ANDYou know how it goes. Two excited and slightly nervous expectant parents stand before a crowd of friends and family. Someone sticks a pin in a giant balloon and pop! – pink confetti everywhere. “She's a girl!” a grandmother shouts happily, as if it hadn't been made clear by the bright pink fireworks now exploding somewhere in the background. Meanwhile, someone approaches the couple as they hug and cry.
These are the typical scenes at a gender reveal party, where people gather and watch the parents-to-be discover the sex of their unborn child. Naturally, this is all a performance for social media, and the more outlandish the thing, the more views you'll get (#gendereveal has 36 billion views on TikTok). The initially harmless trend began in 2008 after a blogger named Jenna Karvunidis opened a cake on camera to reveal her pink cupcake. But the phenomenon is turning into something ugly. Last week, the RSPCA issued a warning following the death of a pigeon that had been dyed pink for one such party. Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital shared a post on Facebook about an injured bird they had been brought in, after which the charity's spokesperson urged people to “think before following these social media trends” and called it an “act of cruelty.”
Other dark outcomes have made headlines in previous years: A gender reveal gone wrong sparked a 47,000-acre wildfire in Arizona in 2018 that caused $8 million in damage; another involved an explosion that killed a grandmother-to-be in 2019. Meanwhile, environmentalists continually warn people about the ecological impact of using large amounts of confetti and colored substances at outdoor events.
And yet, couples seem to be in a race to make these indulgent spectacles even more extravagant. American YouTuber Logan Paul and his fiancée Nina Agdal staged a public wrestling match, with the pink swimsuit competitor set to win. Lithuanian influencer Inga Stumbriene chartered three planes, leaving trails of sapphire smoke in the sky. Another couple of influencers jumped into an ice bath and a substance exploded, turning the water navy blue.
The excess of these games bothers me. But I'm also concerned about the way they reinforce stereotypes about gender that deny any kind of nuance. Of course, it would be satisfying to know details about the child you are about to raise. And there is reason to celebrate, as many parents go through emotionally exhausting and sometimes costly processes to conceive; They deserve to embrace the emotion. But these events feed idealized images of gender identity that are outdated and binary. The spectacle of it all on social media can also seem insensitive towards people experiencing fertility issues.
Even Karvunidis, the mother who started the trend, has since said she lived to regret it. In a 2020 interview with The observerKarvunidis admitted that he now finds this trend problematic. “Who cares what gender the baby is?” he wrote in a 2019 Facebook post, along with a photo of her daughter dressed in a blue jacket and matching pants. “Plot twist: The world's first baby at a gender reveal party is a girl who wears suits!”
Karvunidis spoke about the guilt she felt after creating a complete identity for her daughter, Bianca, before she was even born. He said that Bianca grew up to dress androgynously and, although Bianca uses she pronouns, she does not follow the ideal of the pink-clad beauty that her mother had expressed for her. “When I first saw that a gender reveal party had started a forest fire, I cried because I felt responsible,” said Karvunidis, who admitted in retrospect that she hoped to have a girly girl. “There is such an obsession with gender that it becomes limiting in many ways and exploitative in others.”
That's the problem: the gender reveal part confuses gender with biological sex. There is also a risk that it will pressure children to conform to a certain stereotype, one that can be destructive to their self-expression and self-esteem and may perhaps discourage them from feeling comfortable exploring their identities. In Karvunidis' case, he accepted her daughter after learning that Bianca didn't want to fit that mold. But as the trend becomes more popular, I worry how it will make new parents more attached to a particular image of their future child, denying that child any room for difference beyond Barbie's ways. vs Lego. It seems like a rule from times gone by.
I can already hear the “let people enjoy things” brigade. And also some other brigades. I'm happy to let people do it. But it's worth considering how a child might feel when he or she grows up and finds out that his parents organized a rather egregious event in the name of his assigned sex. What would happen if that child grew up to be gender non-conforming? Perhaps they would feel that they had disappointed their parents or that they could not express themselves comfortably at home. Setting unrealistic goals for children rarely ends well. Maybe it's time for parents-to-be to put down the fireworks, leave the pigeons alone, and consider this first.
