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And then you said, you're not deaf me. So I got over here because I need to get to the end line. There was no line. There is a lot. Because we already knew our place. And some of the police. Amanda, can you can you describe what is happening in this video? Well, outside the doors of a target that has not yet opened. It's a sunny day. There is a long line stretching out into the parking lot from just outside the doors. And there is a 30-ish year old man in a gray quarters.
Are going with a slightly older woman in a black jacket over whether or not he is cutting in line. The line seems to be with the woman. The man does not have a lot of allies in this scenario. I love to. They all look like me at the end of a sleepover when I was 18 years old. Right? Like they all literally look like they rolled out of bed and are wrapped in these puffy coats.
And you just at one point, she says the woman who was at the front of the line. Like we've been here since 3 a.m. Amanda, what are they standing in line for? There are Stanley cups at stake. And specifically I think in this video, a collaboration between Stanley and Starbucks that is available only at Starbucks locations within target stores. And it's a special pink cup. This is the culture study podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. I'm Amanda Moll. I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic.
So Stanley cups, the drinking vessel, not the hockey prize. That's what we're talking about today because of very strong listener demand. And we're also going to talk a lot about just water bottles generally and hydration fetishization. So Amanda, how would you describe the timeline of water bottle trends? Water bottle trends go pretty far back. It's interesting because this is a trend cycle that like I could sort of see different people sort of like clue into at different moments.
Like it got bigger and bigger and bigger. But like the whole idea of water bottles being trendy goes back to, well reusable water bottles goes back to the 2000s. When Nalgeans first became sort of a thing on college campus. I would even date it to 1999, which is when I bought my first Nalgeans. But I also lived in the Pacific Northwest. So early adopter. Early adopter and it had the like gray with blue top. Yes, that's a very classic Nalgean colorway.
Yeah. And then they introduced like fluorescent colors. And that was like, there were four of them. Like there wasn't like this proliferation. Right. Go ahead. By the time I got to college at the University of Georgia in 2004 in the student bookstore on campus, you could buy a university of Georgia branded Nalgean. And those were very, very popular among incoming freshmen. Yes, I was sure. And you just like hold it by the top, right, which is actually very grippable. I would say.
And it kind of swings and it's heavy. And the other thing I'll say that maybe people of my micro generation will recognize. And I'm curious to see if you do this too. I still refer to my water bottle oftentimes as a Nalgean. Like I'll say, where's my Nalgean? Like a Kleenex. Yes. Like the brand is superimposed.
It is in some cases like Kleenex or Band-Aid type of thing where especially I think of water bottles that are transparent plastic that like very hard plastic as Nalgean's like I have a Yeti. I have a Yeti Nalgean essentially. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's so funny. Yeah, there's like there's Nalgeans and there's insulated water bottles.
So those I think were like the first like trendy reusable water bottles. But and I wrote about how this has sort of all changed over the years like way back in 2018, 2019. Because at the time, like swells were the big thing, which like this sort of like curvy, like girly with the screw top lids. Yes. And those were huge and hydroflask. I have owned and do own several hydroflasks. Those were the big things because they came in like pastel colors. They were very popular among teenagers.
And then you get sort of into the Yeti thing is like men are like, well, I'd like a water bottle. And Yeti is like, I'd like to sell you a water bottle. So you get like a bunch of those. And those have like a whole different regional valence than like the early water bottles too because those are from where I'm from. Yeah.
Those are from the south. So you get like, you know, every every water bottle brand has sort of it's like cultural valence to it. Like who is this the water bottle for and that we do this with a lot of consumer goods. But even before all of this started happening in the early 2000s, late 90s, depending on what part of the country you were in, you had this entire run of trendy bottled water.
And this is I think where the idea of like trendy hydration really started when you get the Evion, you get then Fiji water, you get this idea that carrying water around is a like healthy for you in evidence of like putting value in yourself. And like you're spending money on it and you understand, you know, which brands are supposed to be the best.
These like labeled water bottles are are very, very trendy. They are accessories unto themselves. And then we sort of start to realize that it's that like it's not a great idea to use all that plastic. So that's where you get I think this transition into using the reusable water bottles and that sort of induces demand for all of these brands that now make them.
So much of what I learned about hydration craze, which is something that I think a lot of people around our age group are like, I only drink water out of drinking fountains. I was like a shriveled shell of dehydration as a child. And now like kids are in maxed hydration all of the time. I learned a lot from the Dakota ring podcast from sleep.
And I have a great episode on hydration that I recommend very strongly to anyone that also interviews a lot of academics on like the history of bottled water consumption and how we came to think of this. But I think this is a good segue for us to actually dig a little bit more into this idea with hydration. So we got so many questions. We received more questions for this episode than any other episode so far. So we are going to get right into it.
