of women who have devoted their lives to understanding our planet and the universe. It reflects a broader trend where celebrity spectacle eclipses meaningful achievement. In a world grappling with climate catastrophe, deepening inequality, and a global cost-of-living crisis, it is hard to justify pouring millions into a branded spectacle when so much real science, and real need, goes underfunded and unseen.
If we genuinely care about representation in space, then we must look beyond optics. Real progress means funding public science, valuing expertise, and telling the stories of women who are already changing the world. It means making sure future generations grow up knowing names like Nicole Mann and Jessica Meir – not just Katy Perry.
Spaceflight should be a symbol of our highest ambitions, not a platform for brand extension. In a time of climate emergency and scientific uncertainty, we cannot afford to confuse tourism with discovery. The question is not whether women belong in space – they do, and they always have. The question is whether we are willing to celebrate them for their minds, rather than their marketability.
