Scarlett Thomas: You stick to your Tupperware, Mrs. I'm from the Rampant Rabbit generation

So, it looks like I am never going to achieve one of my life's ambitions. That's right; I am never going to attend a Tupperware party. Last week it was announced that Tupperware parties – to put it simply, a group of women convening in someone's lounge (not sitting room; these are not upper-middle class parties) to buy lunchboxes and plastic containers in which to keep cornflakes and orange juice – are finally coming to an end. So I'll never go to one. I will never actually get to touch fresh Tupperware.

Of course, I have seen Tupperware. At school, some kids – usually only the really clean ones – had Tupperware lunchboxes. They had mothers who stayed at home, presumably storing things on a full-time basis. In my house, though, no one had any desire to store things in plastic tubs. That, we reasoned, is what old jam jars are for. We were not a Tupperware family. We did occasionally go to parties where you could buy things, but those things were usually ANC mugs or Free Nelson Mandela T-shirts. I have a suspicion that we may have been disapproved of by the Tupperware crowd, which is probably why I have always secretly longed to go to one of those parties.

The Tupperware phenomenon began in the late 1940s, when inventor Earl Tupper, realising that his airtight plastic boxes weren't selling, decided he needed his products demonstrated. In an era when women found it difficult to socialise together in groups – it wasn't acceptable for women to go to clubs or restaurants without men – these parties became a success. They were a respectable way for a woman to earn some "pin money" without threatening the bread-winning status of her husband.

Or so I've been told. I have grown up at a time when women work and go out in groups without even thinking about it. My era is also one in which many people attempt to reduce the plastic packaging in their lives – not re-package already over-packaged products in yet more plastic, which seems to be what Tupperware is all about. Earl Tupper's products were marketed as "less likely to break" than glass and crockery. Did nobody stop to wonder about what would happen to these products in 200 years' time? Jam jars might break, but they also break down. Are future generations going to find landfills brim-full of Tupperware? With nobody to demonstrate these old products to them, will they be able to work out what they were for? Will they figure out the airtight seal, or understand how their ancestors cooked in a microwave on a budget? Perhaps future archaeologists could hold themed nights of their own in which demonstrators would explain what we did with all this plastic.

Of course, in order to find the Tupperware, these archaeologists will have to pick through a lot of rubber underwear and vibrators first. History has moved on, and Ann Summers now seems to have cornered the market regarding the selling of bits of plastic to women via themed parties. With its best-selling Rampant Rabbit and Shagasaurus vibrators, it recently announced that it is doing very well, even if Tupperware isn't. Now, in an intriguing – but perhaps inevitable – twist, it appears that Ann Summers is attempting to recruit redundant Tupperware party organisers. Could the microwaveable dildo be imminent? Or what about a plastic box for those leftover bits of edible panties and chocolate body-paint? (For those of you thinking: "Doesn't she know anything? I already have those things!", I live in Devon.) A spokesman from Ann Summers said women's priorities had moved from the kitchen to the bedroom. This is a bit simplistic, surely? Could it be that women just want to get together and do slightly wanton things?

As boundaries of acceptability change, though, perhaps even sex toys aren't shocking or wanton enough: many high streets now have Ann Summers shops. In order to be cutting-edge, maybe future party organisers could demonstrate how to clone your own child (using Tupperware beakers in some way?). Or what about weapons-of-mass-destruction parties for the pissed-off woman of tomorrow? Perhaps these could be combined in some way with Botox parties? But before we all mourn Tupperware, just remember, all that plastic is going nowhere. Tupperware will be around for some time yet.