Is The Wing Good, Bad, or Bent on Commodifying Your Identity?

Two members of Study Hall debate The Wing's controversial place in the coworking economy.

The Wing is a women-only coworking space that launched in Manhattan in 2016 and rapidly expanded into Brooklyn and territories beyond, fueled by venture capital and an investment from WeWork. Perhaps predictably, it’s been the subject of controversy ever since. No one seems to know what to think of the start-up: It fulfills a clear, important purpose and the spaces are carefully designed, but how can a de-facto social club promise inclusivity? Two Study Hall members, both freelance writers, both women, one a Wing member and one not, discuss whether the world’s great, new coworking space is worth it, or bullshit. Or something in between. 

Eliza Carter: I joined The Wing about a month ago. After a two-year slugfest with working from home, I came up against the reality that I lacked the requisite mental fortitude. Now I work at The Wing three to four times a week, in six- to eight-hour increments. My visits usually involve a process of self-flagellation, rationalization, exoneration, recrimination, and, finally, acquiescence to the knowledge that I am unlikely to be the one to resolve the coexistence of feminism and capitalism while anxiously sipping free coffee and procrastinating some more immediate task.

Daisy Alioto: I’m freelance and was open to paying to co-work in the city while I was still in Brooklyn, but I just moved upstate on the calculation that more space would make working from home more palatable (it did!).

My problem with The Wing is not the price, it’s the branding of the coworking space as some sort of social good for all women rather than a service that individual women pay for. And this ideological branding is actually backfiring, because you have to wade through cognitive dissonance to even enjoy the space. I think what we’re both saying is some version of ‘there’s no ethical coworking under capitalism’ but the pinkwashing and the media blitz around The Wing’s opening and expansion really gets to me. If it’s a useful space and service, why the political or social justification? I’m glad some women will benefit from it. But I don’t think Audrey Gelman is a pioneer for feminism — she’s an opportunist.

EC: The organization’s polished and self-conscious efforts to appear inclusive help with the exoneration part. Hari Nef’s searing gaze from the cover of the inaugural issue of The Wing’s magazine, No Man’s Land, telegraphs: This is not Carrie Bradshaw’s feminism. This is a feminist space for Kimberle Crenshaw herself, where any and all intersection and form of womanhood is honored.

DA: I love magazines, but the world doesn’t need another covertly branded magazine. Without much transparency, The Wing is using the creative capital of various writers and activists to bolster the image of its brand. Is this a publishing project, or a vanity project? I’ve experienced this on a micro level with friends working in tech and finance. They get an MBA so they can be young Metropolitan Museum patrons and they keep a copy of The New Yorker in their bathrooms. Both outward symbols of cultural capital (one expensive, one pretty discounted these days). Meanwhile, their industries are pricing artists out of Brooklyn and freelancers like me are getting paid $250 an article to write for The New Yorker Dot Com. They go to parties and brag that their best friend is a writer and you start to realize you are the token bohemian friend. You will never, ever live as comfortably as your friends making money and they will never own up to how complicit their industries are in screwing over yours.

We’re all The Wing’s token bohemian friend– that free membership for contributing to the magazine, should it exist, isn’t really free. Your creative legitimacy is the product. It’s the smokescreen from the fact that this is just corporate feminism at its most basic, twee level.

EC: This is, of course, sophistry, as I remind myself in the recrimination phase. Membership in The Wing costs $3,000 per year, or a bit less, depending on whether you pay by the year or monthly. Women are offered the opportunity to pay the fee only after escaping a wait list of about 8,000. This is commodity feminism at best. At worst, it’s exclusion disguised as inclusion.

DA: There’s room for everyone in a social movement. There isn’t room for everyone in a private coworking space. That’s why The Wing should stick to being a business and not a social movement. If it were less selective would it lose its cache? I think we’re both saying the same thing here. Exclusivity is a function of its fundamental business model because of very normal limitations on space and capital. In the end it’s a start-up that should just say it’s a start-up.

I do think the so-called investigation into whether The Wing violates Human Rights Law by discriminating against members based on gender is silly. Women-identifying and non-binary folks should be able to have their own space(s), and The Wing has since clarified that it is open for nonbinary members.

EC: It seems possible that The Wing’s political valence undermines the value of the commodity. There will always be some degree of paradox in a business that exists, as all businesses do, to secure profit, but cloaks itself in a sociopolitical meaning premised on inclusion. I’m drawn to the political disposition, but I’m also repulsed by the knowledge that it’s not quite my politics, as I’m sure is true of many members.

