Amanda Mull

Humans love to take objects and imbue them with meaning. And sometimes it doesn't really matter what the object is. If it's in the right place at the right time, it can be an incredibly meaningful thing. And that is what you got with Tupperware. And I think it makes a lot of sense if you think about how Tupperware spread.

You couldn't just go into a store and if you had the money, you could buy it. You had to be invited to a Tupperware party. You had to have social ties to people who could get it for you. You had to have enough money to actually buy it.

And then when you had it, it was this indicator that you were up on the latest things and also that you were a fastidious and reasonable steward of your family's domestic life.

My mom still uses the cake keeper. And like, I don't know what else she would put a cake in. Like, it has to be the old Tupperware thing. And you can also tell what the big, like, aesthetic color palette of a particular decade was in America by what colors Tupperware came in during those years. You know, in the 60s, it was like pastels. It was very girly. It was very vintage.

feminine in 70s and 80s you get avocado green and citrus and orange and it's all very like warm and deep and um sort of looks like you've smoked around it for a long time and more more more delicious colors go to a party soon

Tupperware got so big and so dominant that it was one of these sort of rare American brands where the name of the brand becomes synonymous with an entire type of product, no matter who it's made by.

Seeing people's neuroses and emotional lives play out and the way that they choose to spend time and money is fascinating to me.

I don't know.

Restocking videos are usually a few minutes long. They are generally sort of a close-up on a woman's hands taking a set of containers, usually out of a refrigerator, out of a pantry, out of a laundry room. And then those hands start filling the containers with stuff. Food or cleaning products stuffed and stacked and plunked and crunched. And peeled and chopped and decanted.

Just thing after thing after thing being put inside of all of these crystal clear containers.

A lot of people find the sound of things getting sort of crunched and plunked and put into these containers very satisfying. And then those containers are put back in the pantry, in the laundry room, wherever.

Everything is abundant and you have all of your choices in front of you. And walking into your kitchen or your bathroom or your laundry room is like walking into a store of your very own.

How popular are they? Incredibly popular. There are people online who make an entire living out of making these videos. It's very, very easy to find ones that have millions or tens of millions of views. I think that to watch something that was like a little bit of a mess go to clean and pristine and organized and perfect is satisfying for a lot of people.

Plastic storage containers have never been more popular. They have never been more ubiquitous. They have never been more culturally salient.

There are clear acrylic containers in virtually every size and shape and scale. They are incredibly widespread, incredibly visible in culture, incredibly visible online.

We're all still living in the world that Tupperware built, and we probably will be for quite some time.

Whether or not today's influencers realize it, they are taking part in a long tradition of women using their charisma to ignite the imaginations of women around them.

That is just such a meaningfully different sales pitch than going to a store and buying something off a shelf.

People didn't really know what to do with it. They have to be told. Somebody has to identify the problem in their lives for them and then explain how a product fixes that problem. And that was the case with Tupperware.

I don't know if it's necessary, but this was like a thing that women were taught to do when they got their first Tupperware. It was like after a meal, you burp your baby. After a meal, you burp your Tupperware. It is a small act of care toward your leftovers.

Women would come over and have hors d'oeuvres and maybe cocktails and chat and gossip.

Tupperware parties sort of pioneered this concept of like women selling to women. It is a completely different selling experience to hear somebody say, oh, you've got to try these. They're so cute. They're so useful. I can order you a set if you're interested.