Somewhere over West Texas, a rocket screamed skyward carrying six women into the edge of space. The headlines wrote themselves. Historic. Empowering. Feminist triumph.
Katy Perry, pop star and cultural mascot of millennial girlhood, brought a daisy onboard for her daughter. They shouted “Take up space!” mid-flight, and Gayle King kissed the desert floor after touchdown. Oprah cried. Jeff Bezos clapped.
And for a moment, you could almost believe it meant something.
But then you look again.
This wasn’t Sally Ride or Kalpana Chawla strapped into a shuttle for science and nation. This was a 10-minute suborbital hop aboard a billionaire’s toy, dressed up as a revolution.
A press kit with g-forces. It was glossy and loud, carefully orchestrated to make us feel like we were watching history when really, we were watching PR.
If you want to talk feminism in space, let’s talk Amanda Nguyen. Civil rights activist, bioastronautics researcher, sexual assault survivor, and now the first Vietnamese-American woman in space. Or Aisha Bowe, former NASA engineer and the first Bahamian in space. They’ve earned their place in this conversation. They’ve broken barriers without needing to pose for Vogue at the launchpad.
But when the face of your “historic all-women spaceflight” is a pop star in a custom flight suit, carrying a flower and some vague talk of “feminine energy,” you start to wonder what’s actually being celebrated.
This isn’t empowerment. It’s branding.
And there’s the problem. When we start treating space tourism as feminist achievement, we insult the women who’ve fought tooth and nail for inclusion in fields that actively pushed them out. The women who passed through the brutal filters of NASA, ISRO, and ESA. The women who didn’t have a billionaire boyfriend or a VIP invitation.
We don’t need celebrity space tourists in full makeup and soundbites to tell our daughters they can be anything. We need to show them engineers building spacecraft, physicists calculating trajectories, flight surgeons keeping astronauts alive. We need to celebrate substance, not stunts.
Because the battles for women’s rights aren’t taking place on luxury rockets. They’re happening in classrooms where girls are told they’re not good at math. In hospitals where women die from lack of care. In courtrooms and war zones and workplaces where safety and dignity still aren’t guaranteed.
Feminism doesn’t need to hitch a ride on a billionaire’s ego trip. It doesn’t need zero gravity photo-ops. What it needs is investment in real women doing real work—especially those who never get the spotlight.
So yes, let’s celebrate the Amanda Nguyens and Aisha Bowes of this world. They deserve it. But let’s stop confusing altitude with impact. Because sending celebrities to space and calling it progress isn’t a step forward. It’s a distraction.
And it’s one hell of an expensive daisy.
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