The Party Planner

When people get together, curious things can happen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. You may have seen

(00:37):
the Wood meme online, where a Japanese lawmaker is tackled
by a massive group of his fellow legislators as he
tries to speak into a microphone. Clearly, Japanese politics can
be rough. But go farther south across the Pacific Ocean,
and you'll find that the Japanese have nothing on the
parliament brawls of Taiwan. It's practically a tradition there, going

(01:00):
all the way.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Back to 1988. It's part political theater... and part earnest
political violence. It's shocking, entertaining, and definitely curious. In May
of 2006, Democratic Progressive Party member Wang Shuhui was seething
at the thought of the opposing party passing their latest bill.

(01:21):
They were trying to lift restrictions on transportation across the
strait to the mainland, which would give the government less
ability to regulate their trade. It was a pro-China move
that she wouldn't abide by. Just as the vote was
about to be called on the legislation, she couldn't take
it anymore. She rushed forward, grabbing the copy of the

(01:41):
bill from her rival's hand. No one could have expected
what she was about to do with it, too. She
took the document, shoved it into her mouth, and started
to chew. The floor erupted into chaos. Huang was soon
surrounded by the opposition, who demanded that she spit the
bill back up as if she were a child or

(02:01):
a dog. but she kept her lips clamped shut with
little bits of paper sticking out of the corners of
her mouth. Soon, her fellow legislators reached up to her
mouth trying to pry open her jaws. Others had a
better idea. They started to pull on her hair as
hard as they could. Her face twisted with pain, and eventually,
they all gave up. But she was still cornered. She

(02:24):
had the bill and nowhere to go. Then she wasn't
about to swallow the whole document … So once the
others stopped attacking her, she quickly spit it out and
tore it up, which she probably should have done in
the first place. It would have at least saved her
all of that hair-pulling. Ultimately, she did delay the bill,
and shortly after this, Parliament adjourned for the summer. That

(02:45):
might sound awful, but what if I told you that
it wasn't even the most stomach-turning Taiwan Parliament brawl of
this century? No, that honor belongs to the infamous Pig
Guts Brawl of November 2020. This brawl wasn't instigated by
any one individual, but by an entire party. And this time,
our previous minority party, the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP,

(03:08):
were the ones with the majority. They had implemented a
new policy lifting restrictions on U.S. pork and beef imports
into Taiwan. It seems an odd turn of events from
an outsider's perspective, seeing as the DPP previously seemed to
be against lifting restrictions. As the premier gave his speech...
the shrill sound of a whistle was suddenly heard across

(03:29):
the floor. Members of the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT,
started to wave banners that decried the lifting of the
ban as a danger to all of Taiwan. They believed
that the chemical ractopamine found in U.S. meat products would
negatively affect the health of their constituents. But they weren't
content to interrupt the speech with just whistles and banners. No,

(03:51):
they had something more significantly disgusting in mind. They revealed
large trash bags and buckets full of pork entrails, long, stringy,
fleshy bits of raw meat. They reached their hands into
the containers and came up with big fistfuls and aimed
them right at the opposition party. Soon, handfuls of meat

(04:12):
were sailing across the aisle and striking members of the DPP. Obviously,
they didn't take this too well, and soon the DPP
and the KMT members were in full brawl mode. Fists
flew and made contact, and the violence soon spread across
the floor. These supposedly dignified national leaders were now a

(04:32):
tangle of bodies rolling around on the floor covered with
raw meat, ripped up protest signs, and pages of legislation
that clearly wasn't going to be voted on that day.
And I get it. It might seem silly or even
disrespectful to us, and there are those in Taiwan who
feel the same. But to some of those legislators... They

(04:52):
feel those protests and brawls are the only way they
can show their constituents that they're standing up for them,
even when they're the minority party and have no real power.
It's a curious world out there, isn't it? Sometimes when
words fail, it seems that all that's left is to
let your fist do the talking. Thankfully, most politicians try

(05:13):
to defeat the opposing argument with their mouths, a lesson
that Wang Shuhui took literally. There is an item that

(05:34):
is so commonplace in American households that you've probably never
paid it any mind. It's a staple of daily life,
so necessary and simple that it's hard to imagine a
time without it. But this product would never have caught
on if not for a stroke of marketing genius by
a woman named Brownie Wise. In the 1940s, Brownie was

(05:55):
a hardworking single mother struggling to make ends meet. She
had recently divorced her abusive husband and and she and
her son were living with her mother in Florida. Brownie
was creative and ambitious, but she was also stuck in
one of the only jobs available to women in that era,
being a secretary. And needless to say, a secretary's salary

(06:17):
wasn't enough to sustain a family. So to make some
extra cash, she turned to the lucrative side business of
direct sales. Now, at the time, many household products were
sold by door-to-door salespeople. Think of them as spam emails
that knocked and wanted to talk face-to-face. And these people
had to convince their potential customers, who were typically housewives,

(06:39):
that their product was worth buying. Brownie was persuasive, and
she had no problem pawning off cleaning solutions and brushes
from Stanley Home Products. But there was one product in
her catalog that that was a particularly tough sell. It
was made of plastic, an unfamiliar material at the time,
and most people didn't understand how to open and close

(07:00):
the innovative plastic seal without seeing a demonstration. This product
had been in department stores for years, but no one
had been buying it. Even the company's top managers couldn't
figure out how to move the stuff. But Brownie could.
As a woman and a mother herself, she knew exactly
how to build trust with her target demographic of housewives—

(07:21):
by throwing a party. And so Brownie invited all her
friends and her neighbors over to her house, plied them
with refreshments, and showed off beautiful piles of the new
product in its various pastel shades. She used fun party
games to demonstrate how to use it, and even chucked
the plastic across the room to prove that it wouldn't break.

(07:42):
And once these women had seen from a trusted friend
how useful and convenient the product was, they were eager
to buy some for themselves. And from there, Brownie recruited
some of her customers to throw their own parties and
sell stockpiles of the product to their friends. They quickly
got on board because this wasn't just about selling household goods.

(08:02):
It was also about empowerment. Sales parties, you see, were
a way for housewives who'd been discouraged from working outside
the home to build something for themselves and connect with
other women in the process. The kitchen, the very place
that gender roles had constrained them to, became a source
of financial and social independence. Brownie's network of saleswomen grew

(08:26):
and grew until it gained the notice of the company's
top executives. In 1951, Brownie was hired as a vice
president of marketing, becoming one of the only female executives
of the era. She even became the first woman to
appear on the cover of Businessweek. Her party plan was
so successful, the company eventually took their plastic bowls out

(08:48):
of stores entirely, and sold them exclusively through these home
events that had become an emblem of the suburban life,
a gathering that became known as the Tupperware Party. I
hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
This show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership

(09:10):
with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim &
Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
the show and the people who make it over at
grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll also find a link to the
official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online,
as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking

(09:31):
for an ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all
the same stories, but without the interruption for a small
monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon.com
slash grimandmild. And until next time... Stay curious.