The bridge between our dreams and reality

I have to confess to being distrustful of the modern idea that a demise is not a demise until a few minutes of silence have been observed. But in the case of Tupperware parties, I'm willing to make an exception. Quite a lot of minutes of silent bafflement are in order, as we contemplate the fact that Tupperware parties, until March, will still exist.

The British arm of the US plastic-box-with-annoying-lid giant has announced that it is to abandon the wilder side of its selling effort, with the loss of an amazing 1,700 jobs. Apparently 1,500 demonstrators, 160 managers, and 20 distributors continue to chase the dream of snap-top sociability. For them, sadly, redundancy will mark the end of an era. For the rest of us, though, this era surely ended long ago.

Not, apparently in the US, where Tupperware parties are still going strong, and proliferating online as well. A search using the word Tupperware calls up 161,000 pages of Tupperware-themed information, including a detailed correspondence about how to "clean sticky residue on Tupperware".

Perhaps Tupperware is simply more culturally significant in the US. Certainly the British design historian Alison J Clarke thinks so. She suggests, seductively enough, that the "unassuming food storage system" can be seen as "a bridge between the Great Depression and the heady consumer carnival of the 1950s".

As such, clearly, Tupperware remains close to the American heart. In Britain, though, women are saying no to Tupperware, and yes to binge-drinking sessions instead. Frankly, the two must be linked. How could you get through a Tupperware party without bingeing on drink? How could you get through a Tupperware party at all?

It's quite hard to get your head round the fact that, so recently in our history, women were happy to organise their social existences around food-storage options. The idea of Tupperware parties conjures up visions of that Fifties housewife of advertising myth, frilly pinny coyly draping her pertly sexy skirt, totally dedicated to home, husband, vacuum cleaner, fridge, coasters and – of course – anti-depressants.

I mean, we all know it was really bad for those few years when it looked as though womanhood was to be outlawed in favour of this narrow, oppressive serfdom (and yes, it's fine to choose a version of such a life, because then it isn't serfdom). But, looking back, the terrible realisation is that, to Britons at least, Tupperware parties were mainly about finding a space for women to congregate without men. How pitiful is that – the fact that women felt the need to coo over storage canisters just to provide a cover story while they nipped round to a neighbour's for the evening. The pub, of course, binge drinking or not, was still simply not much of an option.

And that's not even the sinister side of it. I have a dim memory of my mother attending a Tupperware party in the Seventies. I think she liked the idea of an evening out. But I seem to remember that she was resentful of the position it put her in, where she felt she had to buy something. The something my mother bought, she fumed, was outrageously over-priced.

When the something arrived, weeks after the order had been made, the something was three ochre-coloured tubs with a dust-catching sun-ray pattern incised into their lids. The idea was that the three tubs could nestle inside each other to "save space". Eventually, it was decided that it would save more space simply to dispense with the hated objects, rather than having them sitting there storing each other for ever more.

So, at Tupperware parties, the hostess was exploited – into pushing overpriced goods to all her friends because then she got her own desirable but expensive Tupperware for nothing; the agent was exploited – into making her mates throw these daft junkets in return for commission because there wasn't much hope of cheap childcare and a job elsewhere; and the guests were exploited – by feeling that they had to cough up for plastic containers they didn't want. Thank God those days are officially as good as gone.

Now, of course, everything is different, and women attend Ann Summers parties instead. How much better it is that the female congregation is gathered ostensibly to procure undies and sex toys to pleasure their men and themselves, but actually buying more over-priced pieces of plastic, this time with batteries that come separately – much like their owners.

Which brings us on, so to speak, to the wonderful further effects this post-liberation concern for up-front female sexual pleasure has. How gratifying it is that drug companies are so busily searching for a female equivalent of Viagra, to help us with our "female sexual dysfunction". Much better for sexually dysfunctional women to pop a pill than for us to find ourselves with nothing but the feminine consolation of food storage, or even vibrators, to give us a thrill.

Except, of course, that in many cases taking such a medication would amount to much the same thing as it did to the valium-taking housewife – prescribed treatment for failing to be the woman she feels the times demand her to be.

It would be nice to say that it was refreshing to hear of Shere Hite, in the New Scientist, suggesting that "the pharmaceutical industry is guilty not just of cynical, money-grabbing exaggeration, it has misunderstood the basics of female sexuality."

It would be gratifying to announce that it was a revelation to hear of her opining: "The overwhelming majority of women... can have orgasms easily during masturbation, so why not also during coitus? The answer is that, during masturbation, women choose to stimulate the clitoral area. Only in 2 per cent of cases does it involve vaginal penetration."

Of course what Ms Hite says is absolutely true. But it is neither refreshing nor revelatory because she's been saying it since the Hite Report Into Female Sexuality in 1976. And still, despite the magazine articles, the full and frank discussions, and the general obsession with all things sexual, we sometimes appear to be not much further forward.

In fact, in some respects, matters are worse. When once, "frigid" women were expected to lie back and think of Tupperware, soon, it is hoped by the drugs companies, they will be expected to get down to the doctor's surgery so that they can offer not just compliance with, but enthusiasm for, sex that isn't being had with their needs in mind.

No doubt such a course will be much recommended at lingerie parties, amid much ribald female bonding. But it still doesn't seem to be such a massive leap away from the days when Tupperware was quite enough to bond over. And if Tupperware in the US can be credibly explained as bridging the gap between depression and consumerism, what can Ann Summers in the UK be bridging?

The gap between what we know about our sexuality and what the pharmaceutical companies have in mind for us? Or the gap between the idea of sex that is continually sold to us, and the sex we're actually having?

d.orr@independent.co.uk