Water bottle madness:
Beyond the ‘Stanley cup’
“We are officially in the era of the status water bottle, and it’s only going to get bigger,” said Stephanie McNeal in Glamour. For the past few weeks, the media has been fixated on the “Stanley cup,” the big-handled, 40-ounce insulated water bottle that created in-store frenzies when Target released a hot-pink edition on Dec. 31. The craze for the Stanley Quencher is real, and the story of the Utah-based trio of online influencers who ignited its rise in 2020 is fascinating. “But what on the surface appears to be a strange mania over one specific cup is actually just a peak of what has been a longer trend,” and “the greater the Stanley hype becomes, the more attractive an alternative is seeming.” Not everyone, after all, wants to be seen with the cup adored by 15-year-old girls and suburban moms. An Owala bottle that picked up momentum online in January appears poised to be 2024’s It water vessel. If such crazes were all about daily hydration, a single reusable bottle would be enough for most people, said Alex Abad-Santos in Vox. But Stanley has lifted its sales 10-fold since 2019 by catering to loyalists who each collect the Quencher in various pastel colors, images of which they then share online. So while the demand begins with water and Americans’ conviction that they need to drink lots of it, “slyly, what’s also being sold is the idea of health and hydration as status.” If you buy the right water bottle, goes such thinking, “you will unlock a better, healthier version of yourself.” Better yet, people who recognize the bottle “will see you as one of them.” Living healthy is no longer a goal to be pursued privately. If it were, “the Stanley wouldn’t matter.”