On Women Doing it Their Way, Rockets, and the Right to Wonder

By a woman not in the mood to coddle your cynicism

Maybe I sound cynical—but at least I’m naming it, and trying to find a way through. It’s hard these days.

Because what I saw this week—a group of women taking to the skies in a rocket ship—should’ve been a simple story of progress. A story to celebrate. And yet… predictably, it wasn’t. It’s the predictable part that really chaps my hide. My seemingly factory-farmed human hide — because that seems to be what we are becoming. I’m actually pissed. Y’all hate billionaires while at the same time, you aren’t giving them much to feel hopeful about, and this scares me…because they might actually see us as a lost cause. It’s. Sometimes. Hard. Not. To.

Instead of awe, the public responded with mockery. Not of the technology. Not of the science. But of the women. Their makeup. Their hair. Their proximity to power.

Let’s be clear—these women weren’t stowaways. They weren’t tokens. They earned their place through years of real, hard work. Not the kind the Internet likes to diminish just because a woman did it in heels, or happened to sing while doing it. And here’s the catch: when women choose not to meet beauty standards—think Pamela Anderson going makeup-free—we ridicule them for that too. “Well, if only she’d wear a little lipstick…” It’s a no-win game. And too often, it’s other women enforcing the rules. We say we want women to be taken seriously, but when they don’t perform the right version of femininity—whether that’s your idea of what an astronaut should look like, or an anchorwoman—we punish them. And let’s not pretend it’s just criticism. It costs them. In visibility. In opportunity. In money.

Let’s learn a little more about the women who were on the Blue Origin Flight

Lauren Sánchez isn’t just Jeff Bezos’s partner. She’s a licensed helicopter pilot, an Emmy-winning journalist, and the founder of the first female-owned aerial film company. She helped orchestrate this mission—and flew it too.

Katy Perry didn’t inherit stardom. She built it from scratch, climbing from a strict Pentecostal upbringing to global success. She’s not just a pop star (not that that isn’t an amazing achievement on it’s own)—she’s a businesswoman with vision and grit.

Gayle King has been one of the most trusted voices in journalism for decades. She brings grace, insight, and cultural weight to every room she enters. Nobody can fit in her shoes.

And let’s not forget the crew:

Aisha Bowe—a Black aerospace engineer and former NASA alum.

Amanda Nguyễn—a civil rights activist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and now, the first Vietnamese woman in space.

If you missed all that while scrolling for cheap laughs, maybe that’s the problem.

These women climbed. Through criticism. Through reinvention. Through courage. And now, they’re flying. Literally. And they too are building up a resistance against your opinion and that makes them even more powerful. So good luck bringing them down.

It would be one thing if the criticisms came from an informed place. But they didn’t. This isn’t about policy. It’s about punishment—for being visible, for being joyful, for taking up space. On Earth or off it.

Let’s speak plainly: it galls people when women are visible and ambitious. When they find joy and don’t apologize for it. When they do something bold and take others with them. It enrages people. It terrifies them.

This moment deserved wonder. It deserved reverence. But we’ve become allergic to awe, addicted to irony, and so invested in looking unimpressed that we mock anything that dares to be beautiful or brave.

A culture that cannot celebrate its women is not strong—it’s brittle. A nation that mocks its dreamers isn’t clever—it’s in decline.

The truth is: space still dazzles. And so does the story we tell about who belongs there. If girls grow up thinking the only heroes in space have buzzcuts and badges, we’ve failed. But if they see Amanda. Aisha. Katy. Lauren. Gayle. Maybe they’ll see themselves.

That’s not fluff. That’s oxygen.

So no—I won’t laugh along with the cynics in the cheap seats. I won’t play the polite woman who endures the tired jokes with a strained smile. I will look up. I will marvel. And I will keep calling this out, even if I stand alone.

Because wonder is a form of resistance. And preserving that wonder—preserving peace and awe within ourselves—is how we build something better. Maybe even heaven on Earth.