Stanley Cups and the Cult of Overconsumption
By now, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen the video of people at Target rushing the seasonal Stanley cup display, apparently desperate to snag the latest colors of the now massively popular drinking vessel brand. And even if you haven’t come across the video until now, you’ve probably at least heard about the Stanley cup hype sweeping the internet (and maybe your gym and workplace as well).
The brightly colored cups, which range from around $20 to $60, are the middle class status symbol du jour, with the most exclusive colors supposedly commanding the most respect from fellow collectors. I get it—the cups seem sturdy, maybe even indestructible—and they’re cute, especially if you opt for one of the more eye-popping colors. But shoppers are now harboring whole Stanley cup collections, collecting the most obscure colors so they can, I suppose, have a Stanley that matches every single outfit in their closets.
These collections have caused a stir on the internet, with critics claiming that massive Stanley cup collections are textbook overconsumption, our society’s capitalistic tendencies run amok. They’re right. These are reusable water bottles specifically made to be durable. They’re meant to be reused. You shouldn’t need 15, or eight, even three Stanley cups sitting around in your cabinets, ready to be filled with water once a month when they finally get their turn in the water bottle rotation.
But we don’t like to be told that we’re consuming too much. As economic inequality in this country (and across the world) reaches a fever pitch, we want to be able to enjoy our small luxuries, our pretty $45 water bottles that inform others that we at least have enough money to jump on the latest water bottle trend. Some have even claimed that the criticism around Stanley cup collections can be boiled down to misogyny, which is an argument that, coming from a person who believes that many of the world’s ills can be boiled down to misogyny, is intellectually dishonest at best and downright stupid at worst. Others repeat that phrase that’s often used to justify our problematic behaviors: “Let people enjoy things.”
Firstly, not everything a woman does equals feminism. Overconsumption feeds into a global capitalist structure that causes widespread environmental destruction that at this point overwhelmingly affects people in the Global South, who, ironically, statistically consume the least. It’s not feminist to uphold this structure because feminism should work to free the most disadvantaged of us, not white suburban women in Lululemon yoga pants who want another hot pink water bottle to add to their Stanley cup collection.