As someone who refuses to even use Amazon in a vain attempt to boycott Bezos's billions, watching a highly publicized joy ride in his spaceship was stomach-turning. The short-sighted attitudes of the people on board, openly advertising the peak of human wastefulness, were disappointing. And it appears I wasn't alone in those feelings. Now, Katy Perry is somehow surprised at the backlash she has received for her toe-curlingly embarrassing behavior on her short hop to the edge of space on Blue Origin.
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The backlash online has been wild. It isn't directed at Katy Perry directly, but she has been the focal point. Her behavior on board the Blue Origin was the epitome of what was wrong with the whole thing. Gazing vapidly into the camera, she used her brief seconds in space to promote her upcoming tour and wave around a daisy.
Rather than use the moments to look at Earth from an angle few ever will or have, she made it all about herself. She had no words of wisdom to share, and on her return, behaved like she hadn't really just taken an incredibly expensive Uber.
Furthermore, the flight was phenomenally costly, questionably environmentally damaging, and unremarkable. In a world where temperatures are rising year by year, and 37 million Americans live in poverty, this flagrant, public waste of resources was ugly.
Because of this, people didn't take too kindly to Katy Perry and the others, flaunting their space privilege.
Katy Perry Isn't A Space Inspiration
The people on board the Blue Origin space flight somehow managed to get it into their heads that they were 'doing it for the girls.' The untrained women who briefly visited space inspired nobody. Many woman have been to space before, and they did it without using their vast wealth. They did it by being successful women in STEM.
A source close to Katy Perry has said that, "Katy doesn't regret going to space. It was life-changing. What she does regret is making a public spectacle out of it." Numerous people have been on Blue Origin already, but few have been so obnoxious about it.
However, responding to the backlash, Gayle King still doesn't get it. "What it's doing to inspire other women and young girls - please don't ignore that," she told CBS. Unqualified millionaires paying a billionaire for an 11-minute trip isn't inspiring. However, Sunita Williams, living on board the ISS for nine months, is.
"They call it a ride, which I find very irritating because they never say men went for a ride," King said of the space jaunt she and Katy Perry took.. "It's called a flight or a journey. A ride implies it's something frivolous or lighthearted. There's nothing frivolous about what we did."
It is, in fact, the very definition of frivolous.
