As a women’s studies minor in college and a feminist, I remember being genuinely excited last year when an all-female crew headed to space. Katy Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, and others made up Blue Origin’s crew.

 

But when they returned, all anyone seemed to talk about was their hair, their outfits, their makeup.

 

This isn’t a new story. When a woman runs for office, we already know her pantsuit will be analyzed nine ways to Sunday. But there was a young woman on that flight who wasn’t famous - at least not in the same way as the others. Amanda Nguyen became the first Vietnamese woman to go to space, and she was far less discussed.

 

After the mission, she spoke publicly about how the intense sexism surrounding their return nearly broke her mental health. She said something I haven’t been able to shake:

 

The speed with which we’re inventing our world is outpacing our ability to understand the impact of our inventions.

 

Whoa.

 

Nguyen described “the tsunami of harassment and the avalanche of misogyny” that followed their return, an onslaught she said, “no human brain has evolved to endure.” And it raises a bigger question: what do any of us actually have the capacity to hold with 24/7 access to comments, likes, views, or to hear commentary about ourselves on demand?

 

Nguyen is known for her work advocating for sexual assault survivors’ rights and for founding the non-profit, Rise. She trained for years for spaceflight and conducted women’s health experiments during the mission. For her, the moment was deeply symbolic- when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, bombs were falling on Vietnam. Now, her refugee family could look up and see the first Vietnamese woman in space.

 

The Blue Origin mission drew valid criticism for its cost, environmental impact, and celebrity spectacle. But what followed went beyond critique. The memes, the judgment, the pile-on and cut-up, it was relentless. Nguyen pointed out that harassment at this scale can overwhelm anyone’s mental resilience.

 

I think about that often, especially when it comes to our kids online. Not at this scale, but in ways that echo it. The volume, the speed, the intensity - it’s not just cultural. It’s neurological. It can destabilize. We live in a world where we compare ourselves to curated and filtered versions of others, where speedy content influences our lives, where anyone can comment anything about anyone without consequences.

 

We are building a world faster than we understand how to live in it.


Book I’m reading: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

Other book I’m reading: The Power of Kabbalah by Rav Berg


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