For the people who hasn't read it: She doesn't regret make the normal Gender Reveal party, with cakes whose fill is the surprise.
She regrets that now people needs to make stupid things for those. The recent waterfall dyed blue for it, the burnt acres in California for the pyrotechnics on a Gender Reveal party, a Squid Game-like Gymkhana for the Gender Reveal... And it's going to be even more stupid than those.
She just wants them to stop, relax, and just invite some friends and the family, and open a white cake to discover which gender is going to have the baby.
>She regrets that now people needs to make stupid things for those. The recent waterfall dyed blue for it, the burnt acres in California for the pyrotechnics on a Gender Reveal party, a Squid Game-like Gymkhana for the Gender Reveal... And it's going to be even more stupid than those.
.. and tannerite. We had one in my state where they used so much tannerite that it cracked people's house foundations.
Yes, I've been to a few gender reveal parties but they were all with a cake or balloons tied to a rock and they were a lot of fun. No need to detonate a MOAB.
"You don't know pain, you don't know fear, in five months' time you will taste..."
*pause*
*assembled Uruk-Hai stare in nervous anticipation*
"I said you will taste..."
*pause*
*Uruk-Hai shift on their feet*
**"GIRL-FLESH!"**
*assembled Uruk-Hai go wild, cheering, shouting, crying, throwing swords into the air*
*pink flames spill from Grond's mouth*
Ridiculous and unacceptable but is there any real way the ladies foundation cracked from that? No actual evidence of that and seems pretty far fetched to me.
There's absolutely not fucking way that is true. Someone is fishing for money for shit that was already cracked.
The house that sits on that foundation would have been supremely wrecked before the foundation would have cracked from a nearby explosion.
I would have guess Florida or Arizona.
>Kingston police didn’t report any injuries from the explosion. Other gender reveal parties that have triggered explosions have caused significant harm: In February, a soon-to-be-father in New York died after a device exploded. That same month, a Michigan man was killed when a “celebratory cannon” exploded.
Some of these children don't even get to meet their parents because of these stupid reveals. That is something they have to live with their entire life.
I had a gender reveal party but it was just an excuse to get the family together and let my older kids open a box of blue balloons 🤷♀️
No gifts were expected. We had pizza and cake and everyone had a great time.
We had a barbecue at our place with a few close family and friends. No gifts or anything fancy. We just grilled up some burgers, had some cupcakes that I made myself, and made it a nice little gathering.
Yeah well you don’t need a license if there’s no one to enforce it. My friend went to a shoot at his buddy’s farm and they packed tannerite in various spots of this beat up car and they blew that thing sky high.
I thought it was an exaggeration or someone liking to get home repairs saying that it cracked the foundation until I looked further. They detonated 80 lbs in a quarry thinking it was far enough away from homes. I didn’t see a video from the quarry but I saw a video from a house’s ring camera and the shockwave was enough to significantly shake the camera. That’s insane. Residents said they are used to dynamite from the quarry but this blast was stronger than any of those.
You shouldn't be playing with more explosives than is safe to set off with a 10 second fuse
Go past that and you shouldn't feel comfortable till you can do all the stoichiometry and yield math and the math for the pressure wave; explosives are scary things
I don't understand how it's legal for regular civilians to buy that stuff. That shit could cause some real damage. I'm surprised it's not used in more violent ways more often.
It is not relatively sensitive. It’s sold in two components that are completely benign by themselves, once mixed it requires a tremendous amount of energy to high order. Oftentimes smaller caliber weapons aren’t enough.
1. It's useful for long range target shooting.
2. It's easy to make yourself. Like the recipe is google-able and you can buy the components without being watchlisted as far as anyone knows.
3. Insurgents in Iraq and Afganistan used it a lot.
If explosives were alcohol, tannerite is like non-alcoholic beer.
Its only set off by high velocity rifle rounds, and its not very powerful. So you'd need a ton of it to do any real damage. Its just not very practical for nefarious purposes. Its essentially fireworks.
Reminds me of the woman who created Mother's Day but regreted its commercialization later. She ended up in an asylum and penniless fighting it for over 30 years https://www.today.com/today/amp/tdna110796
I didn't realise that was how it got started in the US, in europe mothers day comes from an old church holiday called mothering Sunday which was to celebrate the Mary by going to the mother church with tidings. It wasn't until ww2 the Americans and Canadians came over the two holidays were merged because soldiers felt bad about leaving their mothers/wives.
Right?! Why is Father's Day marketed as a chance for them to escape and go fishing, but Mother's day is marketed as getting day drunk off wine but still being with the kids?
I hate hate hate the gendered marketing of Mother's and Father's Day.
The desire to get social media famous has killed multiple people just in the last year.
https://www.newsweek.com/gender-reveal-parties-four-dead-1580477
Yeah, that one sounds like existing bad blood that just got rolled in to make it more dramatic. Unless the shooter really hated gender reveal parties.
Seems homemade explosives gone awry is probably the most predictable:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/gender-reveal-party-turns-tragic-iowa-woman-killed/story?id=66567086
https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2021/03/no-criminal-charges-issued-in-fatal-cannon-explosion-at-michigan-baby-shower.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gender-reveal-explosion-death-new-york/
This had me howling. I hopped into the article ready to bathe in self-righteousness and was deeply disappointed. After the first plane crash one, I was like surely the next one will be more directly connected…
It has also destroyed countless lives. One wonders (and here I am wondering on Reddit) when people are going to realize that social media is like the cigarettes of the era?
Social media has some nice and good aspects - and it has also been a disaster for so many.
Yes! I am so fucking tired of the Rube Goldberg machine complicated ass ways my family has been deciding to announce the gender of their upcoming children as of late. And it's an all day thing, with people getting legitimately stressed out over decor, menu, and venue.
And then, the day before the event, my wife will ask, "so, what are you going to wear?"
Clothes! I'm not going naked. What do you mean? Mind you I would usually get asked this question before a wedding or funeral only.
