Scrap pink or blue, it’s a rainbow

Before I go any further, I need to clarify something: I believe in celebrating life events, great and small. I am, after all, the woman who wants an alarm clock that rouses her daily with whistles and applause. I’m all about the hurrah, the go-you, because we should wrangle the good stuff out of every wretched day on this messy planet.

However, let’s draw the line at baby gender reveal parties. Please.

Yes, they’re a thing now. Consider yourself duly informed. Type “baby gender reveal” into Google and it immediately offers up balloons, parties and games as the next options.

This is how a gender reveal party works:

It starts with a sex-specific question, obviously, which the soon-to-be parents can phrase as they choose: will it be a boy or girl, he or she, buck or doe? Will it be brute or beaut, tackles or tutus, rifles or ruffles?

Once the nearest and dearest are gathered, everyone might be handed, say, a black balloon and then together, on the count of three, the balloons are popped and the guests are showered in confetti, pink for girls, blue for boys.

Or a cake might be cut, and the colour of the sponge reveals the gender of the semi-formed bun, which is still very much in the oven.

Or the parents open a large mystery box and out fly helium-filled balloons, either pink or blue.

Or there’s pink or blue fumes spewing from a motorbike exhaust.

Or a magician pulls a pink or blue bunny from a hat.

Or the parents get doused in pink or blue paint.

Or coloured lights are switched on, pink or blue.

Or there’ll be pink or blue piñatas, streamers, party poppers, scratch cards, smoke bombs, fireworks, exploding footballs …

Yet nobody’s mentioning the problem with all of this, the bizarre truth of it: this is a celebration of an unborn baby’s penis or vagina – and in the (endless) online videos, I note the penis always gets more joyful screams. Enough now. A gender reveal party gives licence to label. It locks a little one who hasn’t even taken their first breath in a pink or blue prison.

So let’s fill those balloons with rainbows instead.