This question will likely evolve in telling ways over the next couple years, as the Wing expands dramatically. There are currently three locations in New York and one in Washington, DC. A San Francisco Wing is slated to arrive in October, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Chicago, and a fourth New York location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As it currently exists, The Wing seems to satisfy a distinctly New York feminist cool (I haven’t visited the DC location). As it grows larger, the brand will be forced to shift and likely flatten for a larger consumer base.

Maybe this is unfounded regionalism. Maybe the residents of all of these cool, liberal cities will be drawn to the cool, feminist vibe. But The Wing is so popular in its home turf, it will be interesting to see if and how that popularity transfers to different locations and sensibilities.

DA: The coworking space / hotel / social-club chain Soho House gets eyerolls but it doesn’t get this kind of flack,  because it doesn’t even try to dabble in politics. It acknowledges it’s for assholes, more or less.

EC: For that matter, The Wing isn’t even a sound philosophical commodity, in that it isn’t quite as inclusive as its proponents would have you believe. For example, The Wing’s programming and media seem comparatively unconcerned with problems faced by women who are disabled. Though publicly the Wing is for all women and they don’t have a “type” in mind, most members wouldn’t look out of place in a Taylor Swift July 4th Instagram photo. The term “creative class” comes to mind more than anything. When applicants are placed on the waitlist, they are asked to provide social media handles; officially, this is to confirm that the person “lives as a woman,” (a justification that is suspect on its own terms) but an afternoon at the Soho location might give you the impression that it screens for sufficient bold-print jumpsuits and familiarity with the gatekeepers of memoir publishing and filmmaking. The Wing did recently announce a scholarship program to address the obvious inherent classism, a move that seems way too late given that it launched in 2015.

Here The Wing may be displaying an inevitable symptom of its startup idealist benefactors; coworking company WeWork is a primary investor. WeWork isn’t exactly a paragon of progressive values. It’s closer to a harbinger of neighborhood homogenization, and it’s likely the linchpin fueling The Wing’s upcoming expansion.

DA: Yeah also all the ‘founding members’ work there for free and that was a very curated group of people. Audrey is really savvy. She essentially took every group that might be critical of The Wing and gave them a sweetener. Nobody that works at The Cut can criticize it publicly. Notice The Outline, usually an anti-capitalist take machine, has been quiet on The Wing? It’s because Audrey has friends there. So much for an impartial media! Like, if you can’t be impartial when the stakes are free coffee and soap how am I supposed to respect your publication? Part of the reason I’m so outspoken about this is because I’ve noticed the dearth of criticism from voices that would normally be critical. Also, I’m not afraid of Audrey Gelman or her famous friends. Has she ever apologized for her role in shielding Terry Richardson?

EC: The problem is that I still like it. I can’t quite get my ideological principles to align with what art historian Wendy Steiner calls “the primal yawp of pleasure.” I like the bathroom stalls with full walls so you have real privacy. I like pouring myself water out of a jug into a glass like I’m at a cafe in Ravenna. I like using the Glossier face wash in the middle of the day when I feel oily.

Spending time at the Wing is probably the most civilized part of my life right now. The attention to detail is total and absolute. I noticed that the Wing-branded matches for purchase are made of strong wood that doesn’t bend when you strike them. No chairs go unaccompanied by a little pillow for lumbar support. All of the New York spaces are somehow dappled with lambent light, no matter what time it is.

For that matter, I like the feminism. I like being in a place where you can buy a pin with Fran Lebowitz’s face on it. I like that there’s a room for breast pumping.

DA: Fran Lebowitz is the shit. I want to know her take on all of this, to be honest.

EC: All of which prompts me to question why I feel pressure to display utter ideological purity when it comes to this purchase in particular. We buy things with political meanings that we might disagree with all the time… right?

DA: Right. If people would just treat The Wing like other corporate entities you wouldn’t have to feel any more conflict than other purchases you make in this wildly inequitable world we live in. I want you to be able to enjoy the Aesop and Glossier! Sincerely! I’m just sick of hearing about how this is somehow changing the world for women. My world, minus increased blood pressure, remains unchanged.

Eliza Carter is a writer and Wing member who lives in Brooklyn.

Daisy Alioto is a writer living in the Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, GQ and The Paris Review.

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