Next one comes from Katie and Melody is going to read it. Where are we all in a constant state of dehydration before the water bottle era? Do you think there's some connection between the rise of processed food with excess sodium and the increase in thirst? Okay, so I want to caveat this first to say that in the past when I have made comments about the rise of hydration fascination, hydration fetishization.
People have been like, I had a tweet go viral where people are like, what's wrong with this bitch? Like there, does she want us all to like be in pain and have headaches all the time? Like I wasn't against hydration. I'm not against hydration. I am upset. I'm that person who like when someone when my partner Charlie your co-workers says, oh, I have a little bit of a headache or like any element.
Oh, if you're drunk enough water today, like that is always my go to fix. But at the same time, I think there is very, very clear shift in how we've thought about the necessity of hydration or even the word hydration. So what's your thinking on this? Yeah, I think that sometimes people can misapprehend the urge to like understand how something functions in culture and how it is function within culture has changed as like criticism of the thing itself.
Like drinking water is good. I love drinking water. It's good idea for everybody to drink water. A lot of people probably don't drink quite enough. The idea that it's good to drink water is like not something I think that like anybody anybody here is critical of it and of itself. I love it. I'm drinking water while we're speaking. Yeah, absolutely.
But like it is very, very interesting the way that like this idea becomes like sort of a marker of wellness overall in a way that it's almost like axiomatic. This is how we understand what a healthy person is. They drink water. They get enough sleep. They do certain things. They walk 10,000 steps. Like there are all these sort of like factoids that we invoke.
And like if you do all of these things, then you're healthy. And like what does that mean? Is it correct? Like why did my parents never drink any water as long as I you know as long as I lived in their household. But then suddenly like we're all going to die if we don't drink water. They just die.
I just think about like my granddad who's I'm sure the only water that he drank during the day was either like if he felt an incredible thirst and like chugged a glass of water that he poured at the top and like drink it at the sink. Do you know what I mean? Or water that was in gin ice cubes that were in his gin and tonne. Like that is how he got his water and was you know smoking several packs of cigarettes a day.
I kind of think that the baseline for our grandparents generation for many in our grandparents generation was just like kind of feeling bad all the time. Yes, I think this is this is like a broader topic that I'm sort of obsessed with because I think that there we have a lot of folk beliefs as like a generation like people who are like I would say like 40 45 and under that like a couple of generations ago.
People's health was a lot better because they they ate better food they interacted with like pure things in life. And like when you actually go back and look at the habits of like the greatest generation. The greatest generation was like constantly suited on diet pills. They were they drank like several times more than than the average person does now. They drank coffee all day and it was shit coffee. They were drinking like poll juice and just like ripping on unfiltered cigarettes.
Right unfiltered cigarettes that they started at like age 12 like my granddad literally started smoking at age 12 and smoked until age 82. Right. Yeah unfiltered cigarettes led in the gasoline. No seat belts in the cars. Like there was a lot of like fascinating ways to to die or become ill that we are pretty shielded from now. And like which is not to say that like culture is like healthy now.
But I do think that this idea that that we have changed so much from the worst in our health habits over time. Like just really does not stand up to scrutiny. I'm interested in the ways and this I think comes from my own context of watching Nalgene's which I actually really bought to go ahead. I thought to go hiking with like we had early Nalgene's or even something like a Stanley thermos which the early iterations were.
Here's a thermos that either you take to work or you take when you're going hunting or fishing right like it had this very specific utility. And often it contained coffee like you could use the the lid to drink little cups of coffee throughout the day. Yeah. Like it often was not it was not water at all. No. And that has then transferred over into a necessity for everyday life.
And I think there's some parallels that maybe you can tease out here with like aquisure or ideas about nutrition and hydration and even like fueling that are pertin parcel of this like optimization and wellness idea that like even if you're the most rigorous exercise that you do during the day is like walking your dog. That you still need to be hydrated as if you were training for a marathon.
Yeah. I think that something that is interesting over time is what our idea of like an elite lifestyle is when most people had to toil outside every day. The way to live like a luxurious high status life was to be inside and to not have to deal with the outdoors at all. And then you see with you know the industrial revolution a lot of work both physical work and non physical moves inside and then with the technological revolution. It moves even further inside to the internet.
So suddenly it's really difficult for a lot of people to get out of their houses to get as much movement as they should spend as much time in in nature in the outdoors as they might have in previous generations. So that becomes what is sort of aspirational this concept of being able to go to the gym and being able to spend time sort of fine tuning your body to spend time in nature to spend time at the beach is very very high status.
