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The Stanley tumbler may already have passed peak hype but it seems that there are new models ready to meet our demands for stylish hydration.

When did people become joined at the hip to their water bottles? Sure,take your bottle to the gym,on a hike or in the bag on a trip. But I’m witnessing a generational divide as I see my own young adults,their friends,and others with water bottle attachment issues reminiscent of Snoopy’s Linus carting around a security blanket.

I’m not the only one noticing this bottle fixation. A friend who works in a big hospital says some staff walk around the wards clutching bottles as if they’ve just crawled in from the Sahara,dying of thirst.

I caught up with comedian Tom Gleeson’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival show where he told the story of his wife buying a $65 bottle she saw on Instagram and striving to reach her daily water quota.

No doubt employing artistic licence,he claimed he was topping it up when she wasn’t looking,and she was never,ever finishing the bottle.

Are there unexpected risks from all this water-carting? The other week Serbian tennis ace Novak Djokovic was felled when a water bottle slipped out of a fan’s backpack and hit him on the head. The missile did not appear to be one of Djokovic’s own range of sleek bottles with aspirational wording:Dedication,motivation,playfulness,tenderness,and fierceness,andhe later complained his balance had been off since the incident.

Another tennis figure,Costeen Hatzi,the influencer girlfriend of Nick Kyrgios,did a sponsored post on Instagram,in which she headed out to Australian Fashion Week clutching a sleek Stanley canteen bottle in the way that one might cart a Fendi bag. Her fashion-forward approach to hydration was apparently met with widespread approval.

My local Coles,in their version of the Aldi aisle of shame,has a ginormous 3.7 litre motivational time tracker water bottle. At two hourly intervals it urges the drinker to keep chugging and don’t give up. Such a thing would keep me heading back and forth to the loo all day,if I hadn’t already sustained an injury from lifting and lugging it around.

As kids we had little flasks we’d take to school,often filled with frozen cordial or drink water from a bank of water fountains. At home there was a jug of water in the fridge and on hot days we’d drink from the hose. We didn’t have cup holders in the car,and we’d use a Willow cooler and Tupperware tumblers on road trips.

More options have come along as the humble water bottle has become a symbol of health and wellness,fashion and luxury and even sustainability – if it stops single use bottled water buying,and people don’t just keep accumulating the latest reusable model. A few years back my youngest was determined to fork out her Christmas money for a S’well bottle,the model getting a lot of hype at the time. She returned to the shop five times,finally settling on a lavender bottle which,to her credit,she has fiercely guarded and still uses.

A friend recently splashed $80 on a Stanley Quencher bottle for her daughter. At that price,is it any wonder people are now stealing them? One person spoke on the radio of doing laps at her pool only to look up and make out a figure striding off with her prized bottle.

Don’t get me wrong,I’m all for keeping hydrated. But all these trendy water bottles will go down in history as a marketing masterstroke.

Claire Heaney is a Melbourne writer.

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