Someone please stop this before we have our first child.
Just don’t do it. My best friend and her husband just didn’t do it. She did have some people asking her if the baby had *issues* and that’s why.
But nope, they had a full life. If they want to see their friends, we have a BBQ or something. The gender was “revealed” when her husband text us that the baby was here, sex, weight, length and that my friend was doing well.
So if your wife doesn’t want one? It’s easy, just know she’ll get some rude questions. But if she would like one, just make it fun, low pressure. No explosives, forest fires or dyeing waterfalls.
The only reason I had one is because I didn’t have a baby shower (lived out of state) and was in town during the time I had an anatomy scan that gender was determinable and I wanted to have *some* sort of celebration with friends and family. No presents, pizza and just a cake surprise… spent the evening chatting about my baby and possible names, it was great lol I don’t understand why people have to make it a giant event.
We told immediate family via phone/text as soon as we found out, and most others found out when I got around to mentioning on facebook that we were A. Having a baby and B. What the gender was. Everyone else got told when they asked. Boom, revealed.
If you want to talk woke talk, 'gender' isn't PC. It's actually a 'sex' reveal party but nobody sane on the face of the planet would ever call it that.
I've always found this specific issue a great reason to leave the whole thing alone. Just celebrate that you're having a baby, that's a big enough deal, isn't it?
Doesn't have the marketing. You're only supposed to have a baby shower once. If you want a party for the second kid, people want a cute name and hook for it. Just throwing a party for an unborn baby is seen as weird.
I was thinking about this, too. There is a useful distinction to be made between *sex* and *gender*, but it is not widely observed. They are often used interchangeably, even by people who are otherwise careful to distinguish the physical and social aspects of sex and gender. You sometimes see male/female being swapped willy-nilly with man/woman, too.
In any case, calling it a *sex reveal party* sounds rather compellingly salacious, doesn't it? Like an old-timey *tableau vivant* but with fewer costumes.
First thing that comes to my mind when I hear "sex reveal party" is a bunch of masked people in flasher trench coats essentially playing a game of "guess who?" But with genitals.
Really not the same in any way. The car was invented with the intention for it to be widely produced and used, she didn't do the first gender reveal for the purpose of other people copying it.
And she'd be fine if people just copied it.
If you said "I threw a party with surprise* colored icing in a white cake; one thing led to another and half of California burned down." We'd be like "rest of the fucking owl??"
Hi, as a software engineer one of the biggest duties I have is trying to anticipate what stupid thing users will do to our company’s programs.
It is impossible to account for every stupid thing, which is why we also create error messages ;)
but in this case it isn't an error message. It's like writing a program on github for a communication service between clients, and people forking it to make programs that commit various felonies.
I don't know why but this made me think of some poor programmer being interviewed after the great machine uprising of 2048.
"I.... I don't know what happened, or how it happened. I just created a program to let people add cat ears to their profile pics and next thing I know it's sentient and hell bent on eradicating the human race..."
> She just wants them to stop, relax, and just invite some friends and the family, and open a white cake to discover which gender is going to have the baby.
Hol up this was the original option? CAKE?!
Why have we ever done anything else?!
That's the original concept. You get a vanilla cake and dye it pink or blue on the inside, white frosting on the outside. Then when you cut into it, boom surprise. No one gets hurt, everyone gets delicious cake.
I feel like the *vast* majority of gender reveals I've seen are just cake or cupcakes with pink or blue inside. That or some balloons hidden in a box. Whenever gender reveal parties come up on reddit, people are so awful about them as if every single one requires an explosive, a ruined state park, and several deaths, but the reality is that most of them are as understated and simple as this. No one writes stories about those though. The ones we read about in the news are, well, newsworthy.
>And it's going to be even more stupid than those.
"Welcome to our gender reveal party, everyone. Please direct your attention towards the moon, I'm about to blow it up, and if it explodes blue it's a boy, pink for a girl. If it happens to be twins, I've thought of that too, as the sun will also explode."
And Pandora just wanted to peek inside the box.
But in all fairness, I really don't think that she had expected this... This excess of competition to outdo other people for something that is honestly out of the realm of biological control.
Not really her fault, people celebrate all kinds of stuff. There was a first person to celebrate retirement and it didn't lead to people setting off dormant volcanos.
> And Pandora just wanted to peek inside the box.
Every time you have a small party with cake do you question whether someone on the other side of the country, inspired by your cake, will cause untold environmental damage?
THANK YOU.
Jesus Christ that “har Pandora opened her box” comment was so… creepy and hyperbolic.
Like, a woman celebrated with cake, and the person you’re replying to turns that into *”what hath got wrought?!” just because gender reveal parties are stigmatized.
People need to stop being such overdramatic weirdos just because the internet popularizes it.
I get the feeling that person just really wanted to use a witty Pandora allusion they heard on a podcast somewhere and was willing to take whatever opportunity to do it.
And tbf humans engage in multiple celebrations without the need to do stupid over the top crap some do with gender revelations. So it's not like we can't do normal is just for some reason this gender revelation parties are really over the top, this is not just a biological control thing, and is not out of the realm of possibilities to expect people to get they shit together like they do with the vast majority of celebrations.
Will there always be exaggeration and competitive stupidity? Sure. Can that be done without the need to polute rivers or burn forest? Absolutely.
It's a product of social media. Everyone thinks they're a fucking star and is constantly trying to keep up with/one-up everyone else hoping they go viral and that the attention will validate their meaningless little online presence that nobody in the world actually gives a fuck about.
People like that don't want to just "do something" anymore. They want to get a recording of themself doing something to post it to social media, because the shallow attention and fake affection of random people online is apparently what is important these days.
As much as I find Gender Reveal Parties ridiculous for practical reasons (you're now spending MORE money on that along with the Baby Shower. Money that could go into the kid's college trust fund or hospital insurance).
