on a feminist valence too, signifying power and
the mechanism for accruing more. The Wing’s
merchandise — key chains that read ‘‘girls doing
whatever the [expletive] they want,’’ tote bags that
say ‘‘TAKING UP SPACE,’’ socks that read ‘‘PAY
ME’’ — invite members and nonmembers alike
to telegraph that feminized mode of ambition,
coyly aestheticizing the kind of entitlement that
comes so easily to many men.
At the very least, the stuff makes you feel good.
The Perch’s ‘‘Virgin Woolf’’ mocktail is refreshing;
the water pressure from the Wing shower head is
reassuringly fi rm. At the Wing, comfort itself can
represent a kind of progress. As Gelman once put
it on Instagram: ‘‘Women go through their lives
taking care of everyone & everything, and there
is deep relief in entering any tangible space where
someone is fi nally taking care of you.’’
The union between feminism and marketing is
the consummation of a long relationship. In the
1970s, Ms. Magazine infl uenced corporations to
scrap their sexist ads in favor of feminist-themed
pitches, but today it is the branders themselves
who are hailed as feminist icons. In Gelman, fem-
inism has one of New York’s most charming and
relentless fl acks on its side. When the socialist It
Girls of the ‘‘Red Scare’’ podcast ribbed the Wing
for its bourgeois sensibility, Gelman worked to
change their minds, making herself a T-shirt that
said ‘‘Frenemy of the Pod,’’ showing up at a live
taping and posing next to one of the hosts mak-
ing the universal sign for cunnilingus. Gelman is
not just the face of her own company but also a
kind of executive infl uencer whose currency as
a female C.E.O. is used to brush other products
with a touch of feminism. In 2017 she appeared in
a spot for Chanel fi ne jewelry in which she fl exesher arms and advises, ‘‘Be empowered’’; last year
she starred in an ad for Air France in which she
reclines in a roomy business-class seat. ‘‘I’m a
C.E.O.,’’ she informs the ‘‘guys’’ who dominate
the class. ‘‘Hey, I belong here, too.’’
Though the Wing’s motto is ‘‘empowering
women through community,’’ it also builds mar-
keting relationships, plugging companies like
American Express, Land Rover and Amazon
Prime into its ready-made feminist branding appa-
ratus. These companies are eager to seed the Wing
with their swag and minister to well-connected
members at sponsored events, images of which
percolate across Instagram like modern infomer-
cials. The place is an infl uence machine: Wing
members eff ectively pay to advertise products
to other women in front of the club’s feminine
backdrops, and along the way, burnish their own
brand power too.The Wing was conceived amid great expecta-
tions for the Hillary Clinton presidency, but it
was her defeat that sharpened the company’s
sense of mission. As Trump ascended to the White
House, and sexual harassers were unmasked at
workplaces across the country, the concept of the
women’s-only club was elevated from luxury to
necessity. Members who joined for a refuge from
public bathrooms were now also claiming refuge
from the patriarchy. The absence of men and the
presence of fi ne amenities became a salve for the
traumas experienced by women as a class. Gel-
man began to speak about a Wing membership
as analogous to political agitation. The news of
the day might be dispiriting for women, Gelman
told Entrepreneur magazine, ‘‘but to see women
coming together and fi ghting back and organizing— whether through the Women’s March or in sup-
port of organizations like the Wing — that’s the
silver lining to all of this.’’
Like the women’s clubs, consciousness-raising
groups, feminist bookstores and lesbian separat-
ist womyn’s lands that came before it, the Wing’s
organizing structure gestures at radical potential.
When women convene together in the absence
of men, the argument goes, they can psychically
recharge, compare notes on the patriarchy and
defi ne new political priorities. In the summer of
2018, Gelman threw the congressional candidate
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a fund-raiser after her
surprise victory in a Democratic primary. On
Instagram, the pair could be seen on Gelman’s
patio in matching button-down shirts and round
wire-framed glasses. Later an endorsement from
Ocasio-Cortez popped up on the Wing’s website:
‘‘The Wing isn’t just a functional space, it’s a real
symbol of what’s opening in our country. [It’s]
one of the most potent forces that we’ve seen
emerge in politics this year.’’
The Wing’s feminism thrives on the impres-
sion of societal progress projected by its brand.
Every Wing off ering — its Little Wing babysit-
ting, its inclusive range of hair-care products,
its ‘‘Motherhood on the Move’’ partnership with
Medela, a company known for its breast pumps
— is pitched as a public good. The amenities may
be available only to paying members, but they
are promoted symbolically to women at large.
In fact, the Wing’s political off erings are expan-
sive to the point of incoherence. In its in-house
magazine, No Man’s Land, the Wing featured the
whistle-blower and member Chelsea Manning; at
its Georgetown space, it celebrated the women
of the C.I.A. in partnership with the Showtime
series ‘‘Homeland.’’
Women represent both a consumer demo-
graphic and a political constituency, and the wires
of politics and consumption are easily crossed.
At the Wing, progressive politics themselves are
recast as one more luxury product — something
to be worn rather than enacted. Its programming
can feel like a self-affi rming simulation of political
engagement. After Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme
Court confi rmation hearing, the Wing’s San Fran-
cisco outpost emblazoned Christine Blasey Ford’s
name onto a conference room; Valerie Jarrett and
others stopped for selfi es in front of the door, as
if compensating for the loss of judicial power
with a ticket to a feminist Instagram mu seum.
In February, as the Iowa Caucuses unfolded, the
Wing staged its own ‘‘caucus’’ in which members
role-played exercising their civic duty. Gelman
stumped passionately for Bernie Sanders, but Eliz-
abeth Warren swept fi ctional ‘‘Wing County.’’ It
would be the only 2020 contest she would win.In February 2018, the Wing opened its fi rst
Brooklyn location, an expansive space in Dumbo
Photograph by Robyn Twomey/Redux with a sunken velvet conversation pit, Ruth Bader
The New York Times Magazine 25Audrey Gelman, co-founder and chief executive of the Wing, in 2017.