Two girls, one [Stanley] cup

Thoughts and news for the week of January 23rd

Spare your time and mental health. Reclaiming is a weekly feminist roundup with all the essential highlights and action items you need to stay informed without the *chaos* of mainstream media.

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I don’t use TikTok, which I guess explains why I only heard about the Stanley cup craze a few weeks ago. For the uninitiated, TikTokers have elevated Stanley cups - specifically, the Quencher model pictured above - to absolute stratospheric popularity in recent years, reaching an apex in late 2023/early 2024. Videos all over social media highlight people’s (ie, mostly women’s) huge candy-colored collections. Posts show collectors adding silicon trays for convenient snacking and cute straw figurines for customization. And perhaps most derided of all, people are documenting Stanley enthusiasts (again, almost all women) camping out for special collaborations and editions, such as the Starbucks x Stanley Valentine’s Day hot pink mug, which originally sold for $45 and is now on resale sites like Poshmark for up to $200.

@whoslulugirl_2Decided to vlog the whole morning! The cup is so cute!!✨🩷🫶🏻 #stanleyxstarbucks #stanleycup #starbucks #winterpink #stanley #target #vlog

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Right now, it seems like we can’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing some critical think-piece or negative headline about the Stanley cup craze.

There’s a lot at play here.

Before we go further, my thesis: viral trends that center women are always unfairly belittled, attacked, and criticized, and the cultural reaction to the Stanley cup craze illustrates this to a T. But/and/also, the Stanley cup mania is indicative of a larger hyperconsumerist trend, which - regardless of which gender it centers - always deserves critique. These two facts are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true.

Women and femmes are held to a much more restrictive standard when it comes to trends that center our gender. In mainstream and social media, these trends are discussed in significantly more critical ways, often making fun of how we seem to like silly popular things or how vapid we look when wearing/carrying/doing them. Instead of letting women like something we want to like (as long as it isn’t harming anyone, of course), our culture tends to discredit its seriousness — rendering our affinity toward a cup or astrology or green juice or Ugg boots or whatever to a boorish punchline on late-night TV or an insulting Tweet or meme.

This is nothing new. It has always been easy, low-hanging fruit to make fun of women on the internet.

However.

The virality of Stanley cups points to a moment of much larger cultural acceptance of rampant consumerism. We should be calling this out if men glorified needless accumulation, too. (Although, again, I can’t remember a single time the internet covered a male-centered consumer craze like this one, so this may be a biased take.)

There really is no reason to have 37 cups (at $45 a pop) that all have the same purpose: to hold cold water multiple times. This is blatant, destructive, classist hyperconsumerism. Companies like Stanley, including both fast and luxury fashion brands, know exactly what they’re doing by adding exclusive limited-edition “color drops,” creating a sense of scarcity and urgency that fuel a trend’s viral hype. Stanley’s exploitation of this phenomenon is just a bit more ironic: It’s driving overconsumption of an item that - in its own marketing language - is “built for life.” 

Consumerism like this isn’t just needless waste by consumers and companies alike; it’s a symptom of late capitalism that attempts to stratify us into separate classes - those who can afford dozens of the same expensive cups and those of us who can’t. We are absolutely trapped in “style-driven” consumerism that signifies our status. And underlying this truth is the cup’s connection to wellness, an increasingly exclusive, mostly white, upper-class status symbol.

There’s just something about the Stanley cup that has gripped our attention. Whether it’s the media’s unbalanced fixation with trends driven by women or the rampantly harmful consumerism of an object that has the same purpose across all colors and patterns, there’s a lot here to discuss.

I’d love to hear your take - is this sexism, or well-deserved critique? Send me a note or drop your thoughts in the comments.

Until next week, I love you -

Sarah

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Rec of the Week

I started reading

Laura McKowen

’s work last year when I got sober, and she’s been a favorite ever since. I admire her honesty and vulnerability in this episode, which is perfect for anyone in recovery from ANYTHING, not just alcohol or substances. I read her book We Are the Luckiest early on in my sobriety, and I’m not sure I would’ve been as successful during those hard days without her beautiful, raw, painful, hopeful words.

Witch of the Week

E. Jean Carroll

A jury is deciding how much money, if any, Tr*mp must pay Ms. Carroll for defaming her in 2019, the year she first accused him of raping her decades earlier in a department store dressing room. In May, jurors in a separate trial awarded Ms. Carroll a little more than $2m after finding him liable for the rape, and $3m after finding that he defamed her. It is no secret that he is the most corrupt mob boss bully in the US, so we send all of our love and protective energy to this incredibly brave witch.

Feminist News Bulletin

1. House Republicans introduced legislation that would block a rule prohibiting states from sending federal funds to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.

2. Abortion rights advocates in Missouri launched a ballot initiative campaign to establish a right to abortion in the state constitution.

3. Spellman, a historically Black women’s college, received a $100 million donation, the single largest gift ever to a historically Black college.

4. Over 130 women who were inmates in a California prison allege they experienced widespread sexual abuse by the guards in a new lawsuit.¹

5. Eight Republican lawmakers (seven of them men) in Kansas introduced a bill completely banning abortion, despite Kansans voting less than two years ago to keep protections for the procedure in the state constitution.

Final Thoughts

1. Source for 1 - 4: The Week in Women