By collapsing gender expression, gender identity, and sex, you're doing everyone a disservice, because no one buys into the whole package all the time.' She adds that 'you're especially doing a disservice to those who are intersex or transgender, who must spend their lives explaining it. 'The popularity of gender-reveal parties speaks to how powerful and central this binary is to our sense of identity,' Dalke told me. Millennials Are Backsliding on Gender Equality In a ritual that celebrates only a binary way of thinking about identity, we're leaving a cross-section of the population out, adding to a culture of trans and intersex shame. (Broader definitions of DSD put this number closer to 1 in 100 children (opens in new tab).) Then there are the millions of kids assigned a sex at birth with which they don't align: 150,000 American teenagers identify as transgender (opens in new tab). Projecting gender perceptions onto a fetus becomes especially thorny when you take into consideration that, globally, one in every 1000 to 1500 children (opens in new tab) is born with a visible form of Difference of Sex Development (DSD), which means being neither entirely male nor female, since the chromosomal/genital makeup falls somewhere in between-an enlarged clitoris capable of erections, for instance. We're affixing a label to a child who hasn't even had a chance to enter the world and assume that identity.' 'I'm thinking of 'Tutus or Touchdowns' and 'Bows versus Badges.' Women can't become a sheriff and wear a badge? At a time when these expectations about gender are eroding, this type of ritual is working against that progress. 'Some of the themes we're seeing are so backwards and biased,' says Carly Gieseler, PhD, assistant professor at The City University of New York and author of ' Gender-Reveal Parties: Performing Community Identity in Pink and Blue (opens in new tab),' a report published last January in the Journal for Gender Studies. At a time when work, family obligations and, you know, the dismantling of patriarchal social structures are stretching us all thinner than Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables, why are we focusing our energies on yet another afternoon of baby bagatelle? Laugh as we throw sperm confetti at mom-to-be! Eat from this bassinet-shaped fruit tray! Cast your vote for the sex of our fetus! But despite the popularity, the ritual is a lot like a rousing game of Pin-The-Umbilical-Cord-On-The-Newborn: cutesy in theory, taxing in practice. One former supervisor of a high-end bakery in Champaign, Illinois, told me she received queries about gender-reveal cakes once or twice a week. The It's A Boy/It's A Girl fetes have been an economic boon to stationary companies (opens in new tab) and party supply stores (opens in new tab) nationwide a search for 'gender reveal' on Etsy yields 46,711 results. I've accepted that, when it comes to the baby industrial complex, there are some things I'm better off embracing…no matter how antiquated or absurd.īecause we don't celebrate non-pregnancy-related milestones with the same enthusiasm, we're reinforcing the archaic notion that a woman's value rests squarely in her ability to grow tiny humans.[īut I cannot stomach the latest fad of the knocked-up set: gender-reveal parties. And, if you're like me, you swallow your feminist pride long enough to eat fetus-shaped cookies, finger-paint bibs in gender normative colors, and support a pregnant friend. If you're like me-a woman in her early 30s-your weekends are increasingly planned around these pastel celebrations and their games. This game was the piece de resistance at a friend's baby shower.

Archaic notion definition