Are “gender reveals” here to stay?

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The concerns of being pregnant have been replaced with the fanfare of it in recent times. In 2018 alone, social media has seen an amazing increase in pictures and videos of pregnancy announcements, pregnancy shoots, and baby showers by mom, mom’s friends and even grandparents. In addition to all this is a gender reveal, an event that reveals to one or both parents. or friends and family, the gender of the soon-to-be-born baby.

Gender reveals have become an excuse to party with cakes, balloons, even fireworks.

How the trend started

Social media has been the major forum that has helped to foster and promote the idea of gender reveals. Stephanie Shih, a public affairs manager for YouTube told Huffpost that gender reveal videos on YouTube can be traced to as far back as 2009. It began to emerge more in mid-2011 and as of 2017, YouTube has seen a 60% increase in views for gender reveal videos as compared to 2016.

Instagram is as well full of photo shoots and videos of different parents revealing the sex of their child with varieties of ideas behind the blue and the pink colors signifying that it’s either a boy or a girl.

Celebrities are not left out of the trend as they’ve been getting into the whole fun of it to reveal their babies’ sex.

Why do a gender reveal?

Different couples have different reasons. For some, it’s just an opportunity to party following it as a popular trend promoted on social media.

For others it is to share their joy at having their first child or the end of a battle against infertility. Yet, for others, it is to capture memorable times.

What it involves

The basic idea involves revealing the sex of a baby via any creative concept with blue colors indicating that it’s a boy and pink, a girl. The color reveal could be with smoke bombs, cars, or fire hoses. It could be a simple cake which reveals the color upon being cut.

A couple in Washington DC learned the sex of their unborn child via the lights on a Ferris wheel at National Harbor in Maryland. Some release either pink or blue balloons from a car or parachute. It just gets crazier and crazier.

Criticism

Miss Manners, in 2014, mentioned in writing that sharing a child’s pre-life is not a wise course as not everyone is as excited as the parents are about the child before or after he or she is born.

Parents of transgender children also seem to cringe at the idea. Some critics explain why, saying that such parties further hit on the limits of a gender binary excluding those who are transgender, non-binary or intersex as they fit into neither category.

Conclusion

For many people, a gender reveal is just a fun thing to do and a time to look back at with smiles especially in a world where there is more bad news than good ones.

Gender reveals really have come to slay and stay just like bridal showers, baby showers, even birthday showers.