Lifetime Guarantee! The impending Tupperware bankruptcy is frustrating because the can preserves the unequal treatment of women.
The women did the Tupper work, and the men did other work. Photo: Tupperware
It’s amazing how a message about a lunch box can evoke such emotions. Tupperware – oh my! – is probably going bankrupt. At least that’s what Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. We can’t just ignore this message (sorry, it had to happen now, and yes, that verb is actually used on food blogs!).
Tupper is of course similar to Stuttgart Daimler and the post office and Sparkasse. It has long been much bigger than cars or special stamps. In this case, Tupper itself is part of the Federal Republic. Back in the day, when the world was still black in terms of identity politics, white people came into the picture. At least in the 1990s. The author of this line grew up in eastern Westphalia and quickly learned which parties she did not want to go to. Her aunt and her mother’s friends met there regularly. Buttercream cakes and filter coffee – cappuccino had not yet been invented in East Westphalia – and traded salad spinners and bowls, food containers and other plastic waste, and most of all, bought them from Tupperware representatives.
Tupper, our mother friends couldn’t say it that often. Tupper lasts a lifetime. Guaranteed for life! And you can certainly ask yourself whether that made the decision about the lime green salad bowl with the shit brown lid easier or harder. After all, women who worked at the savings bank in the mornings, when things like afternoon after-school care hadn’t been invented yet, had time to cook for the kids who came home from school at lunchtime. At best, women always did the Tupperware work and men did other things.
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Tupper parties included Frankfurter Kranz, Black Forest Cherry and Bärenmarke condensed milk, served in cream containers or in small plastic individual portions. Anyone who didn’t feel any anxiety would probably still celebrate Tupper parties today.
Yes, they still exist. You can register as a host (!) on the website of the American company founded in 1938 by an unskilled farm worker named Earl Silas Tupper. He reportedly experimented with lightweight plastics after flying to chemical plants. Then he invites as many people as possible who want as many new cans as possible. “It’s all about getting everyone you like together.” For sales of €250 or more, the host receives a paper towel holder or a 50% discount on selected products from the current Tupperware catalog.
Sure, you can make fun of it now, but it’s actually a very sad thing. Tupper is a very zeitgeisty person. Buttercream may be vegan now, and men may be buying lunch boxes, but the essential things that make the world smaller for women, like Tupperware parties, haven’t changed much.
There is still a gender gap in the labor market
And now we can cite many statistics on the lack of inequality. For example, the rate of fathers taking parental leave is as high as 3% (44% for women with children under 3). The higher the rate of part-time work for women, the more unequal the wages for the same work. There is a summary of these indicators in the Federal Statistical Office’s “Gender Gap in the Labor Market.” In 2023, it was 39%. The higher this figure, the more unequal the labor market situation. Since 2014, it has decreased by only 6 percentage points.
These things will certainly cause anxiety in the Federal Republican Party. We can only hope, but it is not the case that they will go bankrupt with Tupper. And what do we learn from that? It is that things were not worse in the past than they are today. As a result, we will urgently need to change something about the present.
By the way, the inventor of the Tupper Party was a woman, because Earl Silas Tupper, who had the can at first, was not in good shape. She became the head of the sales department. It is not known whether she liked buttercream or not.
