For many baby boomers, the word “plastic” immediately evokes the 1968 movie The Graduate when avuncular advice to young Benjamin Braddock—“Just one word: plastics”—conveys the materialism and falseness of suburbia. Although plastics already had shaped American life for decades, Braddock would have grown up in a world in which Formica, vinyl, Styrofoam and fiberglass were considered not only replacements but also improvements. Yet, as Jeffrey Meickle shows in his American Plastic: A Cultural History (1995) this triumph would end, even while plastic remains the stuff on which America is built.

“Plastic” refers not to a single chemical family/ process, but to the malleability of these synthetic compounds—facilitating curving styles in 1950s and 1960s decor and becoming a metaphor for shifting identities. John Hyatt derived the first plastic, celluloid, from pulped cotton in 1869. Unmelting Bakelite, identified with art deco, was synthesized by Leo Backland in 1907. Other plastics became commercially available through US corporations like Du Pont and Goodrich by the 1930s; some, like nylon, “went to war” were diverted to military goods in the Second World War.

The peacetime demand for nylons was only part of the plastic wave that shaped not only new suburbs, but also Disney’s house of the future in Tomorrowland. Plastic goods with bright colors, original lines, flexible shaping and “easy” care—for a home without servants—became ubiquitous. They were also cheap and disposable, whether diapers or fast-food packaging. They democratized luxury in household goods, fiberglass boats and vinyl siding.

Yet, 1960s reactions against consumerist abundance meant that baby boomers also identified plastics with the banality of suburbia and postwar growth even as they profited from it. Many championed returns to natural materials: cotton Indian prints rather than plastic seat covers, or ceramic rather than melmac dinnerware. The difficulties of the “natural”—care for silk, linen, leather—fitted the opulence of the 1980s when a “Teflon” president, against whom charges never stuck, occupied the White House. Plastics became negative metaphors for older generations, lower classes and falseness.

Plastic also became an environmental enemy. Campaigns have focused on the sheer bulk of enduring plastic waste as diapers filled up landfills or the rings around beverage six-packs were cited in the death of aquatic life. At times, figures have been overstated and focus on product rather than process (ignoring, for example, the energy required in sanitizing cloth diapers). Nonetheless, fast-food servers and merchants have offered paper as an alternative.

As Meickle notes, this conveys cultural schizophrenia. Information technology comes sheathed in plastic—no one expects a teak computer—reinforcing an identification of plastic with the future. Plastic infrastructures—pipes, joints, shoe soles, linings and enhancements—also underpin natural facades. Indeed, vintage plastics—Bakelite radios, nostalgic toys, etc.—became collectible “authentic synthetics” in the 1990s. Plastics define the American century then, not only in material conditions, but also in cultural interpretations (and concealments) of everyday life.