What an insult: Eight minutes in a glorified space-Uber makes Katy Perry an astronaut

Calling the celebrity joyriders astronauts is an insult to hardworking women and girls in STEM.

If you Google Katy Perry, media coverage describes her as an astronaut. Picture: Youtube

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If you’re looking for an example of everything that’s wrong with the mainstream narrative right now, and with media more broadly, boy do I have a cracker for you.

A couple of days ago pop starlet Katy Perry (remember her? She kissed a girl and she liked it – big deal) dressed in a figure-hugging navy-blue onesie and, with a full face of makeup, was punted into the stratosphere in a rocket owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Technically speaking, Perry went into space. It was an eight-minute ride, 100km above the surface of the Earth, just a smidge past what’s known as the Karman line which is the recognised point at which outer space begins. Kind of like going a smidge beyond Katoomba and calling it the outback.

Katy Perry kissing the ground upon return to Earth. Picture: AFP / Handout / Blue Origin

However, the strangest thing happened on Perry’s return to Earth (which she kissed on arrival, like the Pope). Mainstream media, Bezos’s company and Perry herself (obviously) decided that this literal flight of fancy had birthed an astronaut. That’s right, Perry is now being referred to as an astronaut. She now refers to herself this way. Actually, if you follow Perry’s social media accounts, she proclaimed herself to be “a astronaut”, but who needs grammar when baby, you’re a firework?

If you Google Perry, media coverage describes her as an astronaut. No disclaimers or qualifiers or any context.

I’d love to claim this line as my own but alas, no. In the words of one social media pundit: If floating around in space for eight minutes in a remotely piloted aircraft makes them astronauts, then friends I am a gynaecologist. Well played, stranger on the internet.

Perry wasn’t alone on this vanity flight; among her fellow passengers was Oprah Winfrey’s best pal Gayle King, who is also now an astronaut. Weirdly, they were all referred to as crew by the company and the sycophantic media that lapped it up.

Crew? More like cargo. According to Perry, they all held hands and sang as they floated above the Earth. The tune? What a Wonderful World. I mean this stuff just writes itself, doesn’t it?

Bezos’s company Blue Origin said in a statement: “Gayle King and her fellow astronauts remind us that the dream of space travel is not just for scientists of billionaires – it’s for everyone.”

Irony just got lined up against a wall and shot at dawn. Yes, Blue Origin is for everyone; everyone who has a lazy half-million US lying around.

At first I kind of hated myself for being fixated on this story. The false narrative about who these women were and the faux prestige with which they were being lavished. But it bothered me that I was so bothered.

Then, as often happens, it dropped during a mundane task (folding the laundry, FYI). It’s not about the cringe, the stupid Hollywood nature of the whole episode. As a publicity stunt, it’s top notch. No, as always, it’s about what lies beneath.

In a world where post-truth and “my truth” fight for supremacy with the actual truth; in a world where for generations women have fought to be recognised for their achievements; in a world where young girls are being raised to see themselves as worthy rather than appendages of a man; in this episode the message is screw the truth, reality is optional.

And dare I say it, in a week where the British Supreme Court finally ruled what every sane human on the planet already knew – that a woman is a biological female – it matters because where do you draw the line if not at the start?

Years of indifference, coddling and laziness has in large part, led us to a place where up is down, black is white, night is day and one of the highest courts in Britain made a ruling on what can never be challenged biologically and scientifically. But people accommodated the “a woman is a social construct” nonsense for reasons I will never understand.

People always say, how did we get here? It’s hidden in plain sight.

Eight minutes in a glorified space-Uber makes you an astronaut? Sure. Microaggression is real? If you say so. A man can give birth to a baby? Rightio then.

People don’t like it when you join the dots so clearly because it lays out the case for personal responsibility for a collective, societal failure. I’m not talking about some kind of culture wars here. This is about progressive societal decay in values, in education, in the level of our thinking.

The other reason this story matters is about the message it sends about women. They dressed this up as pointing women to STEM. What an insult. It takes decades of study and preparation to be considered for a career in space. A minimum masters degree plus 1000 hours of experience as a pilot in command of “high performance” jet aircraft. This message says if you’re pretty enough, wealthy enough, famous enough you can take shortcuts.

And as for empowerment? Please. These women were PR tools, pawns in the commercial objectives of a bazillionaire. All they did was appropriate the prestige, honour and respect that other women spent years earning. This was women undermining other women, plain and simple.

We are so careful with mes­sages via media and broader culture to boys and young men about various things that shape them, as we should be. But so often we ignore this kind of stuff for girls. We lie to young women and say that they can be anything they want.

I cannot be a medical doctor. I am not smart enough. Neither could I be a vet. I would spend all day playing with the dogs. I cannot win Wimbledon no matter how much I may train, and I definitely cannot be a catwalk model. I don’t have the required natural assets. As much as I may wish to live “my truth”, none of this will change.