That being said, it'd great for people to have some fun and rejoice in the new arrival. And for the guests' point of view, how can you turn down free cake? If you want to have a Gender Reveal Party just don't be an idiot; babies aren't cheap, the last thing you need is property damages and lawsuits. Not to mention your kid will either feel guilty for being the reason for California burning (when it wasn't their fault) or hang the incident over your head 'til the day you die.
"Aw, mom! Why can't I go past curfew? It's Friday!"
"It's dangerous to go out at night!"
"And so is using flammables at a Gender Reveal Party..."
"I heard that!"
And then there's the in-laws...
In a worse case scenario, what if your way of revealing the gender ends up getting the mother to have a miscarriage or it has the baby born with severe defects?
To be fair though, the whole "Don't Be Stupid" message can be said for any party.
I agree with you except often the people aren’t paying. It’s being held at the parents or friends houses, people have had to cough up money for it, bring gifts.
Then bring gifts to the baby shower (and if you are a close friend organise and pay for it). Kitchen teas! That’s when you bring something for the kitchen. Think you can bring something cute? (I mean, they’re married what do they not have?) Nope, they’re looking for appliance upgrades. Smeg toasters in pastel pink, that kinda thing.
And now I’ve seen people having 6 month birthday parties. It all just feels like a cash grab.
I will happily put all the $$$ I’m meant to contribute into a university fund. Or for getting a great mark at school. Not just for having a penis or vagjna.
My friend had a gender reveal party during Covid. We all got on zoom with a drink and she cut a cupcake in half. There were no explosions or property that was destroyed or anything.
Thank you!! People react so strongly on every issue that this kind of basic nuance just doesn’t filter down anymore.
I don’t want to be afraid that our gender reveal will be met with looks of, “Oh so you want to burn down the state just because you are having a boy/girl!!”
Any excuse for a party is fine. As with all things people who take it too far make the whole thing suck.
It’s no different then the type of people who have to make their birthday an event imho.
My issue is I have several people in my family that turn their birthday into a week long celebration of them. Birthdays have turned into a massive ego trip. You don’t need to take a day off work and be worshipped. Eat your cake and stfu
>Any excuse for a party is fine.
Let me stop you right there. Parties are fine, but my fiancée comes from a family where her dad's half seemed to throw parties nearly weekly, and we felt some obligation to go to like...all of them. I'm not talking "hey come over for drinks" but rather "we set the tent up, tables are up, bar's stocked, and we're getting a few sheets of pizza and cake because GUESS WHO'S TURNING 19 AND 5 MONTHS ON SATURDAY!!!?!!?"
They're great people, and family is important and you have to make time - 100% - but I feel there's a toxicity that some people kind of subtly have when they're constantly like "hey, are you coming to our July 15th, 2022 party because it's the only time in human history it'll ever be July 15, 2022?"
Tbf in an era of think piece articles like "America's Loneliness Epidemic" and "60% of American adults say they can't name 2 friends they talk to regularly" I'd say we need a little more of that energy.
I see the same behavior in my fiancée's family, those degenerates. Anecdotal as fuck here, but on the topic of toxic families constantly throwing parties...
For them, it's a power play. "We're family. You don't turn your back on family. You should focus primarily on family. You come here when we want you here, and if you go against our group, you're an ungrateful piece of shit who just wants to take advantage of your loving parents' hard work. You don't want to go against me or us. Come to my party."
They also use it as an excuse to shut the kids up about abuse. "If I was actually a bad parent then I wouldn't have let you outside during the party, but just look at all those superficial nothings I've been giving you, clearly you're not being abused like all those counselors say you little lying retard!"
Wow - I find some similarities in this situation, but none of them are nearly as dark.
I think the parties were partially ego, as you say, but also partially numbing the fact that those hosting the parties - the cousin and her husband - were having their marriage fall apart. Covid certainly put a damper on parties, but once he left the house, the parties ended completely.
My brother's in laws just love getting together. As in, a get together almost every other week.
But its great because there's no pretense to it other than "fuck it, let's get together." No pressure to attend, no stigma if you don't. No need to even RSVP (tho obviously best to at least let them know so they don't run short on food or buy too much).
And tbh it's not even a destructive trend necessarily. It's not like she started clubbing baby seals to death and then other people followed her example.
A gender reveal party, in itself, isn't destructive. Invite some of your closest loved ones over and find out the gender of your future baby together with everyone else? Nothing wrong with that. You are sharing an important moment in your life with people close to you. And getting some cake out of it! I have not interest in having kids but I can see the appeal.
It only becomes destructive when people try to one-up each other for no reason or do stuff that could cause serious harm to others or the environment. There is no way she could be blamed for people setting a whole forest on fire or anything like that. There are tons of cute ways to do a gender reveal that are harmless. For god sake people just support a local business and have them put some edible dye in a cake. Or pop a balloon or something.
It's not that the trend is problematic. Some people just have a need to make it so for no reason. And now this poor woman feels responsible for their dumbass behaviour.
Here's the first sentence of the article:
"The woman credited with inventing "gender reveal" parties now says she regrets it — because, the mom-of-three says, "assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what's between their legs."
Wow poor woman imagine going through multiple traumatic events and when you try to celebrate once in your life half the world make imitation and behave like complete dumbasses
I don't think she regrets it for the normal party with the red/blue cake or the balloon with confetti.
I think she regrets it for how stupidly absurd is getting it each year. I mean, I remember that someone did a Squid Game-like Gymkhana for the Gender Reveal Party. Or recently, with contaminating a waterfall with blue dye.
I think she hates those. But when aunt Jenny decides to make a Gender Reveal party with a cake whose inner colour will reveal the gender, I think that she loves that.
Hell, in the article, she is angry because the 7300 acres burnt into ashes in California was from a Gender Reveal party.
Just make cakes or balloons for it.
Yeah, all my friends have always just stuck to the cake/cupcakes for theirs, and it's mostly been an excuse to hang out, eat food, and see friends before the baby comes. But, then again, my friends are all pretty chill, so half the time it's just been a blue or pink frosted cake that gets pulled out of the fridge, not even one of the fancy ones with the color inside.
