Hi First name / friends, 

 

Welcome back to GRWM, my weekly exploration of how aesthetics and business intersect to create culturally iconic brands.

Reading time: 9 minutes (let me cook) ☝🏾

 

This week’s essay is for the woman (or man) who says they want a liberatory brand, but quietly believes ease is unethical.

 

We’re going to talk about why so many ambitious, strategic, talented people are secretly allergic to success that doesn’t look like suffering — and how that shows up in your business.

 

 

Image source: Blue Origin, NS-31 mission, April 2025

 

 

Amanda Nguyen. Aisha Bowe. Gayle King. Katy Perry. Lauren Sánchez. Kerianne Flynn.

 

Some were engineers. Some were icons. Some were billionaires’ girlfriends. Some were just curious. Together, they crossed the Kármán line on a Blue Origin flight and made history.

 

The internet could not take it.

 

Amanda and Aisha were largely celebrated. Gayle got memed. Katy got mocked. Lauren got dragged just for existing. 

 

And the loudest critiques? They didn’t come from men. They came from women.

 

Feminist ones. Influencer ones. Self-righteous ones. Olivia Munn called the trip gluttonous. Emily Ratajkowski said it was disgusting. 

 

The critique wasn’t about science, or safety, or the ethics of private space travel. 

 

It was about who gets to go.

 

Amanda made sense. She’s a survivor. A Nobel Peace Prize nominee. A trained bioastronautics researcher. 

 

But Katy? Gayle? Lauren?

 

That joy looked unearned. That launch looked too easy.

Image via CNN / Blue Origin, April 2025

 

Amanda Nguyen’s Cut profile moved me. Her precision. Her nerdiness. Her commitment. I saw myself in her. Deeply.

 

But I also see myself in Gayle King. A Black woman scared of flying, strapping herself into a rocket.

 

And in Aisha Bowe. Calculated. Brilliant. Quietly competent.

 

And yes, even in Katy Perry. 

 

She was raised in an evangelical cult. I wasn’t — but I was in one for 10 years. And I know how hard it is to come out of that and try to be 'normal,' let alone joyful. 

 

She shaped a career out of public, messy, visible freedom — and that inspires me. 

 

Does she have one too many problematic moments? 

 

Sure. 

 

But newsflash: SO DO YOU First name !!!

 

I find all of them inspiring.

 

Not because they suffered. Not because they redeemed themselves. Not because they gave us a trauma-to-triumph narrative. But because they went. 

 

They didn’t ask for permission to float.

 

And that’s what people couldn’t stand.

 

Baddie is Black American language. It means sovereign. Unbothered. A woman who is too fine, too free, and too focused to make herself relatable.

 

Which is exactly why people hate it.

 

This is the same reason people hate Ice Spice but love Doechii. 

 

Doechii is undeniably exceptional. She suffered for 19 years, so of course she gets to shake her ass on a yacht. 

 

But Ice Spice skipped the suffering and went straight to the yacht. No backstory. No apology. Just vibes (literally). And that’s what makes people mad. Not the success, but the ease.

 

To be clear: they're both baddies. 

 

But we’ve created a cultural script that says joy must be earned through pain — and if you skip the pain, we question the joy.

 

A baddie floats through life. And that pisses people off.

 

Especially when they’re still stuck on the ground.

 

Space is a metaphor. For visibility. For ambition. For audacity. For joy.

 

Men go to space and get documentaries. Women go and get discourse.

 

Amanda brought Petri dishes and purpose. Gayle brought fear and prayer. Katy brought joy and a setlist. 

 

And somehow, only one of those things felt “acceptable.”

 

We still expect women — especially Black women — to offer a reason for their joy. 

 

We must teach through it or tether it to something useful for it to be valid.

Credit: Arista Records, Scott-Heron, Gil (entertainer)

 

 

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron delivered a now-famous poem called “Whitey on the Moon.”

 

It was a brutal critique of the government pouring billions into space exploration while Black families couldn’t afford rent or healthcare.

