Aunt Barbara Will Grate Your Face (And Sell You Spatulas)

Robert Suchan feels like a natural woman in the workplace. As far as looking like a natural woman, he requires heels and heavy make-up, chunky jewelry and a brown bouffant wig (“courtesy of Aquanet”). And then Suchan, a former social worker who, at 6’5″, is almost Amazonian even by average male standards, becomes Aunt Barbara. And Aunt Barbara sells Tupperware. $250,000 worth of Tupperware a year. Not too shabby for slingin’ spatulas.

An “immediately identifiable potpourri of Long Island housewives of the ’60s and ’70s,” Aunt Barbara was created by 43-year-old Suchan several years ago (who he says is based on his own, real-life Aunt Barbara), when he attended a Tupperware Party at his sister’s house in 1995.

“Tupperware kind of had a reputation that people really didn’t want to go to the parties,” Suchan told WCBS-TV. “They thought they were boring; they were going to be conjured into buying things, and I thought, you know, if she just turned it into a little bit of a show, and she had another reason for people to come, the Tupperware would just sell itself.”

Now, after 12 years in the making, Suchan can’t keep the plastic containers in his well-manicured hands for very long. Aunt Barbara is quite literally the hostess with the mostess as North America’s top-selling saleswoman and she’ll be the first to tell you what her favorite product is: the cheese grater.

“I tell them: ‘I live alone. I get fearful of home invasions. If someone is there, I’ll reach for my cheese grater and say, ‘I’ll grate your freaking face off. Then I’ll call 911 and say there’s a man with a bloody face outside and I collected most of his DNA.’”

Welp, I think I’ll take two.

Featured image via Aunt Barbara’s Tupperware Site