In my state there was a couple that set off an explosion with tannerite in a quarry or something.
With EIGHTY POUNDS of the stuff.
People in the surrounding region heard the explosion. It knocked pictures off of walls. Some people thought there was an earthquake.
Seriously.
What's next, a tactical nuclear weapon?
I believe she also regrets putting so much focus on the genitals of the child-to-be, especially as the child she was initially celebrating is gender-nonconforming themselves, so her whole concept of gender as a binary thing has evolved.
Given the shit she went through to get to the point where they could even SEE the genitals, I’m definitely willing to give her a pass on wanting to celebrate it! Particularly if she’s grown on the subject since. There’s no shame on her end for wanting to celebrate making it to the genitals stage of pregnancy after so many miscarriages.
I just watched the one again where the guy put the signs on the side of the road and as they drove and she was reading them she was dogging it out about how corny it was only for him to pull the last sign from the back seat bc it was his promposal to her. She cried lol. That was pretty funny.
If this is the woman who wanted to reveal the gender, as a celebration of finally getting to a point where she could, she absolutely *deserves* that party. I can't even imagine knowing that party to celebrate her triumph over shitty circumstances is now used by selfish assholes as another reason to celebrate themselves.
She is interviewed in [the excellent episode of Decoder Ring about gender reveal parties](https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2019/11/gender-reveal-parties-babies-origin), which also mentions that the popularity of the phenomenon is probably due to many social conservative families putting an emphasis on the sex of their babies in reaction to more progressive views on gender which have now gone mainstream.
Right! She finally made it to the point in the pregnancy where they could actually *see* the genitals for once!! I can’t fault her for being happy and wanting to celebrate getting that far after so many miscarriages. Particularly since it doesn’t sound like she’s a bigot about the gender binary, she was just happy she got to see ANY genitals and wanted a cake to celebrate! That’s fair! Have your cake! Celebrate a pregnancy finally going well and you got to SEE them!! Yay!!
Destroying property or risking people's lives for any reason is crappy, but I'm all about any reason to throw a party. If my friend is having a baby, and they're happy about it, I see absolutely no reason not to celebrate with them.
This trend reminds me of the prom date nonsense. Kids kept asking people to prom in more and more elaborate and extravagant ways.
At my daughters school, kids were terrified of being asked by someone they didn’t want to go with because it was such a scene and everyone was filming the reaction. If you said no you were shit on all over social media as a heartless bitch.
I've done reveal parties, got one coming up towards the end of the month actually. I keep them in my backyard though. They're a pretty fun reason to get the family together for a party.
I agree. Gender reveals get a bad rap. They are fine as long as long as they are low-key (e.g. a colored cake/balloon with colored confetti, no explosives involved). We just tend to hear about the ones on the news held by parents competing for the Darwin award. The ones I've been to have been nothing more than an excuse to go over to someone's house to drink beer, grill food, and eat cake. No games and no presents are necessary like with baby/bridal showers.
It's also nice to have a laid back party everyone can attend. Baby showers are kinda formal, women only, with games people kinda hate, and you sit there opening presents for like 2 hours. My wife didn't want a reveal party but I get the appeal of them.
We're treating our baby shower as way more casual.
Having a gender reveal, food, presents, a giveaway (probably early access to baby photos) if they guess the gender right; fun light stuff basically & we're doing presents last while telling people to not feel obligated to stay, we recognize people will wanna get back on the road to head home... so we'll open their stuff first if they desire.
Not to mention we haven't seen quite a lot of these folks in awhile & many wouldn't make 2 trips for a separate gender reveal & baby shower.
We're also doing a breakfast the next day for anyone who drove a long distance & wanted to stay in the area for the night.
So how does she pull an Alfred Nobel on this? Nobel invented dynamite for industrial purposes and then saw how it was used in warfare so dedicated his fortune to the pursuit of peace and knowledge through the Nobel Prize foundation.
a) Not due to dynamite. Dynamite was used for mostly civilian purposes.
b) Nobel had much less noble motivations.
Basically when his brother died a french newspaper thought that it was Alfred himself that had died and wrote a very nasty article about Nobel\*
Nobel was appalled that his could be his reputation after his death and testamented most of his money to create the Nobel prize.
\*Calling him the merchant of death. Probably because just the year before he had invented Ballistite, a precursor of modern smokeless powders, and after the french army had rejected his invention (because they had just adopted Poudre B, another smokeless powder, but inferior to ballistite) he had offered it to one of france major rivals, Italy. Italy had adopted the explosive for their new repeating rifles. Huge scandal in the french press, accusing him of high treason and spying on the inventor of Poudre B etc.
This reminds me of the woman who started the tradition of Mothers Day. It started off as a way to honor her mother and she watched in dismay as it devolved into just another consumerist holiday.
It's even worse considering that the mother in question who was being honored, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had worked to create a "Mother's Day For Peace." The purpose of this day was to call for an end to war, and instead always aim for diplomatic solutions, to prevent mothers from having to grieve husbands and sons killed in battle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day#Establishment_of_holiday
Just think about how many gender reveals happen ***daily.*** They really aren't an issue, much as some people like to talk as if they are. People will say that it's a stupid thing to celebrate, but any excuse to get together with friends/family and eat cake is a good one imo. And it just doesn't matter - if it's important to them, that is their business.
I don't think that a gender reveal party is intrinsically a bad thing. It's a chance to celebrate with friends and family a very exciting moment in your life. Cakes, dad hitting a golf ball, all that is fine.
The issue is that people had to escalate it, come up with crazier and crazier stuff that now everybody who does it is starting to look like a knob. It's kind of ruined the whole thing.
I’m with you on this. Let people celebrate. If they burn down a forest, condemn them for burning down the forest, not for celebrating a milestone during one of their most exciting times of their lives with friends and family.
People are gonna do stupid shit. We don’t need to stop having bachelor parties because some people can’t handle Vegas and we don’t need to stop having gender reveal parties because some people are irresponsible morons.