So with that you get all of the sort of like physical material trappings of that status you get athleisure which you know wearing it implies that you know maybe you didn't just come from a yoga class or from the gym. But it implies that you are a person who does those things because you have always ready. Yeah you're always ready. Yeah spontaneous yoga just right now.
You have all the equipment for it you're available to go to yoga you are a person who who values these activities and who participates in them. So that is like the weight those the material goods that are associated with these activities become high status goods even though they're not quote unquote luxury goods.
They're a little bit expensive like a Stanley cop is 45 bucks for the big size but mostly they are something that signals that you spend time and money and effort on these activities that are considered aspirational and high status. So with that comes the water bottles and and when it's you know in a in a culture where it is considered aspirational and high status to concentrate on your health and to fine tune your body and to treat yourself well.
Then a water bottle even if it doesn't directly signal I'm coming from the gym it signals that you are somebody who has the time and resources and knowledge and a lot of this is like knowledge. That you're supposed to have and you're supposed to acquire to do the correct things to improve your life as much as like a very rich person could. Okay so this next question comes from Alex and it's about the nature of the discourse.
What is the men's equivalent of the Stanley Cup or insert other FEM coded consumer trend here and why aren't they getting roasted online about it? What can we start roasting the men about? Okay so first we talked a little bit about the Yeti. Do you agree that water bottles more generally are like a FEM coded consumer trend?
I think that they are mostly FEM but I think that that has equaled out significantly in the past few years especially with like the sort of advent of the Yeti branding for for drinking vessels. And you see this in other areas of consumer goods as well where things that were previously intended for women's like physical and appearance upkeep have become more interesting to men.
And sometimes that's good sometimes that's bad it just like it's good for men to feel like they have the freedom to express themselves however they want to and and deal with their bodies however they want to but like it's probably bad for them to be feeling like even more pressure about that in the way that women do.
Yeah it's one of those shitty things where it's like we don't want like the equalization to be like men should also feel like the incredibly toxic pressure that women feel to have their body regimented in certain ways like that's not that's not a quality right. Right. Equality of pressure is not equality like theoretically it would be a quality of choice and like the ability to you know self-determined what your body looks like and how you treat it and whatever way you want to.
I think it's so fascinating that water bottle design does feel gender coded to me like you were talking earlier about the swell bottles and how like they're curvy and they just feel more feminine. And then I think of like my partners yet he that he has which is giant it's like 24 ounces man portion of water maybe it's 36 ounces and then the top is like a huge screw top right in the mouth is big for like man mouth right.
Yeah it's just so much bigger yeah I had it would be the size of my thigh like it's not a desirable water bottle for me but do you think like that sort of like that's part of how they marketed to men. Yeah I think that like water bottles are sort of a fascinating design challenge as far as like consumer goods go because like we've had the technology to keep water cold in this kind of vessel for like a really long time like like the technology itself to like do the practical thing is not new.
We've had the patent for like a century and it works basically the same as it always has like it has not changed a whole lot and different companies use like slightly different methods for insulation but like this is a thing that we can do this these are products we can fabricate it's not like it's not rocket science it's not something that came up in the past 10 years.
So you really get this opportunity like once you have a you know a vessel that can hold some amount of water you can sort of do whatever else to it you want as far as like how you make it look how you how sharp or curvy the edges are what kind of colors it comes in what kind of metallic finishes you have in the metal parts like do you put a handle on it or do you not like this is a big thing about the Stanley for me and maybe we'll get into this later but like I think one of the reasons that the Stanley became so popular with women is that like
you know 30 to 32 ounce water bottles were already popular among this group like lots of people had the hydroflasks I knew women who were buying yet he's already when the when the Stanley became popular like these were these were out there.
There was a lot of brands that made bright colors so it wasn't just that it was only Stanley that was looking for the feminine audience but a big problem with like a large capacity water bottle is that women on average have smaller hands I have I personally have like tiny baby hands I
know that like I will drink as much water as I have in front of me so if I have like a like a drinking glass of water that is easy for me to hold like it might be eight hours before I get up and refill it because I'll just the hyper focus and time will pass and you know who knows what happens in that period but if I have 40 ounces right there I'll drink 40 ounces and I will feel better and sleep better and you know I will have plausibly done something
better for my health but like the 30 to 32 ounce water bottles that are just a cylinder like I have a hard time gripping them when they're full they're heavy they're a little bit big around like and especially if I'm taking it to the gym or
something and I'm sweating and it's a little bit wet and like it just is really hard to keep a hold on while you're and then you have to like unscrew it to sip or whatever it like it is just like a whole thing and I have tiny baby hands and I never really liked it.
