‘Shower hauls’ put focus on the gifts and not the guests
New trend of posting loot received from friends and family a little too showboaty
Let’s hope that after posting the gift haul from their showers, they took the time to sit down and handwrite some thank-you cards.
There is a new trend among those being showered with present for their upcoming nuptials or baby arrival; it’s called a “shower haul,” and it is a bona fide thing. After the shower, the person being feted posts a video or photos online, showboating their, well, haul of gifts.
A search of “shower haul” on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram will reveal a good haul (sorry, I couldn’t resist) of videos and photos of young women posing in front of a heap of gifts.
In some videos, they go through each gift one at a time, meticulously explaining each one, from nursing covers to picture frames, detailing which was or wasn’t on the registry, and who gave it.
Some videos take a glorious 20 minutes to go through the entire haul, some have generated more than 80,000 views.
Jana Francis, who founded the site BabySteals, knows a thing or two about showers, and the digital-savvy cohort of moms that shop online. Since its start seven years ago, her company has shipped more than 2.5 million orders of baby gear. She agrees that shower hauls can put the emphasis on the gifts rather than the occasion, though she thinks the intentions are good.
“Shower haul videos are coming from the YouTube generation. They document everything in their lives, so naturally, they’ll document this chapter.”
She also adds that shower haul videos help her keep a pulse on what’s most popular for new moms.
“We use these videos to keep in touch and see what moms are really excited about. We can read the comments and can see in a video when a woman explains, ‘everyone freaked out when I opened this item’ — it allows us to peek in.”
While I haven’t done an entire audit of the web, I can say that of the 20 or so videos I saw and countess Instagram pics, all I saw was well-intentioned young women, excited by all their loot, full of gratitude for the generous gifts.
Soon-to-be brides and moms explain how excited they are and how grateful they are to be showered with such generosity.
Gratitude aside, isn’t there something inherently show boaty about shower hauls?
Toronto-based interior designer Jennifer Ferreira is seven months pregnant. She registered for her upcoming shower at a local boutique but has no plans of sharing photos or videos of her gifts.
“It’s a bit showy,” she explains, “and do people really need to know every detail of every gift you received? I don’t see the benefit.”
Like Francis, Ferreira points to a generation that is comfortable over-disclosing, but she personally isn’t comfortable with such a lack of privacy.
“I can see the purpose of doing a tour of a beautiful nursery, but a playby-play video of gifts would be boring.”
Sorry, shower-haul posters; I tend to agree. Shower hauls put the focus on the gifts and not on the company or the occasion.