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On April 14, mega-pop star Katy Perry — along with CBS anchor Gayle King, journalist and Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sánchez, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, activist and bioastronautics researcher Amanda N. Nguyen ’13, and producer Kerianne Flynn — boarded Bezos’ Blue Origin Shepard rocket for what was popularly dubbed the journey of a lifetime. The journey lasted all of 11 minutes.

Shortly after their return, fast food chain Wendy’s tweeted, “Can we send her back?”

The backlash for the flight was swift — and telling. The flight, framed by Blue Origin as a milestone for women in space, instead became a cultural flashpoint. Critics mocked the livestream launch, zeroing in on the women’s shrieks of delight and mid-air giggles. Their curve-accentuating space suits were picked apart and scoffed at (especially after Katy promised to “put the ass in astronaut”). Critics, both earnest and snide, derided them for referring to themselves as astronauts, while professionals who have spent decades training for space missions remain relatively anonymous. These women were space tourists at best.

“I couldn’t recommend this experience more,” Perry said in an interview with 11 Alive after the flight — an especially tone deaf statement given that only the mega rich or celebrities would have access to an experience like this.

When the internet exploded with commentary, this was not just the online community being mean. This was the internet doing what it does best: unmasking the contradictions beneath a spectacle. In 11 minutes, this flight managed to touch down in nearly every major cultural fault line: gender, priviledge, environmental ethics, and the commercialization of awe itself.

There’s no question that women are relentlessly criticized for existing publicly, especially when they dare to do something extraordinary — or even appear to. Had it been six (rich and well-connected) men on this flight, the public likely wouldn't be talking about their hairstyles or the pitch of their voices. Society would be talking about the waste factor, but also the cool factor, and we likely wouldn't be calling them “space tourists” with quite the same venom.

The fact that so many critiques leaned into tired tropes about feminine frivolity — vanity, ditziness, the inability to grasp science itself — underscores the relentless misogyny still embedded in public discourse. Many of the women on the trip, most notably, Nguyen, are extraordinarily accomplished and have contributed a tremendous amount to society. Women, somehow, are always doing too much and never enough.

And yet, not all the criticism was rooted in sexism. Some of it was valid. Because to frame this event as a feminist milestone — as some outlets and PR campaigns rushed to do — is plain silly. This was not “making space for women.” This was a joyride for the already ultra-privileged, a performative gesture dressed up in empowerment language. When access to reproductive healthcare is being rolled back across the United States, when many women are fighting to survive, suggesting that a billionaire-funded trip to the edge of space is a big win for womankind feels absurd.

In her poem “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” Tracy K. Smith ponders the mystery of space and life on other planets: “When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic / Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel / Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding, / Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere, / Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones / At whatever are their moons.”

Smith’s vision reminds us that space is not a destination, but a vast unknowable presence that demands reverence, not selfies. The “final frontier” requires not only exploration but also human humility — the recognition of something far larger, far more complex, and far more important than the fabric of our individual lives.

Commercialization is nothing new to contemporary society. From our mental health to our sex lives, everything seems to be ruled by advertisement. For a time, it seemed space was the only place commercialization couldn’t reach — until it did.

—Staff writer Caroline J. Rubin can be reached at caroline.rubin@thecrimson.com.