I’ve got a rocket for these space cadets and their pantomime of feminism

Trump 2.0 is testing us all in unexpected ways. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has discovered what it is to be ghosted – after calling Albanese a “very fine man”, Trump is now refusing to take his calls.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is suffering from allegations that he is too simpatico with the US president, to the extent where he was compelled to tell voters this week, near-pleadingly: “I don’t know the president. I have never met him … I don’t know Donald Trump.”

The all-female occupants of Blue Origin’s flight (clockwise from top left): Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Kerianne Flynn, Lauren Sanchez and Amanda Nguyen.Credit: NYT

Some have been tested by being sent, apparently unlawfully, to a notorious El Salvadorean prison, and others have been publicly humiliated at the White House while on a break from defending their country from aggressive authoritarian rule.

Meanwhile, most women I know would have happily spent the week minding their own business.

Instead, we faced such an affront to our feminist values that we were lured out of whatever pre-Easter news-free bubble we were trying to idle about in. We didn’t want to look but we found we couldn’t look away when, on Wednesday, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin – a space technology company – launched an all-female, B- and C-list celebrity crew of six into space, wearing skintight designer spacesuits and heavy make-up. It was the first fully-lady-mission since Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo space flight in 1963.

Jeff Bezos, Kerianne Flynn, Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Aisha Bowe, Gayle King, Amanda Nguyen, Sarah Knights, director of Blue Origin’s astronaut office, and Blue Origin chief executive Dave Limp.Credit: AP

The team consisted of the billionaire Bezos’ fiancée, the television journalist and children’s book author Lauren Sanchez; pop star Katy Perry; television host and Oprah-bestie Gayle King; former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe; activist, sexual assault survivor and scientist Amanda Nguyen; and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

“I was like, ‘What am I going to wear?’” Perry told Elle of her initial reaction to the invitation. “But seriously, I have wanted to go to space for almost 20 years.”

In terms of publicity for space tourism for the rich and (dubiously) famous, it was a bonanza. But the heavily girlified nature of the rhetoric around the mission (if we can call it that – the trip lasted for 11 minutes), and its explicit branding as an exercise in empowering girls to aspire to careers in space exploration, well, that made it a very dark day for feminism.

The whole exercise was emblazoned with such drippy femininity and lame girlboss-ery that all womankind was implicated. It was a test of the implicit feminist pact to Support Women. I suspect I failed it.

It’s not something that Virginia Woolf or Betty Friedan ever prepared us for – an all-woman space crew which served quotes like: “I think it’s so important for people to see … this dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes. I’m going to be wearing lipstick.”

Despite not having any direct link to the Trump administration, it all felt so very Trumpy – a symbol of the dark end-days of American democracy; the great American project of aspiration and exploration reduced to a commercialised stunt, obscenely wasteful and vulgar beyond words. (Sanchez actually couldn’t find words to describe it – “I can’t put it into words. We got to see the moon!” she said upon return.)

As others wrote this week, the moral emptiness of the mission was underscored by leaked documents showing the Trump administration plans to gut key science programs funded by the federal government.

Under the leaked plans, NASA’s science budget for the fiscal year 2026 would be nearly halved. As Nature reported: “At risk is research that would develop next-generation climate models, track the planet’s changing oceans and explore the Solar System.”

Separately, NASA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion chief Neela Rajendra was sacked, in compliance with Trump’s executive order to “terminate” all people employed under “DEI” programs.

Business Standard reported Rajendra “played a key role in national initiatives like the Space Workforce 2030 pledge, aimed at increasing representation of women and minorities in STEM fields”.

Sure, but did she put the glam into space? The girlstronauts represent a pantomime of feminism found everywhere across Trump-land.

It’s in the robotically doll-like women who sit behind the men of the administration, nodding and smiling as they announce powerful new assaults on the rule of law.

It’s in the milquetoast “Be Best” initiatives of first lady Melania Trump.

It’s in the administration’s persecution of trans people in the name of “women’s rights”, and in its rollback of abortion rights.

A central trope of the pantomime is when the villain creeps up on one of the players. The player remains oblivious to the imminent threat, much to the frustration of the audience, who are compelled to shout: “He’s behind you! Turn around!”

But at least the women are on stage, right? Women can be treated as a special category as long as they uplift and adorn – that seems to be the message the girl crew have absorbed and then promoted. But there is little point in them being on view if they are not looking “glam”.

Such women equate a certain kind of physical presentation with self-respect, and they defend it as their “right”. They fail to realise, or are too rich to care, that the companies which sell them their version of beauty are exploiting them. They do not operate the spaceship. They dress sexy for the spaceship flight.

It is a nihilistic form of pseudo-feminism that insists on women’s right to “take up space” (as the astronaut women chanted when they reached the zero-gravity part of their adventure), but which wrinkles its nose if you look grey, ugly or old while doing so.

It is a way of reducing women to the status of a pretty distraction, while insisting, straight-faced, that at least that means we are being “seen”.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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