Gender reveal parties: Are they cursed?
A mishap that sparked a devastating California wildfire has cast a harsh spotlight on “gender reveal” parties, said Taylor Lorenz in The New York Times. A couple’s use of a pyrotechnic device to announce their unborn baby’s gender sparked an inferno that’s burned more than 34 square miles, setting off a backlash against a new breed of parties that have “turned the private experience of family making into a public spectacle.” Since a blogger named Jenna Karvunidis started the trend by posting photos of a 2008 family party where she cut into a cake with pink icing, gender reveal parties have become increasingly elaborate productions, sometimes featuring “over-the-top” events that have gone dangerously awry. In recent years a cropdusting plane loaded with pink water crashed in Texas, an Iowa woman was killed by “a device meant to shoot out colored smoke,” and an Arizona party ignited a fire that caused $8 million in damages. “Are gender reveals cursed?”
Blame the “attention economy” for these spectacles, said Jenna Drenten in the Chicago SunTimes. As a sociologist who studies social media, “I’ve watched gender reveal parties become their own mini-industry over the past decade.” The
“increasingly extravagant” affairs reflect the “bizarre pressures parents face” in the age of “sharenting.” That means not only custom cakes and confetti cannons but also parents who “wrangle alligators, kick exploding footballs, shoot clay pigeons, or jump from airplanes.” It’s no accident, said John Paul Brammer in WashingtonPost.com, that these “events sprang up just as society really started wrestling with an expanded conception of gender.” Telling the world before your child is born what private parts he or she has is a way of doubling down on traditional gender norms: My kid is a boy, so there!
The woman who started the trend is among those who wish it would die a quick death, said Laura Bradley in TheDailyBeast.com. As Karvunidis’ humble celebration has given way to professional videographers and Instagram “influencers” promoting commercial sponsors, she’s aghast at what she’s wrought. Not incidentally, the 11-year-old daughter for whom she threw the original party now shuns pink and dresses and prefers boys’ clothes. “Stop having these stupid parties,” she recently wrote on Facebook. “For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you.”