Well, I watched every second of the buildup, flight and aftermath of the first Blue Origin all-female space trip. You’ve heard of one small step for man? This was one giant leap backwards for womankind. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! What could be more empowering or something than watching Lauren Sánchez make going to space sound like brunch with the girrrrrls. Sally Ride could never.
Anyway, if you missed this, Jeff Bezos’s fiancee took an 11-minute trip to the edge of space on one of his Blue Origin craft on Monday, alongside some all-female passengers – sorry, “crew” – who included CBS anchor Gayle King and pop star Katy Perry. So yes: the Woman’s World video is no longer the most plastic feminist thing Katy’s done.
Given the mixture of freebie rides and seats sold to the super-rich, the thing people always say about Blue Origin tickets is that prices range from zero to $28m dollars. A bit like a seat on a RyanAir flight to Tallinn. But these spots were all personally gifted by Bezos and Sánchez because this was an Important Mission. Which also meant the whole thing was exclusively documented by Blue Origin’s Pravda-like web channel. Here, the anchors and reporters kept explaining that – unlike when men went to space in the past – this mission was all about emotions. But look, it’s great that we’re valorising emotions above all things, because it gives me permission to say how very much I hated this entire, hilariously vacuous spectacle.
Lauren already bills herself as a children’s author, helicopter pilot, journalist and philanthropist, and kept being told she was adding “astronaut” to the world’s longest multi-hyphenate. How did she find the trip? “I don’t really have the words for this, like … ?” OK but can you at least try? “I can’t put it into words but I looked out the window and we got to see the moon.”
Back at the viewing platform in the West Texas desert, commentary was provided by, among others, Kris Jenner and a bottom-tier Kardashian (Khloé). Khloé glossed the moment of landing with the words: “it’s literally so hard to explain right now”. Other insights? “There’s one woman whose grandfather is back there and he is 92 and they didn’t even have transportation back then.” I mean, the guy was literally pre-horse. Historic scenes.
Amid extremely stiff competition, the most hardcore gibberish emanated from Perry, who served up an entire word salad bar involving the “feminine divine” and being “super-connected to love”. “It’s about making space for future woman,” she explained. “It’s about taking up space.” Imagine going to actual space and talking instead about therapy-speak “space”. When Buzz Aldrin beheld the surface of the moon, he described it as “magnificent desolation”. Honestly, if he wanted to feel desolation he could have just tuned into this corner of West Texas on Monday afternoon. When a Stem advocate came for her post-flight interview, we got to see the apparently lobotomised reporter shriek: “How do you look perfect after just going to space?!”
In truth, how the women looked had been an overwhelming part of the buildup, and by their own design. In an Elle magazine joint interview with the passengers, Lauren showed off the hot space suits she’d personally commissioned, inquiring rhetorically: “Who would not get glam before the flight?” “Space is going to finally be glam,” agreed Perry. “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.” A former Nasa rocket scientist said: “I also wanted to test out my hair and make sure that it was OK. So I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good – took it for a dry run.” Still want more? Because there was SO much of it. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!” explained Lauren. “I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” explained a civil rights activist. “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”
Ooof. I always thought space travel was futuristic, but this was the first time it came off as travelling back in time, in this case using their little capsule to take us back to the most ludicrous inanities of 2010s girlboss feminism.
Ultimately, it felt like a sign of the times that everything was about personal growth rather than affording any new understanding of wider humanity. As King put it: “I’m so proud of me right now.” Everyone, bar none, talked in whatever trite solipsism language has been reduced to by a permanent diet of social media self-care. It all made me realise how much I miss humans not permanently crying on TV, and being able to find words that don’t sound like they could be printed above a picture of a crossroads sign on Instagram, or maybe some sandy footprints on a beach.
Having oh-my-godded her way through some pure gibberish, Lauren eventually announced that she’d learned: “We’re all in this together. We’re so connected.” Agreed. In which spirit, please please please could Amazon pay full and fair tax in all the territories in which it, one of the world’s biggest companies, operates? Such an act of connection truly would be your and Jeff’s gift to our planet that you apparently just got some kind of a perspective on while Katy Perry was floating around during the zero-gravity bit pushing towards the camera a butterfly printed with her next tour dates. Why do I feel like the most meaningful thing to come out of this will be a three-minute song called Space Cowgirl? Forget the right stuff. This was the wrong stuff.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
