Tasteless, pointless, incredibly lame. Many things have already been said about pop singer Katy Perry’s brief trip to space – but I would add that this latest venture is completely on-brand. Perry’s career has been dwindling for years, and her publicity stunts have grown increasingly bizarre: in 2017, she recorded a 72-hour livestream, which nobody watched, to promote her fifth album Witness, which nobody listened to.
The suborbital flight Blue Orbital, funded by Jeff Bezos, lasted around 11 minutes and featured an all-female crew. It garnered mass criticism, mostly for its inauthenticity, but it made Perry “super connected to love”, apparently. More importantly, it connected her to more media attention than she’s seen in years.
It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for her. Unlike her early-2010s pop peers (Gaga, Cyrus, Swift), Perry hasn’t enjoyed the same cultural longevity. It becomes difficult, however, to sympathise with her fading relevance when each new popularity ploy is accompanied by such enthusiastic cognitive dissonance. This latest move follows her 2024 single “Woman’s World,” a comically uninspiring attempt at a feminist anthem, the negative reception to which was compounded by her collaboration with producer Dr Luke, who has faced allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and battery from fellow pop singer Kesha.
It all paints a picture of a feminist ideology that is based more in the marketing than the movement: this intergalactic misfire of a career move is only the latest symptom. Perry’s journey is perhaps a small step of progress in her self-actualisation, but it’s one giant leap backwards for womankind.
Of course, feminism is – and must be – complex. Womanhood contains contradictions, tensions, and personal freedoms that look different for each of us. Luckily for us, this was mandated by Perry in “Woman’s World,” where she described the great nuances of the female experience, informing us that we can be “sexy, confident” and “intelligent…” “soft” and also “strong.” What a relief!
The photos that emerged from the expedition felt like those scenes in big-budget action franchises – think Avengers Endgame – where the female members of our heroic ensemble fight the bad guys together, accompanied by generic pop about female empowerment. The entire scene and its soundtrack are a wincing display of corporate-ordered girl power, but not quite enough to distract from the two-dimensional writing of these characters, their inexplicably sexualised costumes, or the fact that none of them have received a dedicated movie.
Much of the criticism of this mission has rightly focused on optics, but let’s not ignore the environmental cost either.
Publicity stunts like these are designed to appear revolutionary while ignoring the realities of women’s struggles. How on earth can Perry say, without a hint of irony, that this trip is meant to show how space travel is possible for all women across the globe, when seated next to the wife of one of the richest men on the planet? And which woman is sitting on solid ground, grouching that her only barrier to breaching the atmosphere is that she hasn’t seen a pop star do it first? Most of us are just trying to get by. We’re worried about the economy, yes – but also our bodies, our autonomy, our futures. It also feels particularly jarring, as Trump’s administration is currently working to remove the achievements of women in NASA from the records. These must not be erased, or replaced by reports of tacky trips orchestrated by billionaires in Trump’s back pocket.
I am conscious, however, that while the women aboard the flight are not blameless, there’s a broader issue here. Women in the public eye tend to bear the brunt of backlash for symbolic failures, even when the real culprits are billionaires, policymakers, and patriarchs pulling the strings. It’s an achievement in itself that women now occupy roles in STEM that were once inaccessible, and this mission did include former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, whose presence deserves recognition. But placing her alongside celebrities only highlights the contradictions at play – if this mission was meant to herald a feminist future of space travel, then who gets a chance to participate in it?
Much of the criticism of this mission has rightly focused on optics, but let’s not ignore the environmental cost either. Space tourism, especially suborbital flights like this one, produces an immense carbon footprint for a trip that lasts less than eleven minutes. Emily Ratajkowski was among many celebrities to criticise the flight, saying: “You say that you care about Mother Earth, and it’s about Mother Earth, and you’re going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that’s single-handedly destroying the planet.”
Jeff Bezos is the latest in a line of ultra-rich men determined to prove that the sky is not the limit. While critics have warned that Trump’s America is veering toward oligarchy, Bezos and Zuckerberg build rockets and metaverses instead of funding food banks. Each of Musk’s SpaceX rockets costs enough to fund countless humanitarian programmes globally. For these tech-boy billionaires, their legacies are not measured in virtue, but altitude.
I’m sure many of us dream of escape. For myself, the chance to witness the planet from above might restore my faith in humanity (though this might have been somewhat undermined by hearing Perry serenading the Pale Blue Dot with a rendition of ‘It’s A Wonderful World’). Yet, despite the glossy packaging, a voyage like this is simply unachievable to almost anyone. The flight was about showcasing wealth more than it was about expanding opportunity – just another grotesque display of privileged ignorance that we’re grown disturbingly accustomed to. If they have no bread, let them eat cake… and if they have no housing, or clean air, let them go to space!
If feminism means anything at all, it must be rooted in urgency and reality. It must concern itself with the women who don’t have access to healthcare, let alone a spaceship, and fight for the world we live in, not the fantasy of another one. If Katy Perry or Jeff Bezos truly cared about improving the plight of women, they’d stop trying to launch us into the stars and start investing in the planet we’re already standing on.
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