The Wonderful World of Tupperware

Having had Tupperware in my kitchen all my life I found this short film interesting to watch for the production footage. The last part got kitschy with homophobe Anita Bryant singing about Tupperware. I found it entertaining overall.

This looks like a corporate film from Tupperware. It's well made. It's a slice of the world, a world of old style manufacturing and corporate sales cult. It starts from the dinosaur to the petrochemical plant to the manufacturing plant to the salespeople. It's fun to see this nice little time capsule.

It is listed as from 1965 but when they show the cars in the parking lot, the cars are from the 1950s. Maybe in those days, their employees could only afford 10 year old cars. Another poster, obviously very young, was complaining of the sexism. Of course, there is sexism, it is a product of its time. That's the world of 60 years ago. It is an historical curio. It even has Anita Bryant in it...a singer and Florida orange juice spokesperson who was nationally famous because of her outspoken hatred of homosexuality. Also, why would anyone buy Tupperware when they could buy all the cheaper stuff that is like Tupperware and just as good., as a poster writes? Because in those days....there were no other products like it. It was a patented monopoly at that time.

Given that Tupperware is culturally significant because it was an entry point for middle-class housewives into the business of selling to other women -- a model that was already in use by Avon cosmetics, it's noteworthy that we don't see see a woman until ten minutes into this industrial short -- assuming that the cartoon dinosaur is a boy. After that, the number of women on display -- ordinary-looking, often middle-aged women, not glamor models -- increases steadily: running industrial machines, inspection for quality control, packing and shipping. Heavy lifting i and driving trucks is still left to men. It all ends with a party for the leading saleswomen, where they sexually assault a male entertainer.

The change in cultural attitudes, from the 1950s, when the idea of a lady in her home, raising children, supported by her husband's job was not all of it. My mother was a full-time housewife, which was a lot of work, with a daughter and two sons. She also worked a second, unpaid job as a volunteer at a VA hospital.

However, if that was some sort of ideal, it never fit every situation and set of desires, and selling Tupperware -- or Avon cosmetics -- was a way for suburban women to earn their own money. It wasn't third-wave feminism, but it was a start.