The reason I got the Stanley is because it has a handle like I I saw a lot of people like that I didn't jump on immediately but I was like you know a lot of people seem to like these I have not been using my hydroflask at home as much as I would like to because it's like I don't know it's just annoying to deal with in a knowing to grab the handle is interesting so like why don't I try it and I love it like it's so much easier to grab it especially with one hand.
So I think that that was like a design issue that a lot of these companies had that they maybe didn't realize they had because like big water bottles with a handle like did exist but companies weren't really putting them on bottles of like the 30 to 40 ounce size at the time and I honestly think that that was like the innovation that people were like oh this makes so much more sense you can carry it securely with one hand you don't have to screw it off to sip it's got a straw.
So I think that in sort of the rush to make water bottles that looked good for women that a lot of companies sort of missed the functional aspects that might be valuable to women in particular and especially to moms which is where the Stanley's first took off and I think that that is sort of like a fascinating element of this and I think it got sort of glossed over in a lot of people trying to explain the trend I think that that is why the Stanley over all of them took off I think one of them was going to take off and it just happened to be a lot of people trying to explain the trend.
So I think that is why the Stanley over all of them took off I think one of them was going to take off and it just happened to be the Stanley because of that.
Yeah and I think Stanley was also maybe not so precious about oh we make water bottles for athletes right like this actually reminds me in some ways about how part of Hocus success stems from it's real willingness to make shoes that are quote unquote athletic shoes that aren't for people who are necessarily running right whereas another company like say Brooks or something.
It's like oh but we still got to make sure that this is a running shoe and Hocus like now we want people to wear these for everything and the thing about a Stanley cup and part of the reason why I don't have one is it is top heavy it's not great for putting when like a peloton thing it's not great for using necessarily at the gym like it doesn't have that utility which is fine it has so many other utilities but you can't pretend that it's necessarily like the best exercise or hiking water bottle right I would never take that.
I would never take my Stanley outside of my house I. I well the one time that I did it I had to rent a car in my 13 years in New York City this is the first time I drove a car in the city I had to rent a car to drive out to the middle of Pennsylvania to do a site visit for a story I wrote about return facilities.
And so I knew that I was going to have like a two and a half hour drive each way and I was like well normally I'd have my water bottle with me so I guess I'm taking my Stanley on the road and but just but just having it in my hand to like take the train down to the rental car place and pick up the rental car I felt a little bit silly you have to like march with it like a great.
And it's so big I was like I know I know this is a little bit silly this is not normally where I would go with this but it was in the car great like it's at the cup holder I know that something that a lot of people appreciate about it and I can totally see why that why that would be but like can't take the thing to the gym like.
Or like put it in your backpack right like it doesn't fit it will tip over yeah there's definitely like some things that like my hydro flasks still do with me they go to the gym with me they you know they they do a lot of the like if I went to the beach I would take my hydro flask with me I did see I was at the beach in January and I did see a couple a couple girls at the the beach who had their standlies with them and I was like God bless if you brought that on a plane to get here.
And are like exposing it the wide surface area on the top to the sand right yeah go with God yeah I brought my yeti with the screw top for that the the sort of plane plastic one without any insulation it was like this is lightweight when there's no water in it goes on the plane it's fine. So we didn't come up with a masculine coded equivalent and I think our advice would be like we don't need a roast men for their consumption habits let's just not roast anyone.
What I would say about that though is this question confused me because I wasn't exactly sure what she was getting at is if it's something that like fills this role for men or if it's just there is a consumption pattern that is equally sort of like inscrutable from the outside that men do and I think the latter thing they're absolutely are and there's a zillion of them like gamer rigs decorating your like gaming cave
beer releases yes lining up for Legos like the one thing that I got into about my in my story about this is that Stanley is a consumer phenomenon looks strange when it sort of surfaces to you out of nowhere and you don't have any context on it but like this phenomenon of people like waiting outside of a store for a new release or whatever is happening constantly you're just not in the parking lot at nine in the morning when when people are are being let in to get their you know limited edition sets.
Whatever like this is really really common and not gender at all yeah shoes sneakers he have been huge about this for years. The ones that are specifically male coated I think are sneakers Legos anything to do with gaming I think men definitely get roasted for certain types of consumption habits that they have and for this consumption pattern of behavior you might not be in the communities that are roasting them I think because a lot of yeah a lot of who I saw roasting Stanley
couple owners were other women it was not just purely men doing this I think men roast other men for this kind of stuff a lot I think that because women make up an outsized portion of the consumer market and there's a you know there's historical reasons for that. I think that often our consumer habits are surfaced a little bit more easily to the culture at large but I would say that this sort of behavior replicates itself in all kinds of cohorts of humans no matter gender.
