Earl Silas Tupper (1907 – 1983) is the most important individual to have ever walked the surface of the planet, for Earl Silas Tupper invented Tupperware. Without this product, it is a scientific fact that society and human life as we know it would have ended in 1960.

Tupper was born in New Hampshire. As a child he did lots of child-like stuff: climbing trees, catching minnows, staring at the vagina of a precocious older girl in the neighborhood called Annie who would—later unsurprisingly—become a prostitute of some renown.

None of this has any bearing on Tupper’s part in the creation of Tupperware, that most exciting and adaptable of plastics.

Or maybe it does?

Maybe it was that first fleeting glimpse of wiry teenaged pubic hair that set Tupper down the path of plastic that leads to the palace of wisdom and wealth.

After turning his hand to a variety of failed ventures as a young man, Tupper took a correspondence course and decided that advertising was The Future. And he was right. It was The Future. I mean, just take a look around you. We are now in The Future and advertising is everywhere. Watermelons, panty liners, pen knives. Everything is for sale.

Some other stuff happened, all of which contributed in some small world to the creation of Tupper’s air-proof, water-tight products. Chief amongst these events was the thought of young hairy vagina, which seemed to gain in significance and import as time passed.

I mean, he just couldn’t get that image out of his mind: the smooth white thighs, the bristled dark thatch, the blank-eyed look of Mad Annie as she raised her skirts beneath the porch of her uncles’ house, the collective intake of breath shared by Earl Tupper and his mesmerized young friends, all trying to disguise their young hard-ons.

Other things happened: jobs, marriage, children, plastic. Throughout, the image of the vagina remained until one day—et voila—Earl Tupper invented Tupperware. He woke up one morning and it was all there, fully-formed into a series of tubs, boxes, plates and cups.

Suddenly hard-boiled eggs and cold sausages were thrown a life-line. The life expectancy of potato salad doubled. Out in the wider world, the Cold War was icily raging, but no-one paid it much attention. They were too busy enjoying their long and languid picnics on plaid rugs by landscaped lakes.

The success of Tupper and his Tupperware however was due to more than just polymer-based brilliance and vaginal inspiration.

No, Tupper went the extra yard. His Tupperware parties of the 1950s were at the vanguard of marketing techniques.

A pre-cursor to the sexual swinging parties of the 1960s and beyond where men and women got to drink shitty fruit punch, fuck the hell out of each other, and trade diseases, Tupperware parties were the first known social gatherings to feature translucent plastic as the centre piece. Before that, food, drink and conversation were the main motivations for parties; afterwards, communal car keys, and raw sex in suburban semi-detached houses, or maybe perfume and other related products. But for a while Tupperware parties were all the rage, though rage itself was not encouraged.

Back in the 1950s the possibilities of translucent plastic were endless, Tupperware parties the key event in the social calendars of many a housewife—and the odd househusband too.

As the permissive 60s beckoned, recognizing that winning strikes always come to an end Tupper decided to cash in his metaphorical chips when he sold the company for $16 million, a large percentage of which he would later spend on potato chips and roller skates.

In 1964 he would buy a Beatles wig, and managed to get his golf handicap down to 4. Heck, thanks to plastics, he was a man of luxury now.

To avoid heavy taxation he left the US, gave up his citizenship and bought himself an island.

Earl Tupper died in 1983, a happy and successful man who only ever fleetingly thought of Mad Annie’s vagina on the odd occasion, like late at night when it was dark and quiet. His ashes remain stored in a Tupperware box.

Because Tupperware is non bio-degradable, unlike all the other dead people who have been given over to the worms, Tupper aint going nowhere any time soon.

To this day, his ashes remain as fresh as a ham sandwich.

Author Bio (or a collage of previous bios):

Check out these videos for Ben's upcoming book, The Missing Kidney

"Ben Myers used to want to be a boxer." -from 3am magazine

He wants "to be ripped to the tits and gurning" –Zygote in my Coffee

“Born in 1976, Ben Myers is a writer and music journalist. His first novel The Book of Fuck was published in 2004 through Wrecking Ball Press and is currently being translated into Italian as Il Dio Della Scopata. He is the author of a number of music biographies and has published a collection of journalism, American Heretics: Rebel Voices In Music. He has a number short stories and poems published and his writings on music have appeared in Time Out, Q and Record Collector. Ben currently writes a column for 3am Magazine. He also runs the Captains of Industry record label.” –Pulp.net

"Ben Myers is a writer and poet. He is the author of the novel The Book Of Fuck, his recent work has appeared on sites such as 3AM, Zygote In My Coffee, Laura Hird, Bookmunch, BLATT, Straight From the Fridge and in a number of forthcoming anthologies throughout 2007. Ben is also a member of the Brutalist writers and has recently completed his second novel, the Brautigan-inspired The Missing Kidney. More info: www.benmyers.com" -dogmatika

Also, you may remember Ben from this interview and this review...or maybe even this picture: