I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but it seems that within the past few years gender reveal parties have become the big new “it” thing for soon-to-be parents to do. Get all your friends together, bring out a cake, and leave everyone in suspense as you cut into it and reveal what color is on the inside and thus whether or not the bundle-to-be is a boy or girl.
Social media is likely largely to blame for the trend becoming such a feed clog, and it is also the reason why cakes are no longer enough. Gender reveal stunts have gotten more and more intricate, the best of them racking up likes and hearts and all the other meaningless measures of Internet engagement. There are undoubtedly people putting more thought and effort into their gender reveal party than in preparing for the actual baby to arrive.
Regardless of how it got here, though, it is now something we have to deal with, much like Kanye West’s freethinking and guys who are way too enthusiastic about cryptocurrency. Gender reveal parties are that special kind of annoying where you know it’s so trivial and dumb that it isn’t worth thinking about, which somehow makes it even worse when you see everyone lose their minds over it. At its core, gender reveal parties are just a manifestation of a couple’s excitement and their desire to share it with their family and friends. But we already had parties about how exciting it is to welcome a child: the baby shower and the diaper party. You add the gender reveal party and we now have three different parties for someone who doesn’t even exist yet.
I get being excited, but there comes a point where someone needs to pump the brakes. One party is you being excited. The more parties you have, though, the less it’s about genuine excitement and the more it’s about you. It’s the equivalent of your friend who insists they have a birthday month. No, Ashley, I am not buying your drinks again because your birthday was THREE WEEKS AGO.
Babies are second only to puppies in terms of getting attention for yourself. No one in their right mind is going to get upset about doing ANYTHING that involves a puppy, and most people are not going to begrudge doing things for babies. We are biologically hardwired to find them adorable and do things for them. I don’t particularly like babies but you put one next to me I’m still going to make faces to try and make it laugh and smile. There’s no way to stop it. It’s infectious. Babies are basically smile diseases.
Adding gender reveal parties to the overall baby train puts the attention squarely on the couple. It’s less about the baby and more about keeping your friends and family hostage until you decide it’s time to end the suspense and provide them with a piece of information that really only matters to the couple themselves. It’s the Oscars of welcoming a newborn; 95% self-congratulatory spectacle, 5% useful information. But no one is going to say anything, because no one wants to be the one who sounds like they are saying “Fuck your baby.” It’s the perfect trap.
I’m not even really going into gender fluidity and how that renders reveal parties kind of ehhhhh. That is something I will leave to people better equipped than I and is a whole article in itself. But it does bring us back around to the conversation of who these parties are actually for. Baby showers and diaper parties you can at least say it’s partially about the actual baby, since gifts are being given that are either directly for the child or will help the parents take care of them. By contrast, gender reveal parties are just a flashy way for parents to announce arbitrary information that is becoming less and less culturally relevant as the transgender community becomes more understood and accepted. Even though it is a relatively newer thing, it already feels like a dated tradition. Which really is fitting for the current Internet culture of virality. Burn bright and fast, eat those Tide Pods while it still gets you views, then we move on and forget.
For me, the big test is, “Would you still do this thing if you couldn’t post it on Facebook/Instagram/Cambridge Analytica’s database?” Would you still put all this effort into the perfect reveal party if it really was just for the people in the room, or would it not seem worth the trouble if you also didn’t get that influx of Likes? My constant cat pictures are surely annoying to some people, but if you took away my ability to post them I would absolutely still have a cat. I suspect that for a lot of people, though, this would not be the case for the gender reveal parties. Otherwise, it’s just a really elaborate way to tell people what kind of genitalia their offspring is gonna sport out of the womb.