And it also say part of the reason that we roast people for it there's like two twin forces happening there's this understanding that like it's a hysteria right like that there's a feminizing that happens so like when men are competing for these objects it is in a behavior style that we associate with women and with like irrational behavior and then also there's like a very muted but very present capitalist critique that's like how can you be this excited about buying.
And I don't think it's necessarily like an actual like don't buy anything like it's not like a Marxist critique it's more like how can you believe that someone is this excited about buying an object right and I think both of those.
Understandings are pretty misplaced I think that they are to and especially this idea that people find it sort of inexplicable to be excited about buying an object I think that people do a lot of internal justification that their fixations are somehow like objectively superior to the fixations that they don't understand you can see this conversation sort of play out in like little interpersonal interactions on the internet about the Stanley cups all over the place.
And then there's a lot of things where the Stanley couple will come around and somebody will you know or it'll come up on a subreddit for people who collect something else and yes yeah and and somebody will be like how can you like spend all this time on a water bottle and someone reply to them and go you know you're on an internet message board about stuffed animals right.
You know that this is like you know and and they'll respond again and go but this is like objectively that and they're really well made and they're you know and we all have these sort of justifications for why the things were obsessed with are more rational and more justifiable than the things other people are obsessed with and maybe they are to us maybe they fit like some practical or emotional need for us that a water bottle wouldn't.
But this is like this is like one of the most replicable modern human behaviors I have ever come across like everybody is like this about something even if you don't believe you are yeah yeah so I just wrote about Dalia's and there's like this there's a whole bunch of stuff that's going on in the Dalia world right now what's called the Dalia wars and there's all this competition for unicorns and and the way that I finished the piece was asking people how is this behavior replicated in your niche expertise or hobby.
And people all over there like this is how this happens in civil war memorabilia collection like this is how this happens in knitting all over the place and I think that like if we can extend that understanding to also include something like this which is really ultimately about collecting. And this is a great segue to our next question which is about sustainability we got a ton of questions about sustainability and this question from Melanie summed it up best.
At what point is the market for stainless steel tumblers and other reusable vessels oversaturated I think it already is is this bad for the environment where do obsolete bottles and tumblers go to die.
I feel like you're the best person to answer this question even though it's a really hard one because I've loved your reporting on like what happens to returns and like the ultimate the stuff that like we like to not think about when it comes to consumer behavior so what do you think here I think the market is oversaturated like I think that we are already.
Past capacity for how many of these that like humanity could actually like need when it becomes bad for the environment is sort of difficult to pinpoint like because there is all this sort of like very difficult very opaque math that goes into calculating like the environmental impact of like a particular product and it is usually sort of incomplete and it makes things just really like hard to compare to each other.
Also I would say that like most people are not collecting these yeah as with anything on the internet what you see in what what becomes ridiculous enough to like cross your awareness is probably an extreme of the entire set of behavior that goes along with a particular object or particular fandom or whatever so you get people act in a little strange in the target parking lot or rushing in to buy.
Things and it's funny because most of the videos that I saw of people rushing into buy the things were actually pretty orderly I worked at big box stores in the past in like I don't know I've seen worse fights in that. Yes. Yeah over like a sale like a mark down on she yeah like people were rushing and it was very quick and like a little bit chaotic but like in most of those like nobody got hurt like nobody you know nobody fell over nobody tripped nobody.
Pushed anybody else you know it's in the in the grand scheme of retail behavior this was like sort of tame I thought mostly from the videos that I saw and from like the should I've seen myself. So you most people don't collect like collecting is in anything is like a is like a very small percentage of the buying behavior that you're going to see in a market.
But you do end up sort of accumulating these over time and a lot of times you're going to end up accumulating them because you went to a wedding and someone gave you one you went to a conference and usually the ones that they give you are like pretty low quality so they're really on your like JV shelf and they just hang out.
Yeah yeah you sort of like accumulate them over time because they are an easy like piece of swag to give out they are an easy gift from like the you know the family member you don't really know. Yeah but everybody knows they're like expensive enough to be like useful and expensive enough to like somebody you know spent 40 bucks on you or whatever.
So they feel like a really good gifting slot I remember talking to the head of swell back when I wrote that article in 2018 or 2019 at first and she said that there was like this very replicable behavior that they saw on ordering on their website that they would have customers that would order one and maybe like come back and order another one.
And then might they might not see him again but then it was holidays and they come back and they order five because they were going to give them to their friends or their like female family members or something so because they are they were like a really like they're a good ROI gift like nobody's going to be upset that they got like a nice water. Totally.
So they're very safe so I think that like for most people the accumulation that you end up with is this sort of like ambient accumulation because they are marketed as gifts because they are so frequently given away as like event swag or whatever and that is like I think probably where more of your environmental waste comes from from people sort of like distributing these like they distribute tote bags.
