I know that whoever is reading this probably doesn’t know me well enough to invite me to a gender reveal party, but if you’re considering it, I respectfully ask that you do not. It’s not that I’d be offended by the invitation, the opposite in fact. I’d be flattered. Really, I just want to avoid the awkward conversation we’d have as part of my rescinding your invitation.
I’d start by asking, “Why?”
Why on earth do you, a prospective parent, think that it is appropriate to invite a group of people to your house, or worse, a public park to have a ceremony that announces to everyone whether or not your baby has a penis? Why do you want this? Traditionally, parents want people thinking as little as possible about what’s going on between their children’s legs, and yet here we are, parents organizing increasingly elaborate schemes to put the one idea in their guests head that they, long-term, do not want there.
At least early gender-reveal parties were simple. They were still a gross idea if anyone took the time to break down what was really happening if all went according to plan, but mainly they just informed the colour of the cake that sat under the white buttercream you were going to be eating. Sure, the whole thing could’ve been an email, but email isn’t cake so there’s that.
Still, cake wasn’t good enough anymore, once people’s Instagram feeds were full of blue and pink cross-sections. When they became as ubiquitous as pictures of actual babies, followers would scroll on by, just like they will when you clog your feed with pictures of your actual baby.
“Unacceptable!”, cried soon-to be-parents, scared that they waited too long to get pregnant and hop on this trend before it cooled off, “We must up the ante!”
And up it they did.
Popping balloons filled with gender-stereotypical coloured glitters, making the interior of all of their guest’s cars look like they are all Uber drivers specializing in picking up passengers from strip clubs, became de rigueur. Capturing the photo at just the right moment would increase engagement with the couple’s personal brand, helping them become objectively superior parents moving forward. Soon, the more media savvy knocked-up couples realized that slow motion video was way better at grabbing eyeballs than lousy still photography, and they moved away from popping glitter filled balloons to starting house fires with traditionally gender conforming coloured smoke-bombs.
The more astute parents-of-tomorrow had picked up on the risk to be had of accidentally burning down their house with an inelegant smoke signal to let everyone know what their fetus’ junk looks like. They concluded that it’s a real challenge to raise kids in pink or blue tinted smouldering ashes of an 1100 square foot single family dwelling. So they moved their genital parties from their backyards into public spaces, where they could now let complete strangers know if their unborn child’s crotch is an innie or an outie.
Burn my own house down once, shame on me, next time I’m wiping out a bunch of lousy trees.
David J. Hughes (nature-lover, party-hater)
The upside to the move to public parks was that less young couples were losing their homes in entirely avoidable, self-inflicted house bombings. The downside was that, obviously, entirely avoidable, self-inflicted forest fires were on the rise. The type of attention garnered from the house and/or forest fires was, to say the least, damaging to a couple’s brand. That being said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” is an aphorism for a reason, and those who are only just catching the tail end of of the gender reveal party fad will have to increase their impact on the genre if they are to be taken seriously as responsible parents.
The next logical step in the gender reveal party, I feel, is to pre-emptively and purposefully light a forest fire, and fill a water-bomber with either copper (blue is only for boys!) or lithium (pink is only for girls!) chloride as needed, letting the whole world know what your baby’s groin is growing into. The larger the fire and public outcry, the better you will be at raising the fruits of your loins, whatever shape your loins might wind up in (no parties for communicating that information, natch).
Just in case I haven’t made it clear, what I just described is a very bad idea, and you should not do that. To be doubly clear, I don’t think you should do any of the things that I’ve described in this article because at it’s core, a gender-reveal party is gross and weird, and not cute like you think it is.
So please, if you’re a friend or a stranger with boundary issues, do not to invite me to your gender reveal forest fire. I don’t want things to become awkward between us.
David J. Hughes