 

And he wasn’t wrong.

 

But here’s the thing: we have to ask what happens when it's no longer whitey?

 

What happens when the woman on the rocket is Vietnamese? Or Black? Or joyful? Or famous? 

 

What happens when the face of space isn’t erasure — but possibility?

 

If we keep repeating "no one should be on the moon," we risk reinforcing the idea that certain people never belonged there anyway.

 

I'm not rejecting Gil. I'm expanding the critique.

 

Gil said: 

 

 

I'm asking: 

 

 

We are not erasing history. We are occupying space.

 

If your brand feels stuck, maybe it’s not your niche. 

 

Maybe it’s shame.

 

Maybe it’s the unspoken belief that you need to be tired, broken, or universally beloved before you’re allowed to win. 

 

That if you rise, you better rise with a sob story. Or a nonprofit. Or a campaign that proves you’re not like those other girls — the ones in space taking selfies.

 

But here’s the thing:

 

 

Just like you don’t know if space travel won’t solve climate change or turn trash into fuel. 

 

Just like you don’t know if AI won’t revive human creativity and save us from the burnout economy we call business. 

 

You don’t know if the earth didn’t manifest AI to save us from ourselves.

 

And if you’re not at least curious about the possibility that the future could be better:

 

 

If you're not willing to embrace the audacity of ambition, don’t build a brand. Join the UN. Go feed the children. Do real, beautiful, sacrificial work.

 

(And no — I’m not mocking human suffering. I’m naming the hypocrisy of resenting women who’ve exited the system while doing everything you can to exit it yourself.)

Credit: Touching Grass by Jelly Luise

It’s the same energy that makes people hate baddies. They’re not mad at the woman. 

 

 

And most people aren’t actually scared of the future. 

 

They’re scared of not being prepared for a future they didn’t control.

 

What I’m saying is: maybe the solution isn’t martyrdom. 

 

Maybe it’s joy? Maybe it’s beauty? Maybe it’s expansion?

 

I’m not concerned about the celebrities. They’ve got money. They’ll be fine.

 

I’m concerned about how the reaction to them echoes the way everyday women shrink their joy, dull their ambition, and apologise for their presence — because you can't move forward without saving the world.

 

We’re setting scary prerequisites for when and how women are allowed to reach for the stars.

 

Why must girls always carry the burden of reading the room, while boys get to be boys?

 

Because when a woman flies alone, women cry witchcraft louder than the men.

 

 

I don’t care how liberated you say you are: if you’re a Black woman, you know what it means to have your life treated like a group project.

 

You’re allowed to rise, but only if you’re lifting up your entire community in the process.

 

If you’re resting, you better be writing about it. If you’re soft, it better be part of a lesson. If you’re flying, you better be crying.

 

Anything else is seen as betrayal.

 

Midway through a client project, I was hospitalised. She didn’t ask for a refund. She extended grace, handled her launch and allowed me to recover.

 

When I returned, I added more deliverables. Not because she asked. Not because I wanted to. But because I felt like I had to earn my way back.

 

I turned grace into guilt, promised to over deliver and ending up delaying the original project even more.

 

That’s what so many women do. 

 

 

We don’t know how to succeed without first suffering and the cost is collective.

 

You’re not from the future. 

 

Just like people didn't know what the wheel, electricity or the internet would do, you don’t know where space travel will lead. 

 

 

But if you’re still moralising other women’s ambition, ease, or audacity, you’re not building a brand. You’re building a cage.

Image via Vanity Fair / Blue Origin, April 2025
Gayle King, journalist and co-host of CBS Mornings, became the oldest Black woman to fly to space.

“I know there are cranky Yankees. I know there are some haters. I’m not going to let people steal my joy.”

 

—Gayle King, Co-Host of CBS Mornings & Editor-at-Large for Oprah Daily

 

Galactic baddies don’t audition. They don’t confess their sins. They don’t ask for permission.

 

They launch.

 

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