We need to have a national conversation about gender reveals.
Gender reveals are absolutely out of control.
You’ve probably heard by now the latest example of a gender reveal gone horribly awry.
A couple expecting a baby set out Saturday morning to share the news of the child’s sex by setting off a smoke bomb that would send plumes of pink or blue smoke rising into the arid Southern California air.
As the pyrotechnic device ignited, so did the dry wild grasses that had grown as tall as four feet in the meadow at El Dorado Ranch Park, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, Cal Fire said in a statement Sunday.
As of Monday night, the barely contained fire had grown into a monster that has already burned through nearly 10,000 acres and forced more than 20,000 people to evacuate.
The WaPo story goes on to notes a few more gender reveals that went sideways.
The misguided “gender-reveal” stunt is not the first to spark a costly conflagration. A similar antic in 2017 started a 47,000-acre wildfire in the foothills of southern Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains. Last year, another gender-reveal gimmick set off a brush fire in Florida. Gender-reveal parties have caused a plane crash and last year one killed a grandmother when she was struck with shrapnel after a family unintentionally created a pipe bomb while attempting a colorful explosion to announce the sex of their unborn child.
What’s next?
This thing has gotten completely out of control. Even the lady who helped to popularize these reveals more than than a decade ago said that she wants these to stop.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t have to have a massive, pyrotechnics induced stunt to announce what the gender is of your child.
You can have somebody make cupcakes with the color inside of them.
You can have balloons with colored confetti inside of them.
You can shoot colored cans of silly string into the air.
There are a variety of ways to celebrate this without risking a massive environmental catastrophe and/or loss of life.
You can even, you know, find out the gender directly from the doctor’s office and tell people yourself.
And finally, you can do what we do; never find out until your child is born. That’s worked for us with two children. If it worked for hundreds of generations of our ancestors, it’s good enough for us.
Gender reveals are actually a fantastic representation of everything wrong with modern consumer culture. Everybody is obsessed with preparing for their baby, with having the room painted the right color, with having the right outfits. Parents want everything to be perfect. Parents want to feel like they are totally in control.
Let’s be real; you’re never in control when you’re a parent.
Look, find out your baby’s gender. Or don’t. But parents, please; stop making spectacles of yourselves.
Id like to think we snuck ours in before the saturatuon point.