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From memes to headlines, Blue Origin’s recent 11-minute, all-female trip to space has garnered plenty of media attention — especially Katy Perry’s presence. There were some positive comments about the trip, but it was also met with backlash. One of the crew members, Gayle King, made a weak attempt to defend the trip.

“What it’s doing to inspire other women and young girls — please don’t ignore that,” King said on CBS Mornings.

But the trip wasn’t a win for women or feminism. Creating “inspirational” content is not doing enough.

Some people have even described the trip as “tone deaf” and “embarrassing.”

You may have also seen the cringeworthy moments from the trip, like Perry’s blank stare while holding a daisy or her kissing the ground upon landing back on earth.

Like me, you may be wondering how the pop singer ended up among the stars in the first place.

Blue Origin is a space tourism company owned by Jeff Bezos that’s been launching the rich and famous into space since 2021. Bezos didn’t plan this all-female trip, but his fiancée Lauren Sánchez.

Sánchez told Elle Magazine her decision to include herself, Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen and Kerianne Flynn was meant to inspire young women to join STEM careers.

While I’m all for representation, this feels more performative. This critique doesn’t apply to all the crew members, but it certainly fits for Perry and Sánchez. Out of everyone sharing their thoughts online, the fast food chain Wendy’s X post may have said it best: “When we said women in stem this isn’t what we meant.”

The cost of the trip alone demonstrates a severe disparity between the participants and their audience. While the cost of a ticket on these trips is a mystery, Blue Origin’s reservation page states a traveler needs at least $150,000 for a “fully refundable deposit.” This is an obvious barrier to entry — not everyone has money like that lying around.

The trip’s so-called representation may include women from many different racial backgrounds, but this doesn’t account for wealth disparities. To young girls living with less socioeconomic resources, concerns of where their next meal is coming from overshadow dreams of becoming a pop star or astronaut. Perry’s trip didn’t provide them with something to work toward — only deeper insecurity for the things they can’t control.

There’s an environmental cost as well. Blue Origin claims to be a more sustainable option because its rockets’ fuel byproduct is only water vapor, but this is still a greenhouse gas pollutant that will impact our climate greatly.

Perry can’t be praised for the daisy she brought to signify “our beautiful earth” when her actions directly harmed it. The negative effect on our atmosphere doesn’t seem worth it for a trip shorter than my walk to class.

Joe Zhao | Design Editor

In all of these attempts at symbolic activism, Perry finds herself at the root of publicized irony.

Even the choice of dress distracted from Perry and Sánchez’s claimed intentions.

The crew sported full glam makeup and blowouts, along with designer space suits created by Sánchez in partnership with Monse.

I don’t have a problem with reimagining space suits to correctly fit a woman’s body in contrast to the normal design made for men. But it’s quite odd that Sánchez wanted the outfits to be “sexy,” and that Perry said they were going to put the “‘ass’ in astronaut.” We shouldn’t be teaching young girls they have to be sexy to go to space.

Performative feminism attempts to champion women’s rights and gender equality while doing nothing of value to further this goal. It seems to me that Perry and Sánchez are guilty of performing.

If the intention truly was a feminist effort to push young girls toward a future in STEM, Sánchez should’ve ditched the space photo op. She could’ve donated to an organization that supports women in STEM, like Black Girls Code or the Society of Women Engineers.

With Sánchez’s net worth at $30 million and Perry’s at $350 million, I’m sure an additional donation wouldn’t have broken the bank. And if they still had their hearts set on space, they could’ve conducted research like their crew member, Amanda Nguyen.

The activist was on a path to space while studying astrophysics at Harvard and interning at NASA. Her studies were cut short after she was raped, and she forged a new path to fix our broken justice system for survivors. After helping create major reform, Nguyen continued her training and was asked to join the all-female crew.

Nguyen took advantage of this opportunity and conducted two microgravity experiments, one testing how much liquid bamboo-based pads could absorb. Her research is what should be shown to young girls — helping us learn new things instead of singing in space. It’s an enriching theme the media should’ve paid more attention to.

We need to make sure that we’re calling out performative feminism, and this trip is the perfect opportunity to do so. Our society has a bad habit of focusing on or “memeing” celebrities who slather fake activism onto their actions. Instead, we should look to role models who are making efforts to create real, systematic change and exemplify such behavior in ourselves.

Bella Tabak is a junior majoring in magazine journalism. She can be reached at batabak@syr.edu.

Published on April 21, 2025 at 9:08 pm