Gender parties go bigger, not better

CAKE CUTTING?: TRY FLYING PLANES AND PIPE BOMBS

Washington

Aplane crash in Texas, a deadly explosion in Iowa, a massive fire in Arizona – elaborate baby gender reveal parties, a growing trend among parents in the US, have taken a nightmarish turn.

“It’s a girl!” After dropping litres of pink-coloured water, a small plane flying at low altitude suddenly stalled, crashing in a Texas field.

There were fortunately no victims in the early-September crash, but another such party – where expecting parents stage elaborate events to reveal their future child’s sex – turned fatal when an Iowa woman, 56, was killed the following month by shrapnel from a pipe bomb.

American parents are no longer satisfied with the traditional gender reveal method: cutting a cake to reveal a blue interior for a boy or pink for a girl.

With the rise of social media, gender reveals have become more and more sophisticated and “extreme”, according to Carly Gieseler, a professor of gender and media studies at City University of New York (Cuny).

What started as an “intimate, small gather” has become a “much larger spectacle, a much more grand affair”, Gieseler said.

“We’ve gotten to the point where you have explosions and fireworks, skydivers” appearing all over Instagram or YouTube.

Gender reveal parties are “kind of filling a void for these communal gatherings that we don’t really have as much anymore”, she said.

Even the woman credited with inventing the trend – lifestyle blogger Jenna Karvunidis, who wrote a blog about her party in 2008 when she was pregnant with her first daughter – feels she created a bit of a monster.

“I did at the time we didn’t know what we know now – that focus on gender leaves out so much of their potential that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs,” Karvunidis said in her recent post, which has racked up more than 35 000 likes. –