The Blue Origin lady spaceflight was desperate, sad and tasteless

I was determined to write something positive about Blue Origin’s “historic all-female spaceflight.” The spectacle was an all-American underdog story. Jeff Bezos worked his way up from dorky book salesman to buff billionaire who can launch his busty bride-to-be into space alongside some celebrities — because hey, why not?

Then I saw the group photos of the girl gang, and I just couldn’t. My resolve dissolved faster than the lip fillers in Khloé Kardashian’s fake face. All I could think was, “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!”

The pre-flight portrait was actually more amusing than cringe, and I wondered why the ladies — including the wincing Gayle King (apparently she was super nervous) and Katy Perry, with her dazed, Amish-girl-just-off-the-farm look — didn’t demand a re-do. The shot was overshadowed, though, by an Elle magazine spread that accompanied an interview in which the female astronauts prattled on about how they were planning to keep their hair and make-up in place while weightless. Former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe said she had tested her hairdo by skydiving in Dubai to see what it would do.

“Space is going to finally be glam,” Perry declared. “If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”

“Ass” is indeed a word that came to mind when I saw these women strutting their stuff in their spandex spacesuits. Not because I don’t think women should get dolled up even for mundane tasks. Au contraire! I try not to leave the house – even to go to the gym – without first applying some cosmetics. It’s only polite. Plus, who doesn’t think the Golden Age of Flying, when airline stewardesses were basically required to be models with the same presentation standards as a Fox News anchor, was preferable to today?

No, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good, but what Lauren Sánchez does isn’t good. Her pursed lips are so practiced, they might be permanent, and they were on full, ridiculous display in pictures snapped after the crew landed back on Earth after a few minutes in space. Maybe the short duration was due to several articles speculating about “What happens to Botox, fillers and implants in space?”

So Sánchez’s aesthetic isn’t the same as mine. That’s fair. I also don’t have a problem with uber-wealthy people spending their money – provided they earned it fair and square and are keeping up with their tithing – on fun stuff. There’s a reason, though, no one gets mad at Jay Leno for collecting millions of dollars’ worth of cars and motorcycles, because he does it for the right reasons (i.e., not to put the “ass” in Aston Martin).

The least negative thing I can say about the Blue Origin spaceflight is that at least these women aren’t afraid to embrace and express femininity. “I think it’s so important for people to see us like that,” one of the astronauts, Amanda Nguyen, said. “This dichotomy of engineer and scientist, and then beauty and fashion. We contain multitudes. Women are multitudes.”

Women are multitudes. Lauren Sánchez herself is an Emmy-award-winning journalist and an accomplished helicopter pilot; but all we got out of her brief sojourn beyond the stratosphere was the impression that Sánchez originated in outer space, rather than visited the place.

Sánchez and King “hit back” at critics who suggested their narcissistic selfie stunt was “a superficial display of privilege.”

Sánchez’s “defense” for the ostentatious joy ride was this: “I would love to have them [our critics] come to Blue Origin and see the thousands of employees that don’t just work here but they put their heart and soul into this vehicle. They love their work and they love the mission and it’s a big deal for them.”

For her part, King said, “Anybody that’s criticizing it doesn’t really understand what is happening here,” (that’d be me), adding, “We can all speak to the response we’re getting from young women from young girls about what this represents.”

Hmm. What this “mission” represents to me, a young-ish woman, is a tasteless show of wealth and physical flaunting from a group of desperate, pathetic women – the real NASA scientists excluded – for whom a million likes on Instagram is not enough. The Blue Origin money would have been better spent on a half-dozen Kill Bill jumpsuits and 20 minutes at an indoor skydiving facility. But then the whole world wouldn’t have been forced to watch.

Katy Perry insisted that the spaceflight was for all of us:

It’s not about me. It’s not about singing my songs, it’s about a collective energy in there, it’s about us, it’s about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging, and it’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth.

For those wondering, the “Botox, fillers and implants” all appeared to have stayed in place. But Jeff Bezos didn’t fare so well. He face-planted on his way to greet his fiancée when she came back to Earth. So much for that underdog-comeback story.