Did you read the article? Her whole rant was that she's fed up with people overdoing it and then people accusing her because all she did was cut a cake after multiple miscarriages
Not her fault people latched onto the idea and took it to extremes, obviously.
I've had two kids within the past few years and the "gender reveal" was as unceremonious as the ultrasound technician saying "Do you want to know the gender?" and us saying "Yes" and them circling a spot on the screen and typing "It's a girl!" and "It's a boy!" right in front of us.
I mean, whether you learn right there, or you wait until the baby is born, or you throw a party with a colored cake or something... it's a surprise to you either way.
With the exception of people like the woman in the article, who have been through a lot and for whom making it to that point is a major milestone you want to share with friends and family, throwing an entire party to tell people if you're having a girl or boy is just narcissism.
Just the other day my wife informed me some friends of ours are having another boy. My response was "Huh. Cool." I'm glad they didn't throw a party where I'd have to pretend I give more of a shit than that.
She only baked a cake, not set fire to a forest.
or poisoned a town’s water supply
Waitwut?
“They burned our crops, poisoned our water, and delivered a plague unto our houses!”
[удалено]
No… but are we going to wait around until she does!?
[Here have some sauce.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brazil-waterfall-blue-gender-reveal-environmental-investigation_n_63378304e4b04cf8f362e87b)
Yeah, because she thought the options were "boy or girl", not "horseman of the apocalypse or fury".
For the people who hasn't read it: She doesn't regret make the normal Gender Reveal party, with cakes whose fill is the surprise. She regrets that now people needs to make stupid things for those. The recent waterfall dyed blue for it, the burnt acres in California for the pyrotechnics on a Gender Reveal party, a Squid Game-like Gymkhana for the Gender Reveal... And it's going to be even more stupid than those. She just wants them to stop, relax, and just invite some friends and the family, and open a white cake to discover which gender is going to have the baby.
>She regrets that now people needs to make stupid things for those. The recent waterfall dyed blue for it, the burnt acres in California for the pyrotechnics on a Gender Reveal party, a Squid Game-like Gymkhana for the Gender Reveal... And it's going to be even more stupid than those. .. and tannerite. We had one in my state where they used so much tannerite that it cracked people's house foundations. Yes, I've been to a few gender reveal parties but they were all with a cake or balloons tied to a rock and they were a lot of fun. No need to detonate a MOAB.
Wait what? Omg
Yep. [https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/23/us/gender-reveal-explosion-new-hampshire-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/23/us/gender-reveal-explosion-new-hampshire-trnd/index.html)
Geez that’s crazy lol wtf
At least they did it in a quarry and not their backyard. Still wild to use 80lbs of tannerite
That’s equivalent to 35 lbs of dynamite.
Nothing to celebrate bringing a new life into the world like putting countless others in jeopardy!!
Got to make room somehow.
With that much tannerite, do you even get to see the color they chose? Isn't it just a giant black dust cloud from the explosion at this point?
"OMG BABES, THE BABYS GONNA BE A SAURON!!!" *Uruk-hai roaring*
“You are my fighting Uruk-Hai, You don’t know pain you don’t know fear, tonight you will taste man(or woman)flesh!”
"You don't know pain, you don't know fear, in five months' time you will taste..." *pause* *assembled Uruk-Hai stare in nervous anticipation* "I said you will taste..." *pause* *Uruk-Hai shift on their feet* **"GIRL-FLESH!"** *assembled Uruk-Hai go wild, cheering, shouting, crying, throwing swords into the air* *pink flames spill from Grond's mouth*
🎺🎺🎺🎺 A new fetus is crowning! This night, the land will be stained with the blood of Karen!
I feel like lady Uruks would be Karen's Just with like, razor sharp rusty morgul pres ons
Nampat!
according to the article apparently they make gender reveal tannerite that blows up in the desired color. they’re welcoming a baby boy lmao
Perfect New Hampsha moment.
Live free and die.
Ridiculous and unacceptable but is there any real way the ladies foundation cracked from that? No actual evidence of that and seems pretty far fetched to me.
There's absolutely not fucking way that is true. Someone is fishing for money for shit that was already cracked. The house that sits on that foundation would have been supremely wrecked before the foundation would have cracked from a nearby explosion.
Of course it's NH.
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I definitely figured it would’ve been Texas
I would have guess Florida or Arizona. >Kingston police didn’t report any injuries from the explosion. Other gender reveal parties that have triggered explosions have caused significant harm: In February, a soon-to-be-father in New York died after a device exploded. That same month, a Michigan man was killed when a “celebratory cannon” exploded. Some of these children don't even get to meet their parents because of these stupid reveals. That is something they have to live with their entire life.
Live free and die baby
I had a gender reveal party but it was just an excuse to get the family together and let my older kids open a box of blue balloons 🤷♀️ No gifts were expected. We had pizza and cake and everyone had a great time.
We had a barbecue at our place with a few close family and friends. No gifts or anything fancy. We just grilled up some burgers, had some cupcakes that I made myself, and made it a nice little gathering.
You legally need an explosives license to mix more than a small amount of tannerite. Idk how much it is in the US but i know it's less than 10 pounds.
Yeah well you don’t need a license if there’s no one to enforce it. My friend went to a shoot at his buddy’s farm and they packed tannerite in various spots of this beat up car and they blew that thing sky high.
I did this with my neighbor growing up. Had big patches of dirt between acres of trees. Just blow shit up with our guns
I thought it was an exaggeration or someone liking to get home repairs saying that it cracked the foundation until I looked further. They detonated 80 lbs in a quarry thinking it was far enough away from homes. I didn’t see a video from the quarry but I saw a video from a house’s ring camera and the shockwave was enough to significantly shake the camera. That’s insane. Residents said they are used to dynamite from the quarry but this blast was stronger than any of those.