And like that behavior happens at scale because it happens like because you order like several thousand of them to give out or several hundred depending on the size of your event whereas somebody who's just like ordered four of them because you know they had a couple in a different sizes and then there was like a color that they really liked that came out and they're like oh damn they got me again like an individual doing that I think is probably still toward like one of the extremes of consumption of personal consumption for these and even then like it's not going to be as harmful as like.
This happening at scale because. Fortune 500 company decided to give one of these to every single one of their employees for the holidays or whatever I think I would like if I was criticizing this first of all I think water bottles are actually a really great way to deter people from. Drinking bottled water and celebrate the fact that we have good drinking water in the vast majority of places in this country and we should celebrate that municipal infrastructure whatever possible.
But then I think that like if you're going to critique or if you're going to try to like advocate for systemic change it should be at the corporate level right it's like don't give this a swag this is not utility that you think like this is actually where the waste comes because if someone.
Donates I don't know water bottle that like is for like Edward Jones and co like someone is not likely to thrift that or second hand you know what I mean like right there are other types of water bottles that people do want to reuse but that's not necessarily the one yeah yeah and I think that like that is like a great place to start and like stop giving out this stuff that nobody wants just because it has a logo on it because.
You feel like it's good like employee relations or whatever like stop don't do it do something else by them lunch I don't need I do know how many pairs of bus feed like socks I still have like I don't need that yeah but I think that the idea that these are good for the environment and buying one is like good for the environment is something that these brands use to sell more of these than like people really need.
So like I think what the questioner is bringing up is like a valid thing but I would say I would be sort of slow to generalize collectors as like the main consumers of these and also like you have to sort of look at like the holistic market and like where they where they come from in all kinds of different ways.
Okay so our last question is a two for and this is one that we got a ton about that's about kids and water bottles so we're going to play two questions back to back and then answer them together first up is Nora. I'm a former teacher nanny babysitter I currently am a pediatric social worker and my question is when the fuck did kids get so obsessed with carrying water bottles.
Like am I just blocking out my own water bottle habits from when I was a kid why does every child always have a water bottle and is so obsessed with hydration and then here's Caitlin. Can you explain how water bottle mania extends to kids and two specific things one class signaling at an early age and two wellness surveillance in terms of monitoring how much water kids are drinking. I see this in my daughter's cohort and I wonder why are we like this as caregivers.
There's so much going on here and I feel like we can maybe just start with our joint acknowledgement that like yeah we did not have water bottles and we're kids like this is not a thing well I you know I was I was thinking about this because I have a very vivid memory of my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Posey who taught me to do this.
Who told us if we brought in water bottles we could not leave them on our desk overnight and use them again the next day because they would be journey they would grow bacteria. So which suggests to me that this is a thing that we were doing in the fourth grade and I was in the fourth grade in like 95 and that that lines up a little bit more to with the water with water craze right with the beginning of the bottle of water craze.
I will also say that you were in the south and it was hotter yes it is it is very hot in the south I think what it was related to though is that it was like by that point in school it was already considered sort of like high status to be an athlete. Like if you played club soccer or if you swam on your neighborhood swim team or something like that that was already very high status and we and we all brought water bottles to soccer practice I played soccer when I was a kid.
What kind of water bottle it was like a it was like a big insulated igloo bottle like it was red because good old and like the thing flipped up the top. Yeah yeah yeah and so I had one of those and I think that like what happened because like status signaling among kids is interesting to me because I remember it so clearly like what we did as kids.
And I think because I have always been interested in like clothing and interested in like in trends and stuff and I think that some people remember it less well because they don't have this like weird fixation on it that I've always. No I have same of similar memories.
Yeah so I remember like people would would bring in like their like soccer practice water bottles and want to use them in class because it was another thing that like you know like athletes are all these years later that marked them as like high status because you played a club sport.
