Tupperware

Alison J. Clarke shows how the "party plan" direct sales system, by creating a corporate culture based on women's domestic lives, played a greater role than patented seals and streamlined design in the success of Tupperware. Drawing from newly available records and interviews, Clarke describes how Tupperware Home Parties, Inc., reinforced a conservative ideal while undercutting that ideal by offering women economic independence through a flexible, home-based form of employment. Tracing the fortunes of Earl Tupper's polyethylene containers from early design to global distribution, the author explains how Tupperware tapped into potent commercial and social forces, becoming a prevailing symbol of late twentieth-century consumer culture.