The Blue Origin flight showcased the utter defeat of American feminism | Moira Donegan
www.theguardian.com
The trip leaned on a vision of women’s empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness

There are some spectacles of US decadence and decline that almost seem too on the nose – the sort of orgies of vulgar provocation or fantastic lack of self-awareness that exceed the limits of parody, so that if they were in a novel, you’d think the writer was laying it on a little thick. Among these is the all-female flight by Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company, which on Monday launched a phallically shaped pod full of women – including the pop star Katy Perry and Bezos’s partner, Lauren Sánchez – on a brief trip into space.

The flight, which was promoted for months in advance, was touted as a triumph of feminism, a win for science and an embrace of the kind of expansive, curious human spirit of striving and possibility that once animated both. Instead, the flight served as a kind of perverse funeral for the America that once enabled both scientific advancement and feminist progress – a spectacle that mocked these aspirations by appropriating them for such an indulgent and morally hollow purpose.

  • Optional
    19•4 days ago

    In an interview with Elle, the crew members paid lip service to the importance of women, and particularly women of color, in Stem. (The Trump administration has forced Nasa to close some offices in order to comply with its ban on the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that would recruit such candidates.) But mostly, they seemed interested in talking about their makeup and hair. “Space is going to finally be glam,” Katy Perry said, bizarrely. “Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”

    “Who would not get glam before the flight?!” asked Sánchez, who evidently can’t imagine that women might prioritize anything else. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule.” Bowe, too, joined in, saying that she had gone to extreme lengths to make sure that she would be, of all things, well coiffed for the experience. “I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good,” she said. “I took it for a dry run.”

    Finally bringing glam to space. Oof.