You played soccer you played tennis whatever yeah yeah yeah and it's like yeah it's like a letterman's jacket but for like smaller kids right exactly and then I remember at the same time it was very cool to have umbrose
soccer shorts and wear those in class and like the other brands wouldn't do you had to wear the umbrose like if you had the other brands well like why didn't you have the umbrose like you you clearly acknowledge that they're cool you're trying to rip them off so like where are they wouldn't your mom take you to the mall like the whole
that umbrose had on 90s kids is just incredible I mean they were comfortable that's what I think back on yeah and like there was like there was the trendy perfumes you had to have a Calvin Klein perfume like one yeah I was I was a CK obsession girly I'm always like this sort of more amber sense um and to the state I want I want the gender neutral scent actually was just the only scent that they had in the Bon Marseille now Macy's
yeah so like we were you know when we were kids we did all of the status signaling like whether whether we like totally understood that's what we're doing or not like things being cool among kids is something that pre so far predate Stan Lee's and so far predates this this set of kids and like we got it in more like gate kept ways because it was mostly like teen magazines and like you know what was on Nickelodeon and what was on like the TV that we could watch
so kids I think are definitely getting it like a ton more now via TikTok because it's like yeah you know via Instagram whatever because there is so much more media scaled for them then there was for us but I think that like kids have been really a lot of people who are really well aware of the status conscious and brand conscious for a really really long time like they sort of couldn't not be because they sort of we all
so I think that it didn't surprise me at all to hear that families were cool among kids because we would have done it when we were kids too. Absolutely I also have a tactile memory of what the drinking fountain felt like right in elementary school and I think we made just a lot more use of the drinking fountain
generally when I was a camp counselor so this is early 2000s the way that we would keep kids hydrated because most of them did not have water bottles was you would pour water into the cups when they came in for a meal and they couldn't have their like it was like fruit punch right so just like sugar they couldn't have the sugar water until they drank the water that was in the cup so maybe they got three cups of water a day but I do
think that like part of this also this idea of like parenting means your kid always having their water bottle with them some of it is COVID related right because like you weren't allowed to use drinking for a period of time and like just this idea of like you shouldn't share a drinking fountain like maybe that's on sanitary and all these different ways or I think there are also fewer drinking
now yes there are New York still has pretty great drinking fountain so there's some people I know where like I would never use a drinking fountain and I it's fine once in New York all the time they'll make it strong putting my mouth on it I'm not making out with the drinking fountain it's just the water and but I think it also has to do with this kind of like individual
responsibility parenting fetishization right like that everything like to be a good parent you need to be mindful of all things for your individual kid at all times yeah and the kids need to be equipped yes constantly and for everything and the kids need you know I the push to surveil kids now seems sort of omnipresent and to ensure that they're you know just like the rest of us are that they're maximizing their health that they're doing all
the things that are right for their bodies that they're not doing anything that's bad for their bodies that they're paying attention to their health and that you're paying attention to their health and like health is like a status marker in the United States it is something that's mediated by income to a great extent so it makes a sort of like awful bit of sense that like your child's health would also be a
status marker for parents and like a badge of like a good or bad parent even though there's like only so much that a parent can even do to determine if their kid is going to be healthier not like there there's just a lot that's like not up to anybody's individual control but like in the United States we believe that everything is up to your individual control and like why aren't you doing better right and it's this fantasy of control too that like if your kid always has a water bottle then they by extension they will always be hydrated and then the idea that like somehow you can control and know how much your kid is drinking at school
right and know how much they're eating whereas I think the the previous understanding was very much like school is kind of a black box like the kid goes into the elementary school classroom and then I don't know maybe they ate lunch baby they didn't right like I always ate hot lunch which meant that my mom had no idea what I was eating she just knew on Thursdays
that got chocolate milk is the best day of the week but now there's just so there's this idea that somehow all of this all of these activities are knowable I can understand why that feels like quote unquote good parenting and I can also see how incredibly fatiguing it must be right
all right we're going to move on to the ask anything part of the show usually this is only for paid subscribers but every now and then we like to let the rest of you peak by in the curtain and see what you're missing out on
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today Amanda and I are answering two questions one practical and one philosophical so this first practical question comes from Christine how do you keep the trendy water bottles clean I became obsessed with my awala water bottle but then it develops a black mold on the lid despite me cleaning it and I even bought the brush and I have tried the brush and I've tried the little brush inside the big brush but my awala is still sadly 30
all right so before we started recording we were all sharing with melody how disgusting our water bottles can get like I was saying like oh when it tastes like algae you know that it's time to make some changes in your life I recently bought some of these tablets online that are specifically marketed to clean your water bottle they essentially function like denscher cleaners and I know this because I used to use denscher cleaners to clean my retainers and there's like some sort of oxidation process
that happens and it mostly works I would say it did not work as well as I was hoping but it mostly works and the other thing I mean like this is the hard thing to say don't put him through the dishwasher because it makes them less effective and like less able to clean so what's your advice here I think another reason and like
