Wildfires; an earthquake; a downed plane and a killed grandmother-to-be. That is just a snapshot of the chaos unleashed by gender reveal parties across America over the last few years. When an American blogger unwittingly introduced the idea in 2008 by cutting into a cake at her baby shower to reveal pink frosting inside—it’s a girl!—it was hard to imagine the disruption that similar parties would later cause. The once innocent celebration has become increasingly elaborate as people bid to outdo each other, dividing opinions and creating absurd headlines, and finally prompting the question—when is enough enough?
13 years ago, in Los Angeles, blogger Jenna Karvunidis cut into her custom-made cake. The pink frosting announced to the room that she was due to have a baby girl. Her blog post about the party went viral, and according to public lore, the modern gender reveal party was born. Social media fuelled its popularity. In its early iterations, the celebration gathered friends and family who witnessed the joy of the beaming couple and giddily waited for that pink or blue revelation. But now the gender reveal party is more associated with global headline-grabbing fiascos that have set off earthquakes and wildfires.
The internet has witnessed some extravagant takes on the gender reveal party: the tallest skyscraper in Dubai was rented out for a (blue) light show. A video of an alligator biting into a watermelon—which then squirted blue jelly—has amassed over 12 million views. But with extravagance comes risk. Last month, a New Hampshire family’s gender reveal party set off earthquake reports after 80 pounds of Tannerite was detonated to announce the gender of their unborn son. The explosive, typically sold over the counter as a target for firearms practice, caused property damage and cracks in the foundation of neighbouring homes.
The blast was only the latest in a series of hazardous gender reveals. In September last year, a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used at a Californian party caused a wildfire that burned more than 13,000 acres of land and prompted the evacuation of 3,000 residents. In April 2017, an off-duty US border patrol agent chose to ring in his baby boy by shooting at a target full of blue-coloured explosives. The stunt damaged 47,000 acres of Arizona forest and resulted in a wildfire that cost $8m to extinguish. In Australia's Gold Coast, a car emitting blue smoke burst into flames.
In the last three years, gender reveal parties have destroyed at least 60,000 acres of land. That’s over 80 times the size of London. And it’s not just the environment that suffers—two pilots hired to stream a banner announcing “it’s a girl!” at a party in Cancun were killed when their plane crashed into the waters below.
The devastation and mayhem caused by gender reveals have led some to denounce them as a form of domestic terrorism framed as quirky stories. Originally, the colour of frosting inside a cake was enough to make you go viral. But the internet is a competitive place. Insta-parents grapple to one-up each other, fighting for attention and double taps. Reveals have now run full throttle, becoming more elaborate and more explosive—planes, pyrotechnics and deadly animals have joined the party.
Most of these headline-grabbing fiascos have occurred in America, but the tradition is taking off in Britain, with Aldi and John Lewis releasing their own "gender reveal" kits. Even the parties free of wild animals or explosives risk doing harm. Gender reveals have been criticised for harming the very children they’re celebrating. A recent poll found that half of Generation Z think traditional gender labels are outdated. What the party does, then, is put children in a labelled box before they’re even born.
Jenna Karvunidis herself now considers the parties problematic and said she regrets starting the trend. “Who cares what gender the baby is?” she wrote in a 2019 Facebook post, “assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents.” Her post was accompanied by a photo of her daughter wearing a pale blue blazer and trousers. “PLOT TWIST” Karvunidis wrote. It went viral once more. The world’s first gender reveal baby girl had started to defy gender norms.
In a comment piece for the Guardian last year, Karvunidis said of the initial party “I was certainly not anticipating creating an entire identity of my child. I was just looking for a way to up the ante and get everyone excited and involved [but] the problem is they overemphasise one aspect of a person.” When she first heard that a gender reveal party had caused a forest fire, she cried: “I felt responsible.” In just over a decade, Karvunidis has gone from cutting into the world’s first gender reveal cake to naming herself “the anti-gender reveal lady” in her Twitter biography.
So is this the end of the gender reveal party? Considering how often these stunts come back into the news, perhaps not quite. But people are beginning to re-evaluate their use of social media, consider the fragility of our environment and move beyond gender binaries. The increasing examination of these—very relevant—issues challenge us all to question whether these outlandish reveals miss the point entirely. That we should simply celebrate the birth of the baby, not its gender. There are other ways to eat cake.
