The Girlbossification of Stanley Cups

Real quick up top: I was featured in a news story about microplastics in plastic water bottles! Check it out to read why plastic bottles are harmful to your health, and how you can mitigate these risks! https://www.verywellhealth.com/bottled-water-contains-plastic-particles-8546698

We’re all trying to fill the void in our own ways. Some do it with drugs and alcohol, some do it with Funko Pops, some do it with obsessive skin care routines, and some do it with Stanley Cups.

By now, you’ve likely seen the viral videos: swarms of young women crowding around a display stand to acquire a hot pink tumbler. Collections of ten, twenty, thirty, more Stanley Cups, all to display on a shelf rather than drink from. And of course, Danielle Lettering, the young woman who had a tragic car fire, only to pull her invincible Stanley out of the cup holder and demonstrate that the ice inside had not melted in the heat, who was then gifted a new car by the CEO of Stanley. (At least now I know how to go viral!)

The “Stanley Cup Craze” has, of course, drawn somewhat of a backlash online. It’s not unfair to point out how this falls into the regular toxic discourse around Things Women Be Doing. From Twilight to Ugg Boots to pumpkin spice lattes, any social trend led by women is vigorously dunked upon by people of all ages. There’s usually a “main reason”, of course; Twilight features a toxic age gap relationship, purchasing too many Stanley Cups is counter-intuitively bad for the environment, so on and so forth. But two things can be true at once: just because there are real criticisms to be made of “The Stanley Cup Craze” doesn’t mean that there isn’t misogyny at play as well; men are out here enacting six-figure sales of Pokémon cards, but a few women start buying cups and all of a sudden every commentary YouTuber has to make a video about it.

Still, if (like me) you’re interested in sustainability, riding a social media wave is a good way to get your message out there. People are talking about Stanley Cups? Let’s use this as a chance to talk about overconsumption! It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship: women who are alienated under a misogynistic, consumerist culture fill the void with products, environmental activists make videos about them (partially to make a good point about consumerism, but also often to mock women), the women become further alienated, and the cycle continues. I’m personally very much looking forward to the next time we all start talking about fast fashion again, only to forget about it the next day.

I don’t want to get too down on online activist culture. Social media can be a great tool for sharing your perspective and getting the message out there; I just find myself wondering if we’re ever truly reaching the right people. Let’s talk about class.

The Stanley Cup brand started in 1913 and had always marketed itself to working class men. Ads from the 1970s showed the tumbler getting knocked around at a construction site, falling off buildings into rebar and wheelbarrows, only to end up in the hands of a plaid-shirted Man’s Man, who takes a satisfying sip from a totally-intact canister of coffee. The product’s label proudly states that it’s survived gunfire, hurricanes, multi-thousand foot drops, and more. The Military Antiques Museum in Petaluma, CA displays an “original WWII Stanley thermos that was issued to bomber crews to keep their coffee hot at the high altitudes”. Despite the hyper-masculine legacy of the Stanley brand, you can draw a direct line between the 1978 construction site ad and the viral post-explosion car video: these cups are goddamn invincible, invest now!

How did such a masculine, working-man/nature-lover’s brand become associated with upper-middle-class white women? Mommy bloggers, of course; in the late 2010s, the creators of the Instagram page “The Buy Guide” loved the cup and thought it should be more popular than it was. As legend has it, the group purchased a Stanley for a Bachelor contestant, which got someone who works at Stanley to say “Hey, that’s our cup! Maybe we should get on this whole influencer marketing thing…” and ultimately give thousands of tumblers to The Buy Guide to sell through their website. The rest is history, with a rise in women’s obsession with hydration rising even further with the 2023 WaterTok trend, and crescendoing with Lettering’s viral car explosion.

One can wonder, from “The Buy Guide” authors to Danielle Lettering, that random, unpaid women are doing what should be the work of advertising agencies. At least Lettering was “compensated” (??) for her 95-million-view video that launched Stanley into the stratosphere. But if you think about it, everybody’s who’s made a Stanley Cup video, positive or negative, influencer or civilian, is essentially making an advertisement for the Stanley Cup, for free. This newsletter, unfortunately, is getting YOU, right now, to think about Stanley Cups! STANLEY CUPS!!! Organic marketing saves the day again.

Clearly, this change was successful: what was once a masculine, yet seemingly-pro-sustainability company that launched camo-themed collections with hunting and fishing brand Mossy Oak is now available in every color of the rainbow and collaborating with Starbucks, the Pumpkin Spice Lord itself. There’s even a huge market for Stanley accessories, so now you can treat your invincible car-fire-surviving cup with the gentle care of a newborn baby.