What Is the Stanley Cup Craze Really About? I Have a Few Ideas.
The Stanley Quencher H2.0, which has been trending on TikTok and inspiring stampedes at Target, is a quintessentially American vessel: great for people who love ice, who drive cars, or who are Just Too Busy to refill a smaller cup throughout the day. Until my editor asked me, in the wake of the craze, if I had “a reusable water bottle philosophy”—I write about climate change—I knew nothing about the Stanley.
Friends filled me in: The insulated walls keep the contents cold all day. The base fits in cupholders; the handle makes it easier to sip from a heavy thermos while multitasking. A standard Stanley cup holds 40 ounces and runs $45. As my sister-in-law explained, it’s the expensive, brand-name version of a cup she got from Costco. “Except it’s been cult-ified,” she said. It’s basically a Big Gulp with a glow-up.
On the one hand, good: A reusable cup is better than going through endless plastic bottles, cups, and straws. There are worse things than Americans getting really into fancy water bottles. A status symbol that comes with a lifetime warranty—that feels hopeful for the planet.
But, of course, people aren’t just buying one and using it for life. To keep plastic out of oceans and to cut carbon emissions, reusable cups need to be used and reused, again and again, not hauled around for a season or two (or paired with an outfit) and then relegated to the back of the cupboard when a new model becomes hot. (Remember S’well?)
Water bottle brands are fads. My reusable water bottle philosophy, if I have one, is that the best water bottle is the one you already have. That’s what’s good for the planet. But what reusable water bottles have become in our culture is very much not about environmentalism. They don’t fly off shelves because we care about plastic-free oceans, but, as with any fad, because we want to fit in. For this fad in particular, there’s also something else going on: Water bottles play to our thirst for perfect hydration.
Hydration, we’ve been told, is the answer to just about everything. In addition to keeping us alive, water helps us detox, supports glowy #cleangirl skin, and keeps us focused. Being hydrated gives us a competitive edge. Planners and habit apps help us diligently track eight glasses a day or more. We cannot, the ethos goes, be trusted to get enough water into our bodies on our own. We require help, and fancy tools.
As Slate’s Decoder Ring explored in a 2021 episode titled “The Invention of Hydration,” the fear that we might not be getting enough water was first popularized to help sell Gatorade. It was perfected to sell bottled water; today it helps move various reusable bottles off the shelves, from Stanleys to the Yetis that were in vogue before them, to “motivational” bottles that cheerfully encourage you to keep drinking water.
Getting enough water is not nearly as hard as we think. Humans obviously need water to survive. But the inherited wisdom—drink eight, 8-ounce glasses of water a day (about one and a half 40-ounce Stanleys)—is misleading. It comes from a 1945 recommendation for someone with a 2,000-calorie diet. But it includes water from all kinds of food and drinks: Downing eight glasses of straight water a day was never actually the goal.
Foods like watermelon and soup help us hydrate; so do less obvious things, like spinach. According to a 2022 paper, food might fill 20 to 50 percent of our daily hydration need. Coffee and tea also count. A 2014 study found that for coffee drinkers who were used to having caffeine in their systems, coffee was just as hydrating as water (the diuretic effect may negatively impact hydration if you drink a lot of coffee, or if you aren’t used to drinking any coffee at all).
While water bottles nudge us to imagine hydration as an individual responsibility, coffee and tea remind us that it can be a social joy. The coffee klatch, the afternoon cuppa; traditionally, hydration has been a byproduct not of careful management, but of quality time. Maybe you don’t need another water bottle. Maybe what you actually need is a tea kettle—or a workplace where people have time to take breaks. (Unsurprisingly, hospital workers see themselves as water bottle trend bellwethers.)
Of course, many people do need lots of water to be hydrated—and are perfectly justified in toting it around. Gender, body composition, and age all change how much we should drink; so does anything that makes us work harder: exercising, fighting infections, or sweating to cool down. Nursing moms (another early Stanley cup market) typically drink more water than they did prior to nursing. Where dehydration is a real threat is for farm workers, particularly as global temperatures heat up.
As it turns out, drinking when you feel thirsty, as long as you aren’t drinking something super sugary, is a pretty good way to stay about as hydrated as you need to be. No complicated calculations needed. Pause and notice your body; then pause and take care of your needs. If another reusable water bottle is helpful for meeting those needs—get one. Ideally at a thrift store.
But the reusable water bottle craze is not just about our physical needs. Achieving peak hydration offers a sense of control in an uncertain world. Emotional Support Water Bottles can serve as psychological ballasts. When we feel insecure—whether we fear layoffs or a shifting of the social winds or the climate apocalypse—humans have an uncanny ability to allow objects to fill the void. You don’t need a new water bottle. You don’t need to overhydrate to be great. But you do deserve to feel safe. The better we get at supporting each other, the more resilient we will be when the next water bottle fad arrives.
