The All-Female Blue Origin Space Flight Was Peak Girlboss Nonsense

The flight lasted less than 11 minutes. At 8:30 am CDT, the Blue Origin NS-31 spaceflight was launched with an all-female crew and lasted for less time than the full cut of ‘I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ by Meatloaf. Blue Origin Enterprises L.P., the pet project of Jeff Bezos, has garnered a lot of headlines and vanity coverage for these minuscule-crewed flights, frequently featuring celebrities like William Shatner, Michael Strahan, and Bezos himself. This latest endeavour, a punch through the glass ceiling with a d*ck-shaped vehicle, included among its crew Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, journalist Gayle King, and singer Katy Perry. They wore jumpsuits designed by the fashion brand Monse, who wanted them to be ‘flattering and sexy.’ Perry declared, ‘We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.’

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There was a lot of effort to spin this ‘mission’ as both important and feminist. A glossy cover story from Elle treated the project with the awe and PR-mandated spin of an Amazon union-busting initiative. Sanchez ‘says she chose each of the women because of their proven ability to inspire others.’ The lack of women in STEM is certainly an issue of merit for any feminist cause, although trying to blend that with commercial space tourism is questionable.

After the flight, the women took questions and kept up the company line. ‘I feel that anybody who is criticising doesn’t really understand what’s happening here,’ said King, although what actually was happening remained an ephemeral concept. Perry says the crew were not taking up space but ‘making space.’ Added Sánchez, wife-to-be to one of the richest men alive, ‘Protect this planet we’re on; this is the only one we’ve got.’ One questions the compatibility of environmentalism with an aggressive push for space tourism.

On NBC’s Today, Olivia Munn nailed it when she described the entire mess as ‘gluttonous.’ The Blue Origin mission never felt like anything other than an obscene waste: of time, of money, and of Earth’s diminishing resources. This was not a mission to gather important data or develop research for the betterment of mankind. It wasn’t an opportunity to showcase the work of underrepresented women in a field where their accomplishments are frequently dismissed or hijacked. It was the 2025 version of eating condor eggs, of queuing to get to the top of Mount Everest and sidestepping the corpses littering the path. It was a rich person holiday for those too scared to go into submarines and visit the Titanic after that explosion. It was a d*ck measuring contest by a group of women who own Live Laugh Love t-shirts.

For what it’s worth, it feels like the general public, those who even noticed the launch was happening, felt the same way. The entire project was drenched in the aura of cynicism from the get-go. There’s only so much you can suck up to Jeff Bezos before us plebs call BS. I wouldn’t say society has gotten any better at dissecting the nuances of feminism, not in the second Trump age where reproductive justice has been so thoroughly desecrated. But the general public did seem savvy to the spin of this mission and how it rang incredibly hollow to see such self-serving silliness given the label of feminist advancement. Women’s firsts can be powerful things, but we also know the difference between something for them and something for all of us. Sally Ride, these women were not. This was like watching a weapons manufacturer celebrate Pride with rainbow merch.

It’s disheartening how much the exploration and appreciation of outer space has been appropriated by the ultra-wealthy and morphed into a for-profit lark. Both Bezos and Elon Musk talk of the importance of getting humanity into space and of spending untold billions on mini-jaunts and exploding rockets while actively making the planet worse through their various business and political ventures. The magic of human wonder and ambition is incompatible with the follies of billionaires. It’s so startlingly incurious to look at the vast reaches of the universe and think of it exclusively as a way to make money and entertain the 1%. Not that any of this is necessarily new, alas. Find something worthwhile and Bezos’ ilk will find a way to colonize it, whether it’s music, art, or basic labour rights.

Honestly, I expected to have way more to say about all of this nonsense. I’m the woman who can write a thousand words on a celebrity starting their own sponge company. This is my field of interest. And yet, this girlboss vanity project, this inflated version of a spoiled kid and their toys, just made me do a big ol’ shrug. This is all we can do? All those resources and abilities and it’s for this? It wasn’t even unintentionally hilarious (although ‘put the ‘ass’ in astronaut’ did inflict a minor crack on my psyche). I suppose it has one helpful function: to remind us that, no matter how bad things get on this planet, those with the ability to do something about it will always choose not to do it because they’re too busy playing with their d*cks.