Tupperware: The End of an Era
By 
Just yesterday, my brother and I were talking about how our parents still use the same Tupperware that they have had for at least 45 years. Today, Tupperware files for Chapter 11. I doubt anyone is surprised by this–who actually uses this brand of food containers today unless you are my father’s age? But let me make two points. First, for all the over the top use of plastics that they were, the things last a heck of a lot longer than the also plastic but somehow less tacky for reasons unclear to me tops of the glass containers that a lot of people use today. Second, the impact of Tupperware on 50s-80s era American culture was huge, especially given the Tupperware parties of women trying to make money in an economy that shut so many doors on them. I went to employer’s library website and just typed in “Tupperware.” The first thing came up was an American Studies encyclopedia entry on it, which I followed and found all kinds of references.
In fact, for those of you who want to go down this bright yellow plastic rabbit hole, here’s the bibliography for that article.
Bax, Christina E., Entrepreneur Brownie Wise: Selling Tupperware to America’s Women in the 1950s, Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 2 (2010):171-180.
Biggart, Nicole Woolsey, Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America (University of Chicago Press 1990) [in-depth sociological study of the phenomenon of direct sales in the context of American culture].
Clarke, Alison J., Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (Smithsonian Institution Press 1999) [a definitive study of the Tupperware phenomenon in cultural historical context with emphasis on gender and consumer culture in post-war America].
De Vidas, Anath Ariel, Containing Modernity: The Social Life of Tupperware in a Mexican Indigenous Village, Ethnography 9, no. 2 (2008):257-284.
Kealing, Bob, Tupperware, Unsealed: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers (Univ. Press of Fla. 2008).
Meikle, Jeffrey L., American Plastic: A Cultural History (Rutgers Univ. Press 1996) [an overview of the technology, consumption and cultural history of plastic in America].
Meyerowitz, Joanne, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Post-War America (Temple Univ. Press 1994) [an account of women’s history in the post-war period that counters the reductionism of the ‘domesticated’ suburban housewife stereotype].