Monday, October 13, 2003
Not just whistling Dixie
One of Tupperware's top sellers, her parties come with a decidedly blue show.
By ANDRE MOUCHARD
The Orange County Register
Dixie is funny.
Dixie is fun.
Dixie is frank.
Dixie is the rare Tupperware Lady eager to tell you how to use Tupperware products in the kitchen and the bedroom.
And she's theatrical.
When Dixie arrives tardy for a recent sales party in Mission Viejo, she literally jogs into the house, zipping from front door to kitchen to TV room.
"Oh gawd, I'm so laaaaaate!" she screams, her Southern accent at full throttle. She mentions traffic as a reason for this. She hints at an anonymous sexual encounter. She sighs. She cracks up.
Meantime, Dixie's audience - about two dozen suburban women, many drinking wine or beer - gasp a bit, giggle, and ogle their exotic new friend.
And Dixie is an eyeful. She wears blue eye shadow, green fingernail polish and hair (rust meets apple meets frizz) so large it bounces when she's agitated, which is pretty much all the time.
Critically, Dixie is relentlessly profane.
Virtually everything Dixie says in her 90-minute presentation can't be printed in this newspaper. Her explanation for this also is X-rated, as are her jokes, her life history, her descriptions of her three imaginary children (Winona, 16, DeWayne, 10, and Absorbine Jr., 3) and her talk of 18 failed (imaginary) marriages. Even Dixie's body language is X-rated.
When Dixie tries to tone it down, she reaches something closer to an R-rating. But this proves to be a strain, and she soon returns to her comfort zone, doggedly blue.
None of which prevents the suburban women from falling in love with Dixie. They laugh a little at first, peeking around the room to make sure laughter is the approved response. But as the party gains steam, pretty much everybody is laughing nonstop. A few laugh until they nearly cry.
When it's over - when the ice cream scoop and can opener and "bowl ... a simple bowl," have been linked to acts culinary and carnal - the suburban ladies break out their checkbooks.
On this night, Dixie sells nearly $1,000 worth of what she lovingly calls "plastic crap." That's roughly three times the sales volume of a typical Tupperware party.
Dixie might be the most popular Tupperware Lady in Orange County. She got into the business two years ago "on a dare," she says, and, ever since, the bulk of her work has been local.
Dixie claims income of about $70,000 a year. She works perhaps a dozen parties a month, two to three hours a pop.
Dixie is clever. And, while she'll shout down a heckler with the subtlety of a bazooka, her heart is soft.
"I don't want anybody to feel bad," Dixie purrs. "I want people to feel goooood."
Oddly, she's deeply earnest about Tupperware.
"I believe in these products. My mother had Tupperware in her house. And I do, too."
There's one other thing about Dixie, the Tupperware Lady.
Dixie's a dude.
Sales and Broadway
Dixie can be subtle. For example, the closest Dixie ever comes to hinting that she's not a she is when she reaches into her blouse and pulls out two plastic bowls that have doubled as breasts.
Ok, that's fairly overt. But, other than that, Dixie is semi- militant about staying in female character.
"You think I'm a whaaaaat?" Dixie responds, broken- hearted, when asked if she's a he.
She won't say who she is, but she does refer to a man, Kris Andersson, whom she describes as "my live-in manservant." Her Tupperware customers are told to write their checks out to Andersson.
"He's really good at accounting," Dixie says of Andersson. "He has a calculator."
Andersson, 33, is an actor who lives in Hollywood. And, as an actor, he's having some success. He's set to appear in the movie "The Gristle," due out on HBO fairly soon. He plays a hotel clerk. And he's had smaller, noncredited roles, usually as a dancer, in movies like "Titanic" and "The Majestic" and "Scream 2."
As a guy, wearing guy's clothes.
But Andersson also has appeared in a couple of smaller movies as a female impersonator, including one short film in which he plays a character named Dixie.
Coincidence?
When pressed, Andersson says only that he's "very close" to Dixie, and is promoting her as much as he can.
"People always want to know about the man behind Dixie. But I think she's a pretty fascinating woman in her own right," Andersson says.
So fascinating that he's shopping Dixie as a sitcom. Dixie would play the female impersonator neighbor of young newlyweds who live in a trailer park.
"The couple have their usual newlywed problems," Andersson explains. "And they turn to Dixie for advice about life and love and Tupperware."
The thinking is that if Dixie can win over the women of Orange County, she can make it on the small screen for a national audience.
"Sometimes, you'll find one or two people at a party who sort of stand back and fold their arms. They decide they're better than (Dixie)," Andersson says. "But that's definitely the exception. Mostly, people respond very, very well."
Marianne Corn describes Dixie as part saleswoman, part Broadway act.
Corn, of Mission Viejo, first saw Dixie at her cousin's Tupperware party and had so much fun she booked her for her own house just a few blocks away.
"A lot of people who came to my party had no intention of buying Tupperware. They just wanted to see the act. And that was fine," Corn says, adding that some of those people wound up buying a lot of Tupperware.
"I told people that if they had even a tiny part of them that might be offended, that they shouldn't come," Corn adds. "But I don't think anybody was upset."
In fact, at Corn's party in Mission Viejo, Dixie got a Tupperware version of a standing ovation, staying to chat with the Corn family and other customers for two hours after the last order was written.
"My niece kept trying to get Dixie to come out of character," Corn says. "But it just wasn't going to happen. Dixie is very professional."
For her part, Dixie says her goal is to sell and entertain, not outrage.
"As much as you might get offended by me, you also kind of love me," Dixie says. "I'm like one of those Southern ladies we all know who says things we all think but are afraid to say."
"But my message - if you can pull a message out of Tupperware - is that we should all love everybody and play as much as possible.
"You're only on the planet a little while," Dixie says. "And I've learned you shouldn't judge people by what you see."
Monday, October 13, 2003
