In the first issue of the FAAR publication, we identified seven signals of change that will define opportunities and messaging during the next decade, regarding the intersection of fashion and space. In this series, we pull out some highlights from each of those themes. Here, we include artworks that comment on the theme from Aleksandra Mir and Elia Arce.
Women on the moon
A hallmark of the Artemis Mission, NASA’s directive to get astronauts back to the moon by 2024, is the goal to demonstrate the evolving diversity of the space program by including a female astronaut on that mission.
For all of the progress that NASA has made, from the days when only men were eligible due to the recruiting process and to social norms, there was a long list of updates that NASA has been checking off to prepare for women’s trip to the moon.
Not least of these major projects was the redesign of the astronauts’ spacesuit. Led by spacesuit engineer Amy Ross, NASA revealed their new, flexible, one size fits all spacesuits in October of 2019. Kristine Davis, a spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was even demoing the new suit, giving us a glimpse of that promise realized.
Photo: IANS News (L-R)Amy Ross, spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Kristine Davis, spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, wearing a ground prototype of NASA’s new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), and Dustin Gohmert, Orion Crew Survival Systems Project Manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, wearing the Orion Crew Survival System suit
While the EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity) suits are modular, with different sized torso and bottom halves, the suits were never meant to fit everyone, as Marina Koren writes in this great article for The Atlantic:
Space-suit engineers thought that outfitting the new space travelers would be simple. “Some groups initially assumed that women could fit in the same sizes as small men—or at worst, that some of the men’s sizes would have to be scaled down proportionately to fit women,” Elizabeth Benson, a NASA design engineer, wrote in a 2009 paper on sizing considerations in space-suit design.
This approach doesn’t account for differences in the body shape of men and women. “For the same height and weight, women can have significantly wider hips and narrower shoulders than men,” Benson wrote. “If, for example, a one-piece coverall designed for a man is meant to fit at the shoulders and the hips, then one of these fit areas is likely to be compromised for a woman.”
Aleksandra Mir, Astronaut (2009)
Aleksandra Mir's First Woman on the Moon (1999)
While the move can be considered symbolic, or simply “signaling” equality without doing the real work, that should be quickly moved past when you see the number of female astronauts balancing the number of men in recent astronaut classes. There is still room for much more diversity, but this is one area where there has been genuine progress at NASA.
Even more important is how that evolution is playing out across society, and in different cultural dynamics around the world.
The cultural moment, following #metoo and the rise of many international groups seeking empowerment for women who are still repressed in societies around the world, speaks to a more enduring message of where we must go. Space exploration is still a blank slate for us to show what we have learned through many societal experiments and advancements on Earth. The question is, what is women’s place at the table deciding that future. And what example will we set for the generations that follow?
Excerpt from issue n.1:
With 2019 marking the 50 anniversary of the first Moon landing, many are wondering if we can expand past this physical limit we have reached, or if life in space will remain an abstract concept to more than the few hundred people who have lived on the space station. At the very least, those artifacts include a diverse representation of humanity. This new space age has a responsibility to carry that tradition forward and to make diversity intrinsic in our presence in space.
This theme will be explored further in the new research initiative “Bodies in Space: How we design to mediate between the body and the environment.”
Elia Arce, First Woman on the Moon, presented by DiverseWorks at Frenetic Theater, November 30, 2012
