Are gender reveal parties just a fad?
The internet, which made it possible to unwittingly create a trend, is the same thing that commodifies it, sustains it, and raises the stakes for inferred competition between parents for the title of the most viral and memorable gender reveal affair.
There is a sparked craze for gender reveal parties that has become an industry in itself, a huge trend among parents-to-be.
The internet, which made it possible to unwittingly create a trend, is the same thing that commodifies it, sustains it, and raises the stakes for inferred competition between parents for the title of the most viral and memorable gender reveal affair.
It is no longer about the joy of welcoming a new member of the family, but about that video you can post on your socials.
Can you imagine a world without gender reveals? It seems almost impossible, given how deeply embedded they are in pop culture and our social scrolls –they are a fairly recent phenomenon.
While social media is to blame, the reason is twofold. Social media creates trends, the literal platforms that reward the posts that attract the most engagement.
Heart emoticons
Posts dotted with heart emoticons are shared widely with users like those who originally engaged with them. Social media creates a zealous sameness, with everyday people and influencers alike flocking to Instagram's bait.
Parents are no different, and as child Instagram influencers emerge --with or without their consent--, we are forced to consider what it means for their privacy when their entire lives exist online for the benefit, social or financial, of those who raise them.
The gender reveal party that Cathy* threw for her first baby did not go as planned.
She had her mother-in-law secretly write the baby's gender on balloons from a shop.
The plan was for the balloons, all pink, to be hidden in a bag from her and her husband. The balloons would reveal that the baby was a girl. But the shop put them in a clear bag. Everyone accidentally saw the colour of the balloons before the party even started, and that ruined the surprise.
Gender reveal is like a battle that begins before the child is even born, starting with a cake with blue or pink icing, and with items such as footballs, cannons and smoke bombs that spew clouds of fuchsia or teal, while some celebrities and public figures go as far as hiring helicopters that explode contrails to signal to family and friends (and anyone else in the area) the baby's gender.
Socialites such as Vera Sidika and Amberay spent absurd amounts on their reveals, with conspicuous invitations to the haves and not the have-nots.
As gender reveal parties grow in popularity, it seems that the subsequent proud parents want to outdo the others.
Hardly a tradition
Conservative parents aren't the only ones using gender reveals, but parents across the continuum remain fascinatingly unwilling to part with what is hardly a tradition.
Planning and hosting gender reveal parties that conform to the gender binary is simply pushing an idea, benign or otherwise, of what children's gender should be.
And social media has created a hierarchy in which parents who want their parties to go viral, and their children's genders to be celebrated around the world, must continue to up the ante on such parties.