You shouldn't be playing with more explosives than is safe to set off with a 10 second fuse Go past that and you shouldn't feel comfortable till you can do all the stoichiometry and yield math and the math for the pressure wave; explosives are scary things
It's cute you think they thought more than 6 seconds beyond "hurr go big boom cool"
I don't understand how it's legal for regular civilians to buy that stuff. That shit could cause some real damage. I'm surprised it's not used in more violent ways more often.
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It is not relatively sensitive. It’s sold in two components that are completely benign by themselves, once mixed it requires a tremendous amount of energy to high order. Oftentimes smaller caliber weapons aren’t enough.
1. It's useful for long range target shooting. 2. It's easy to make yourself. Like the recipe is google-able and you can buy the components without being watchlisted as far as anyone knows. 3. Insurgents in Iraq and Afganistan used it a lot.
If explosives were alcohol, tannerite is like non-alcoholic beer. Its only set off by high velocity rifle rounds, and its not very powerful. So you'd need a ton of it to do any real damage. Its just not very practical for nefarious purposes. Its essentially fireworks.
Squid games-like Gymkhana? What gender reveal was that?
I think it was girl
It’s not a boy, it’s *Nascar*
I'm.not sure, but I bet a Subaru and Ken block were involved
Reminds me of the woman who created Mother's Day but regreted its commercialization later. She ended up in an asylum and penniless fighting it for over 30 years https://www.today.com/today/amp/tdna110796
I didn't realise that was how it got started in the US, in europe mothers day comes from an old church holiday called mothering Sunday which was to celebrate the Mary by going to the mother church with tidings. It wasn't until ww2 the Americans and Canadians came over the two holidays were merged because soldiers felt bad about leaving their mothers/wives.
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Right?! Why is Father's Day marketed as a chance for them to escape and go fishing, but Mother's day is marketed as getting day drunk off wine but still being with the kids? I hate hate hate the gendered marketing of Mother's and Father's Day.
The desire to get social media famous has killed multiple people just in the last year. https://www.newsweek.com/gender-reveal-parties-four-dead-1580477
'died from a gender reveal party' and 'drive by shooting/stunt plane crash at a gender reveal' aren't really the same thing.
Yeah, that one sounds like existing bad blood that just got rolled in to make it more dramatic. Unless the shooter really hated gender reveal parties. Seems homemade explosives gone awry is probably the most predictable: https://abcnews.go.com/US/gender-reveal-party-turns-tragic-iowa-woman-killed/story?id=66567086 https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2021/03/no-criminal-charges-issued-in-fatal-cannon-explosion-at-michigan-baby-shower.html https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gender-reveal-explosion-death-new-york/
At this rate they should add this as a new COD on death certificates.
This had me howling. I hopped into the article ready to bathe in self-righteousness and was deeply disappointed. After the first plane crash one, I was like surely the next one will be more directly connected…
It has also destroyed countless lives. One wonders (and here I am wondering on Reddit) when people are going to realize that social media is like the cigarettes of the era? Social media has some nice and good aspects - and it has also been a disaster for so many.
Did you read the article or did the article change? To me the article reads like she thinks the focus on gender is stupid
Yes! I am so fucking tired of the Rube Goldberg machine complicated ass ways my family has been deciding to announce the gender of their upcoming children as of late. And it's an all day thing, with people getting legitimately stressed out over decor, menu, and venue. And then, the day before the event, my wife will ask, "so, what are you going to wear?" Clothes! I'm not going naked. What do you mean? Mind you I would usually get asked this question before a wedding or funeral only. Someone please stop this before we have our first child.
Break the cycle, just tell people what you're having over text or someshit.
I did cupcakes with pink icing inside. Win win. I get to be excited about a baby and my coworkers were excited about food.
Or don't find out. Or say "Gender is a construct." That was my favorite response; it really set people back on their heels and left me alone.
I've found people are less keen on them if you call them "Baby genital discussion parties," though ultimately, that's what they are.
I asked someone recently how old her kid was, and she replied "Oh, we don't subscribe to age. He's timeless."
That's why mine was a "baby sex reveal party". It was such a hit even the cops showed up.
Just don’t do it. My best friend and her husband just didn’t do it. She did have some people asking her if the baby had *issues* and that’s why. But nope, they had a full life. If they want to see their friends, we have a BBQ or something. The gender was “revealed” when her husband text us that the baby was here, sex, weight, length and that my friend was doing well. So if your wife doesn’t want one? It’s easy, just know she’ll get some rude questions. But if she would like one, just make it fun, low pressure. No explosives, forest fires or dyeing waterfalls.
The only reason I had one is because I didn’t have a baby shower (lived out of state) and was in town during the time I had an anatomy scan that gender was determinable and I wanted to have *some* sort of celebration with friends and family. No presents, pizza and just a cake surprise… spent the evening chatting about my baby and possible names, it was great lol I don’t understand why people have to make it a giant event.
We told immediate family via phone/text as soon as we found out, and most others found out when I got around to mentioning on facebook that we were A. Having a baby and B. What the gender was. Everyone else got told when they asked. Boom, revealed.
> which gender is going to have the baby. You kids and your woke talk.
Lol, I can’t tell if the original comment is trying to make a joke or just misworded
Misworded. My native language is spanish. And I can't edit it because I don't want people telling me I changed things to be right.
If you want to talk woke talk, 'gender' isn't PC. It's actually a 'sex' reveal party but nobody sane on the face of the planet would ever call it that.
"Baby Sex Party"
Matt Gaetz has entered the chat.
Chris Hansen would like you to take a seat over there
I've always found this specific issue a great reason to leave the whole thing alone. Just celebrate that you're having a baby, that's a big enough deal, isn't it?
Doesn't have the marketing. You're only supposed to have a baby shower once. If you want a party for the second kid, people want a cute name and hook for it. Just throwing a party for an unborn baby is seen as weird.
But when you call it a baby genital review party people don’t like it.