you know I said this earlier but I think that some of the sort of like physical design choices that they make made with the Stanley are like things that that really sort of made it latch on in a way that others didn't but like a nice part about the Stanley is you can just take off the top and put your entire like forearm in there like the top is wide and I have I can use a normal scrub brush to get in there or I just take my normal sponge like I'm cleaning any other cup is just like it's better it's easier like the the wide top really just does let you put your hand in there
all the other ones are just a huge pain to clean I think yeah yeah and that oftentimes I think the reason people buy a new water bottle is that they've reached the point of no return with their existence I have this for two years I have not maintained it very well it's time to start again maybe this time will be different
there's an expectation in modern American parenting that your kid has a water bottle with them at all times this is of course a new expectation that did not exist when I was young did I ever drink water as a kid doubtful I suspect that this thing where kids are never more than three feet from the water bottle is more about the increasing burden of performing good parenting than it is about the actual well being
of the kids involved I have a seven year old kid who loses things gloves socks stuff that's supposed to be brought home from school you name it and this includes water bottles which are expensive so a year or so ago after spending probably hundreds of dollars on lost water bottles I decided to opt out of the water bottle game he no longer
to to water bottle to school or friends houses are the playground he is largely left to fend for himself out there in the world when it comes to hydration summer camp is the exception we're not monsters so my question is am I allowed to feel smug for opting out of yet another unnecessary parenting expectation or is this new water bottle mandate actually a good one and I'm depriving my kid of his essential bodily needs
okay so my take here is that any place where your kid is whether it's school after school program soccer there should be apparatuses there in case a kid doesn't have their water bottle so like they're not going to let the they're they can't just rely on personal responsibility here because there's always going to be a kid who forgets it so there's always going to be a water supply
so I think it's okay what what's your take care Amanda I think it's basically fine I send the kid to soccer with a water bottle just because you know that you're going to be getting a lot of a lot of exercise there and it would be safe to have one plus that's like one place so you go there you come back hopefully you don't lose it
I never lost mine when I was a kid and I lose stuff I'm not like the most organized personal life but like I think it's like basically fine I think I mean like you said everywhere that the kid goes is going to have a water fountain or going to have like a supply of water like I think that the I don't I wouldn't necessarily say to feel smug about it because like I think I think there is like so you know you're not you're not in competition with the people who feel like they have to do this
like they they are beset by the same set of run your own race yeah run your own yeah you are beset they are beset by the same you know set of expectations that you are that you're trying to resist they just haven't gotten there yet so yeah I think it's like basically fine
that unless the school like I know some schools have these sort of like draconian rules now about bathroom availability and water availability so like if you're yeah I you know it's situational but if like your kid's school is like normal is is not some sort of like torture system then you're probably fine like I went through life without carrying a water bottle anywhere but talk or practice when I was a kid and I am a healthy and hydrated adult now so you're probably fine
yeah it's one of those things we're philosophically I think that unless we use stuff that stuff goes away oftentimes right so like I kind of like always use a drinking fountain whenever I'm in a public space because I'm like look at me using the drinking
fountain because I want drinking founts to be there for everyone like I think that that is a public good I think it's good to pressure on schools to ensure that they provide water for kids that they have like many many ample sources of hydration for children during the day yeah and I think like if we need to teach kids I'm sure there were implicit and explicit lessons about how to not put your entire mouth on a drinking fountain when I was a kid right like how to be a good drinking fountain
so that they don't become germ machines and some capacity but I think that that's one of those things that like it's an equity issue also like you want to be able to have something available so that if a kid doesn't have a water bottle for whatever reason that there's water available to them yeah so that's my my philosophical thinking but again yeah it's not let everyone run their own race when it comes to yeah yeah like if you're if your kid is happy not carrying a water bottle around
when you're happy not having to make sure that they carry a water bottle around that I think that that that you've already solved that problem for for y'all right Amanda thank you so much for coming on to talk about hydration water bottles Stanley all of the affiliated things will you tell us what kind of Stanley that you have
thank you so much for having me again my Stanley is is a 40 ounce quencher it is apparently what what was a seasonal color so it is like a like a very bright like cobalt blue but it's got like speckles of lavender and mint green paint on it that are like very very tiny which is and they're a little bit textured
what like when you touch them like there they it doesn't look rough it's very shiny but like you do get a little a little nice I will say that the flex are also a little bit of a throwback to like in the pebble feel is also like an original Stanley to kind of it looks like it's not from the 2000 yeah it's a fun thing it was just like the coolest one that like Dick sporting goods have and I like bet the ball in ordered one amazing mind is a hot pink tall like the tall skinny hydro
flask nice it's filthy it might be time for anyone I mean I'm trying like I bought those tablets but we'll see we'll see what happens yeah all right thank you so much people want to find more from you on the internet work and they find you I am at a mandemoll on Twitter I am a mandemoll dot blue sky dot social or however those work
I I don't 100% no but I am on there I do post somewhat frequently I just love to post that is one of my fatal flaws honestly and I am a staff writer at the Atlantic and that's where all my writing goes thank you so much thank you thanks for listening to the culture study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts we have so many great episodes and the works like a three
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