Madhappy or Madexclusive?
By Anna Kim
I first heard of Madhappy from friends who told me that they made the “most comfortable sweatshirts ever!” So, as a lover of athleisure, I had to check them out. I browsed their website and found that their simple hoodies were topping $150! After learning about the brand, I started noticing it on other students, Tik Tok stars, and celebrities. I googled the brand again online and found that the company promotes mental health awareness, a topic that I am quite passionate about. I initially found the emphasis on positive mental health ironic since consumerism is associated with lower levels of happiness. I grappled with the ethical dilemma that appeared in front of me. Was the brand’s promotion of mental health awareness superficial and ironic, or was it actually helping to increase awareness about the importance of mental health?
I mulled over this question with my friends, and one of them expressed her skepticism about brands’ promoting social causes and opined that the two should not be combined. I saw her point; other brands have been accused of using social causes to better their brands’ images without actually supporting the identified causes. For example, the cycling and lifestyle brand Soul Cycle famously promoted LGBTQ+ rights for Pride Month, while their billionaire investor used earnings to fund Trump’s re-election campaign.
My conversation with a friend left me skeptical, and I approached the overwhelmingly positive articles about Madhappy’s social justice activism cynically. The website markets Madhappy as an “inclusive” community around mental health. Could a brand that required a $150 price tag to rep it really be inclusive? Did the brand’s use of mental health awareness gentrify the issue of mental health? I, for one, found this so-called community very exclusive.
I decided to take a more critical look at the Madhappy website and how the company branded itself in relation to mental health awareness. I was not impressed with the flowery “about us” statement that ended with: “Sometimes we’re mad. Sometimes we’re happy. However, in spite of all this, or maybe because of all it, we can always be Madhappy.” This seemed like a pretty glossed-over account of mental health. The brand seemed to look at mental health through rose-tinted glasses. Then again, poor mental health is not the best selling point.
Was I being too hard on a brand that was trying to do a good thing?
I decided to take a more diplomatic approach to my evaluation and look for some of the positives of Madhappy’s commitment to mental health awareness. I found that Madhappy allows you to donate $1 with each purchase to a charity of your choice, including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Though it does not seem like much, the annual revenue of Madhappy was over a million dollars in 2018. Madhappy customers had a chance to help donate to causes that actually put what Madhappy said they stand for to the test. I also found a section on the Madhappy website called “The Local Optimist,” which hosts resources, stories about mental health, and even lists a free mental health hotline that anyone can text for mental health peer support. With this new information in hand, I found myself growing fonder of Madhappy’s support of mental health awareness.
After talking with friends and a bit of googling, I believe the benefits that Madhappy presents around the topic of mental health outweigh the costs because they have tangible initiatives to promote mental health: generating regular donations, providing resources, and publicizing their own mental health text-line. I still worry about Madhappy promoting some kind of gated mental health advocacy model, but I find it more important to be talking about mental health in the first place through an avenue that usually ignores mental health: fashion. Other comparable designer athleisure brands such as Aviator Nation and Bandier shy away from such social justice topics. That said, I, like my friend, remain skeptical about this new trend of brands’ embracing social justice issues and will continue to take the time to consider the actual impact, if any, of such claimed support.