on the emotional support stanley cup
a story on why buying into trends is probably not a good idea
here’s my current water bottle situation:
a 40oz hydro flask for home, and
a 16oz nalgene for adventures
it’s a good situation, a reliable one, and i never gave this duo a second thought until the internet introduced a reason for me to.
cue: the stanley cup
i’m a gullible girl who likes shopping: i.e. america’s perfect consumer. i’d watch a popeyes commercial with flying cgi drumsticks and crave some fried chicken after dinner and dessert. i’d learn that hourglass marked 20% off their gorgeous ambient lighting palettes on black friday and immediately bought one, even though i hardly wear makeup outside my eyes.
so a stranger online could tell me that my perfectly flawless hydro flask needed an upgrade because it neither has a straw nor fits in a car’s cupholder…even though i don’t have a car.
i started scouring the internet for the 40oz stanley quencher, specifically for the warm serene brushstrokes color—a sold out color nationwide, part of the highly-anticipated clean slate collection. imagine my excitement when an email from dick’s sporting goods popped up one morning, notifying me that the $45.99 tumbler i’d been hunting for for weeks was finally in stock.
unfortunately, our romance was short lived
one night, water pooled onto my beloved carpet, stinging my bare feet with the stanley’s infamously-insulated ice cold.
i scratched my head; the stanley was a quarter-filled before my clumsy incident left it with nothing, and there was simply no way that much water could have spilled from a straw that quickly. i waddled to the pantry, first to grab paper towels to soak up the regurgitated liquid, then to refill my water. but opening the stanley’s lid was almost an impossible task, so much so that my hands hurt from the operation.
how could a lid that was screwed on this tightly be so prone to leakage? i thought, before deciding to conduct a little mid-week experiment: i filled the stanley with tap water, screwed its lid on, and held it by the boot.
and water began to pour from every imaginable corner all over my sink. think the straw, its opening, the lid’s rim… almost like a pressurized shower head.
i was horrified; i hadn’t considered that the infamous stanley cup that took the internet by storm, resold on ebay and stockx for almost double its retail price, demanded overnight lines outside target during the holidays, did not possess the bare minimum quality of a water bottle: leak-proof.
but because of the stanley’s beautiful construction and gorgeous insulation that lasted hours, i was willing to tolerate its antics and just vowed to be more careful next time.
…until the internet started catching onto the stanley cup trend’s absurdity.
the final (leaky) straw
i was alerted, via an instagram reel sent by a friend (which is how i get most of my pop culture news these days), that the magic behind stanley’s infamous insulation was because it tested positive… for lead.
my straw-sipping stanley-forgiving self was mortified, to say the least. though a stanley owner shouldn’t be concerned about lead poisoning unless the cup’s bottom seal is compromised, brands like hydro flask and owala quickly declared that their insulation is perfectly lead-free, even in the hidden places.
the moral of the story
i have decided, in light of the above events, to return my stanley cup. i contemplated reselling it online for a profit, but decided to do the world a favor by retaining the stanley at its retail value. but not all breakups have to end badly. in fact, this rollercoaster of a romance with my stanley cup has taught me five valuable lessons:
to be grateful for what i have,
to be vigilant about internet trend bombs,
that drinking a lot of water is good for you,
that pretty colors often signal poison in the wild, and
thank you for stopping by,
<3 tasha