Middle schoolers are being bullied for not having Stanley tumblers: They ‘laugh and point’

Navigating the trials and tribulations of middle school popularity is something preteen girls know all too well, with status markers such as what sports, extracurricular activities and friend groups they’re part of.

Now, that includes what brand of water bottle they have.

The viral Stanley tumbler has become a symbol of popularity in middle schools — and even elementary schools — and those who don’t have one are now subject to bullying, The Cut reported.

A 13-year-old named Dahlia wasn’t the popular girl at her Dallas middle school, having been the new girl last school year, but when she walked into school with her Stanley cup, all of a sudden she was no longer invisible.

“Every day when I get into school at like 7:45 a.m., everybody comes over to me like, ‘Oh my God, I like your Stanley!’ or ‘It’s so cool, I want a Stanley just like yours!’” the eighth-grader told the outlet. “It makes me feel like I’m famous and being swarmed by paparazzi.”

Dahlia isn’t the only girl who admitted to gaining popularity thanks to the $45 Stanley Quencher Tumbler.

“I’m, like, a little bit more popular now, and I’ve been getting more friends because of it,” Madalyn, a 9-year-old from Kentucky who owns five Stanleys, told The Cut.

But while Stanleys have the power to make a preteen girl feel like the Regina George of their school, not having one — or worse, having another brand — is so-called social suicide.

“I wouldn’t say any of them are actually my friends,” Dahlia from Dallas told The Cut. “They only talk to me in the morning when I’m holding my Stanley.”

In a viral TikTok, Dayna Motycka shared that her 9-year-old daughter was made fun of at school for not having a name-brand Stanley.

For Christmas, her daughter got a $9.98 cup from Walmart that she thought was cute.

“On the second day back to school after Christmas break, she comes home…she’s just upset,” the mom shared. “[Some of] the other girls in her grade…got Stanleys for Christmas and they made sure to let her know that [hers] is not a real Stanley, that this is fake and it’s not as cool.”

Jamie Sherman also told The Cut that girls pass her 11-year-old niece in school hallways and “laugh and point” because her Stanley dupe isn’t real, even though it looks exactly the same minus the brand logo.

“Now, she doesn’t want to bring it to school and she doesn’t want to use it.”

And it’s not really an exaggeration that “all the kids have a Stanley.”

A sixth-grade teacher from Mississippi told The Cut that about half of her students own a Stanley cup and carry them around school.

“​​I wish I could have taken a picture today at lunch. At this one table, it was like every girl had a Stanley cup,” Nicole Walker said.

“I asked one student, ‘Why did you want to get a Stanley?’ And she said, ‘Because everybody else had one, so I just feel like I needed to have one to fit in.’”

The drinkware has been such a huge craze that it was seemingly the most popular holiday gift among Gen Z and people have been waiting in long lines and rushing to get their hands on one of their own.

One video on TikTok posted by Victoria Robino shows customers pushing and shoving to get the limited-edition Valentine’s Day Stanley — Stanley’s exclusive Galentine’s Collection available only at Target.

According to Amazon search data, the insulated 40-oz Stanley Quencher Tumbler with a side handle and straw was a top-searched product on the platform this holiday season.

The main selling points of the portable cups are the insulation that can keep a drink cold for hours, the rotating lid and the slim base that can easily fit into a car cupholder.

Meanwhile, despite all the frantic buying, Casey Lewis, a youth consumer trends analyst who writes the newsletter After School, told Business Insider that she thinks the hype is already dying down.

“They are absolutely on their way out. This is peak Stanley,” she proclaimed. “There’s no up from here!”