Let Them Eat Space

Girlbossing the ozone layer.

I tried to stay silent on the female empowerment space mission and I lasted about ten and a half minutes, which, ironically, is shorter than the actual length of the mission that the media has now spent five hundred hours breathlessly mythologizing. Everything I know about the all-female space mission has been against my will. I didn’t ask. I didn’t consent. I’ve been subjected to press releases, push notifications, and an alarming number of people earnestly using the phrase “breaking barriers” in the year 2025. I’ve been left with no choice but to produce a 900-word rant about it.

While I genuinely have no interest in personally attacking any of the women who went on the mission, with the exception of Lauren Sánchez, who should be personally attacked every single day as a matter of public health, the entire thing reeked of a stunt written by a man. And all of it…every high-gloss photo, every vague “yay women” soundbite, every recycled girlboss quote from 2016 has felt like one long recession indicator.

The richest man on Earth sent women to space to prove he supports feminism, which is exactly what someone who ruins the Earth would do.

Yes, one of the women was Amanda Nguyen, who is a brilliant activist and rape survivor whose journey to space was undeniably meaningful, and who has spent years fighting for sexual assault survivors' rights while daring to reclaim a dream deferred. But even Amanda’s deeply admirable presence couldn’t rescue this mission from what it ultimately was: a glorified brand activation for Jeff Bezos.

Watching women float around in Oscar de la Renta flight suits and full-glam, polluting the stratosphere for what was essentially a press tour to make Jeff Bezos more money, while people are losing their social security because of another billionaire, wasn’t just weird, it was embarrassing. This was feminism as seen through the window of a Blue Origin shuttle: warped, commercialized, and completely detached from gravity.

Even Bezos greenwashing couldn’t save him. While Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen which are fuel types that produce water vapor instead of carbon dioxide, it’s still wildly energy-intensive to manufacture, and the emissions are released directly into the stratosphere. They trap heat and they exacerbate warming. The cumulative effect of launching vanity missions into space is a recipe for heating the sky.

And while we’re busy looking up, let’s remember what’s happening down on planet earth thanks to men like Jeff Bezos. Men who got rich off union-busting, tax dodging, and platforming the kind of disinformation that helped elect Donald Trump. The same billionaire class that funded the rise of a man found liable for sexual abuse is now funding feminist-branded rocket launches as if that erases the damage. Meanwhile, children are living in poverty. People are rationing insulin or dying because they can’t afford a $35 inhaler. Pregnant women are fleeing their own states just to avoid going to jail for having a miscarriage. The public school system is collapsing. And everyone’s future, everyone’s social security, is in now literally in the hands of a man whose midlife crisis includes ketamine. You can dress it up in Oscar de la Renta and call it empowerment, but sending women to space won’t unburn the world men like Bezos helped torch.

This isn’t empowerment. It’s feminism bought on amazon prime and shipped straight to space. It’s what happens when billionaires steal the wealth of an entire working class and then spend it on a “historic moment” that literally heats the planet while cooling their image.

It’s not just annoying, it’s gaslighting in a flight suit. But I’m dying to know…. what are your thoughts about the feminist space mission???

If you need to chase this story with a sprinkle of joy and a dash of hope, watch my exchange with Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the wildly successful “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in LA this weekend.

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