Hey Space Ladies: Here's Why Everyone Is Making Fun of You

You too, Rachel Zegler, with your girl-bossy "Snow White"

By now, you are most likely aware of (and perhaps even participating in) the dogpile mockery of Monday’s Blue Origin flight. Mockery isn’t really my thing, but I do understand why it’s happening here.

Sources like Google News offer predictably misleading headlines on the event itself:

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches all-female crew into space

It was indeed Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and it did launch, and they were all women on board. Those things are true. But it was a suborbital flight and they weren’t a “crew”:

Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s space tourism company, completed its latest spaceflight on Monday with a six-member all-female crew that included pop singer Katy Perry; CBS Mornings host Gayle King; and Lauren Sánchez, an author, TV host turned philanthropist and Bezos’s fiancée.

They were joined by activist Amanda Nguyen, ex-NASA engineer Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn on the suborbital flight, which lasted less than 11 minutes.

The fact that the flight was suborbital and only lasted 11 minutes is not the reason why they are being mocked now, however. Those things are being added to the dogpile, but that’s not why.

Why It’s Cool

Before we talk about why they‘re being so thoroughly savaged, we should be straight about what they actually did. A suborbital flight is pretty cool. If I did it, and if my parents wanted to tell their friends, with pride, that I went to “space,” I wouldn’t try to correct them. It was close enough.

These six women went weightless. They saw the atmosphere, the moon, the curve of the Earth, and the magnificence of our world stretched below them. Amazing! They were given an opportunity to experience what few have.

Do you remember when William Shatner took a similar flight on Blue Origin and then spoke with moving vulnerability upon his return? This phenomenon is called the overview effect: a shift in one’s worldview as a result of seeing one’s world from above. It impacts different people in different ways.

Here, for example, is Katy Perry describing her experience:

That is arguably a bit more shallow than Shatner’s, but hey—who can say how each of us ought to interpret such an experience? Everyone’s overview effect will be their own.

Then again, some people really do doubt Perry’s sincerity (or perhaps her sanity). (NOTE: slightly vulgar content):

Here is a short clip from their flight. I might have just stared out the window in quiet wonder rather than smiling for the camera and flinging butterflies around, but again, to each his her own.

I would love to see the moon, the Earth, and the blue line of our atmosphere. Definitely cool.

Why They’re Being Mocked

If they had returned to terra firma and shared deeply personal insights, with unscripted vulnerability, the way Shatner did, far fewer people would be mocking them. But they didn’t.

If they had spoken about the technology—about the feat of engineering and all the innovative minds over the decades who had made such a flight possible, I don’t think nearly as many would be mocking them.

If they had expressed a little humility—we’re so unbelievably lucky to have had an opportunity like this—I think more people would respect that. But they didn’t.

Instead, they made it about identity. It wasn’t humans going to space, it was about the fact that they were all women. It was Cultural Marxism: Suborbital Edition.

People are sick of it. People on the right have been sick of it for 75 years, and now that identity politicking has ramped up to fever-pitch, moderates and others are starting to get sick of it too. In addition to the political implications, it’s just boring, narcissistic, and just plain tiresome.

I believe people would have loved to hear some real stories about their experiences. Instead, it was about how “historic” it was. Instead, we got treated to carefully scripted dog-whistles like “making space” and “holding space”—terms straight out of the nonstop Maoist struggle session taking place on most American college campuses.

Sometimes, those terms are used in way that should give us all pause: they are directed at white people, as a not-so-subtle way of telling them that they are taking up physical space that could be occupied by a minority. Even if people do not know that—even if they do not recognize the pregenocidal nature of such statements—they still have an intuitive and instinctual sense that this is, at best, just more leftist preening.

And then there is the terrible inaccuracy of the preening. This was not the first all-women “crew.” That honor goes to cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who did it all by herself in 1963. Sixty years ago! And then, of course, there are the two women who lost their lives aboard the Challenger space shuttle: Crew member Judith Resnik and teacher Christa McAuliffe. And there have been many other women astronauts and scientists in space.

So, on top of all the obviously scripted Cultural Marxist garbage, they also ignored the actual women pioneers who came long before them. And people caught that too.

So if they’re not the first, then what are they prattling on about?

It’s the fact that inside the capsule, there were no men.

Is that historic? Perhaps. But since they weren’t the first women, and since they’re not pioneering anything, then all of this just comes off as more obnoxious girl-bossing. We don’t need no man. A woman needs a man like fish needs a bicycle. Blah. blah blah.

Except everyone knows that there were men back at mission control. Most of the work, construction, and maintenance of their vehicle was done by men. Most of the invention and engineering of space technologies has been done by men. Most of the pioneering of space has been done by men. Most of the deaths that have occurred as humankind stretches its hand toward the cosmos have been men.

There have been many women too. So what we had was the spectacle of a handful of uber-wealthy celebrity¹ women propelled toward the stars by the efforts of men (whose contributions they ignored) and women (whose contributions they also ignored).

They made it about themselves. Breathlessly telling us all about how historic and powerful their actions were is just straight-up narcissism, just like all virtue-signaling. And people are wise to that too.

At this point, normal people just find it all just a bit grotesque. But these women, living in their bubble, have no clue. So they just kept blathering on. And telling those who are mocking them what horrible people they are.

Learn From Your Mistakes Much?

There are constant instances of leftists beclowning themselves in this way (and causing collateral damage in the process). But we just had a really huge one in the person of Rachel Zegler and the damage she did to Disney’s Snow White remake. It was a slow-motion %$@#show that lasted for more than a year.

Were these space ladies not watching this?

The Snow White movie was guaranteed to be bad—Disney just can’t help themselves these days—but by running her mouth, Zegler completely tanked it and did even more damage to an already damaged brand. And she also may have destroyed her personal brand, as some are now calling her “un-hireable.”

The outpouring of mockery for Zegler and this bloodless, propagandistic remake of a classic film came in wave after wave for months, and has only recently begun to let up. One such example is below. It explains a lot about why people found Zegler’s behavior so repellent.

Just like these women “astro-NOTs,” as they’re now being called, Zegler had an opportunity to show some humility and gratitude, and earn respect in the process. She could have been gracious—perhaps speaking of the honor to be a part of Disney history. She could have been modest—perhaps telling us that she hopes she can do the story justice.

Instead, she vomited an endless stream of girl-boss sauce all over the American people for a whole year, and now, no one likes her or her movie.

They just never learn.

1. Interestingly, they are also getting critique from the left. Much of that critique is class-based, and given everything, I suppose that makes sense too.