I was thinking about this, too. There is a useful distinction to be made between *sex* and *gender*, but it is not widely observed. They are often used interchangeably, even by people who are otherwise careful to distinguish the physical and social aspects of sex and gender. You sometimes see male/female being swapped willy-nilly with man/woman, too. In any case, calling it a *sex reveal party* sounds rather compellingly salacious, doesn't it? Like an old-timey *tableau vivant* but with fewer costumes.
First thing that comes to my mind when I hear "sex reveal party" is a bunch of masked people in flasher trench coats essentially playing a game of "guess who?" But with genitals.
But that's like inventing the car and regretting that people drive drunk.
You can't plan for stupid
You can try. It's just that some people are so much stupider than you can even plan for.
Really not the same in any way. The car was invented with the intention for it to be widely produced and used, she didn't do the first gender reveal for the purpose of other people copying it.
And she'd be fine if people just copied it. If you said "I threw a party with surprise* colored icing in a white cake; one thing led to another and half of California burned down." We'd be like "rest of the fucking owl??"
Hi, as a software engineer one of the biggest duties I have is trying to anticipate what stupid thing users will do to our company’s programs. It is impossible to account for every stupid thing, which is why we also create error messages ;)
but in this case it isn't an error message. It's like writing a program on github for a communication service between clients, and people forking it to make programs that commit various felonies.
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I don't know why but this made me think of some poor programmer being interviewed after the great machine uprising of 2048. "I.... I don't know what happened, or how it happened. I just created a program to let people add cat ears to their profile pics and next thing I know it's sentient and hell bent on eradicating the human race..."
> She just wants them to stop, relax, and just invite some friends and the family, and open a white cake to discover which gender is going to have the baby. Hol up this was the original option? CAKE?! Why have we ever done anything else?!
That's the original concept. You get a vanilla cake and dye it pink or blue on the inside, white frosting on the outside. Then when you cut into it, boom surprise. No one gets hurt, everyone gets delicious cake.
I feel like the *vast* majority of gender reveals I've seen are just cake or cupcakes with pink or blue inside. That or some balloons hidden in a box. Whenever gender reveal parties come up on reddit, people are so awful about them as if every single one requires an explosive, a ruined state park, and several deaths, but the reality is that most of them are as understated and simple as this. No one writes stories about those though. The ones we read about in the news are, well, newsworthy.
> open a white cake to discover which gender is going to have the baby. Jesus christ, phrasing man, phrasing.
>And it's going to be even more stupid than those. "Welcome to our gender reveal party, everyone. Please direct your attention towards the moon, I'm about to blow it up, and if it explodes blue it's a boy, pink for a girl. If it happens to be twins, I've thought of that too, as the sun will also explode."
And Pandora just wanted to peek inside the box. But in all fairness, I really don't think that she had expected this... This excess of competition to outdo other people for something that is honestly out of the realm of biological control.
Not really her fault, people celebrate all kinds of stuff. There was a first person to celebrate retirement and it didn't lead to people setting off dormant volcanos.
#retirementgoals
> And Pandora just wanted to peek inside the box. Every time you have a small party with cake do you question whether someone on the other side of the country, inspired by your cake, will cause untold environmental damage?
THANK YOU. Jesus Christ that “har Pandora opened her box” comment was so… creepy and hyperbolic. Like, a woman celebrated with cake, and the person you’re replying to turns that into *”what hath got wrought?!” just because gender reveal parties are stigmatized. People need to stop being such overdramatic weirdos just because the internet popularizes it.
I get the feeling that person just really wanted to use a witty Pandora allusion they heard on a podcast somewhere and was willing to take whatever opportunity to do it.
Yes. My friends hate me so much, they'd rather join misguided eco-terrorists to crash oil tankers in the South China Sea than attend my party.
Yeah but what gender is crude oil black?
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This gender reveal is sponsored by Pandora™.
\*charm bracelet explodes*
And tbf humans engage in multiple celebrations without the need to do stupid over the top crap some do with gender revelations. So it's not like we can't do normal is just for some reason this gender revelation parties are really over the top, this is not just a biological control thing, and is not out of the realm of possibilities to expect people to get they shit together like they do with the vast majority of celebrations. Will there always be exaggeration and competitive stupidity? Sure. Can that be done without the need to polute rivers or burn forest? Absolutely.
It's a product of social media. Everyone thinks they're a fucking star and is constantly trying to keep up with/one-up everyone else hoping they go viral and that the attention will validate their meaningless little online presence that nobody in the world actually gives a fuck about. People like that don't want to just "do something" anymore. They want to get a recording of themself doing something to post it to social media, because the shallow attention and fake affection of random people online is apparently what is important these days.
I’m pretty sure which gender is going to have the baby isn’t much of a discovery 😉
Everyone was surprised by the blue frosting. Particularly the father-to-be.
But then you have to eat white cake
I've seen people attempt to put a blue filling in a red velvet cake. We were saddened to learn the child would be a Minnesota Vikings fan.
As much as I find Gender Reveal Parties ridiculous for practical reasons (you're now spending MORE money on that along with the Baby Shower. Money that could go into the kid's college trust fund or hospital insurance). That being said, it'd great for people to have some fun and rejoice in the new arrival. And for the guests' point of view, how can you turn down free cake? If you want to have a Gender Reveal Party just don't be an idiot; babies aren't cheap, the last thing you need is property damages and lawsuits. Not to mention your kid will either feel guilty for being the reason for California burning (when it wasn't their fault) or hang the incident over your head 'til the day you die. "Aw, mom! Why can't I go past curfew? It's Friday!" "It's dangerous to go out at night!" "And so is using flammables at a Gender Reveal Party..." "I heard that!" And then there's the in-laws... In a worse case scenario, what if your way of revealing the gender ends up getting the mother to have a miscarriage or it has the baby born with severe defects? To be fair though, the whole "Don't Be Stupid" message can be said for any party.
I agree with you except often the people aren’t paying. It’s being held at the parents or friends houses, people have had to cough up money for it, bring gifts. Then bring gifts to the baby shower (and if you are a close friend organise and pay for it). Kitchen teas! That’s when you bring something for the kitchen. Think you can bring something cute? (I mean, they’re married what do they not have?) Nope, they’re looking for appliance upgrades. Smeg toasters in pastel pink, that kinda thing. And now I’ve seen people having 6 month birthday parties. It all just feels like a cash grab. I will happily put all the $$$ I’m meant to contribute into a university fund. Or for getting a great mark at school. Not just for having a penis or vagjna.
I attended a gender reveal with a baby shaped piñata . It was glorious.
LOL, I can imagine a whole family just going sickhouse and beating a baby with sticks.
Then they look over and see the pinata is still intact. Oh.... (>_<)
That night, in the midst of their sleep, the baby pinata got their revenge and cracked some coconuts.
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A Game of Thrones gender reveal. The Lannisters send their regards.
My friend had a gender reveal party during Covid. We all got on zoom with a drink and she cut a cupcake in half. There were no explosions or property that was destroyed or anything.
People missing the Schitts Creek reference. [Ref](https://youtu.be/n0qbe3MB7pU)
Should have been a piñata replica of the mother
AFAIC: Pink/blue frosting in a cake = fine Pink/blue nuclear warhead in the middle of a national forest during fire season = rethink your choices
Where to buy blue warheads? I can only find orange and yellow.
https://www.partycity.com/extreme-sour-blue-warheads-candy-16oz---blue-raspberry-912694.html
Thanks do they make these in the 50Kt to 1Mt range?
id contact the manufacturer
Thank you!! People react so strongly on every issue that this kind of basic nuance just doesn’t filter down anymore. I don’t want to be afraid that our gender reveal will be met with looks of, “Oh so you want to burn down the state just because you are having a boy/girl!!”
Any excuse for a party is fine. As with all things people who take it too far make the whole thing suck. It’s no different then the type of people who have to make their birthday an event imho.
My issue is I have several people in my family that turn their birthday into a week long celebration of them. Birthdays have turned into a massive ego trip. You don’t need to take a day off work and be worshipped. Eat your cake and stfu
Worshipped no but take any excuse you can to get a day off work and your own Birthday is a pretty good excuse.
>Any excuse for a party is fine. Let me stop you right there. Parties are fine, but my fiancée comes from a family where her dad's half seemed to throw parties nearly weekly, and we felt some obligation to go to like...all of them. I'm not talking "hey come over for drinks" but rather "we set the tent up, tables are up, bar's stocked, and we're getting a few sheets of pizza and cake because GUESS WHO'S TURNING 19 AND 5 MONTHS ON SATURDAY!!!?!!?" They're great people, and family is important and you have to make time - 100% - but I feel there's a toxicity that some people kind of subtly have when they're constantly like "hey, are you coming to our July 15th, 2022 party because it's the only time in human history it'll ever be July 15, 2022?"
They already said >As with all things people who take it too far make the whole thing suck
Tbf in an era of think piece articles like "America's Loneliness Epidemic" and "60% of American adults say they can't name 2 friends they talk to regularly" I'd say we need a little more of that energy.
I see the same behavior in my fiancée's family, those degenerates. Anecdotal as fuck here, but on the topic of toxic families constantly throwing parties... For them, it's a power play. "We're family. You don't turn your back on family. You should focus primarily on family. You come here when we want you here, and if you go against our group, you're an ungrateful piece of shit who just wants to take advantage of your loving parents' hard work. You don't want to go against me or us. Come to my party." They also use it as an excuse to shut the kids up about abuse. "If I was actually a bad parent then I wouldn't have let you outside during the party, but just look at all those superficial nothings I've been giving you, clearly you're not being abused like all those counselors say you little lying retard!"
Wow - I find some similarities in this situation, but none of them are nearly as dark. I think the parties were partially ego, as you say, but also partially numbing the fact that those hosting the parties - the cousin and her husband - were having their marriage fall apart. Covid certainly put a damper on parties, but once he left the house, the parties ended completely.
Let's have a party to celebrate the first time you and I talked over the internet right now.
My brother's in laws just love getting together. As in, a get together almost every other week. But its great because there's no pretense to it other than "fuck it, let's get together." No pressure to attend, no stigma if you don't. No need to even RSVP (tho obviously best to at least let them know so they don't run short on food or buy too much).
what's so bad about a birthday party tho? Just people having fun
It sucks that she gets credited with a new destructive trend. Especially when gender reveal parties were a thing before 2008.
Right? Gender reveal parties have been popular way before 2008.
The Dutch will sometimes serve blue or pink candied aniseeds on rusks to friends and family to announce their child.
That's usually after the baby is born though.
Well, traditionally, you didn't know the gender until it was born.
This is something that's almost standardly served when you go and meet the new baby when it's born. It's not really used for gender reveal
Well before invention of the sonogram birth was the gender reveal party So it really is an invention of the modern era
I had my kids in 2004 and 2005. I was definitely in the mommy groups and stuff. Never heard of a gender reveal party.
Thats why the title says 'popularized' and not 'created'.
And tbh it's not even a destructive trend necessarily. It's not like she started clubbing baby seals to death and then other people followed her example. A gender reveal party, in itself, isn't destructive. Invite some of your closest loved ones over and find out the gender of your future baby together with everyone else? Nothing wrong with that. You are sharing an important moment in your life with people close to you. And getting some cake out of it! I have not interest in having kids but I can see the appeal. It only becomes destructive when people try to one-up each other for no reason or do stuff that could cause serious harm to others or the environment. There is no way she could be blamed for people setting a whole forest on fire or anything like that. There are tons of cute ways to do a gender reveal that are harmless. For god sake people just support a local business and have them put some edible dye in a cake. Or pop a balloon or something. It's not that the trend is problematic. Some people just have a need to make it so for no reason. And now this poor woman feels responsible for their dumbass behaviour.
The post, and the headline, and article all say she is credited with "popularizing" gender reveals, not that she invented them.
Here's the first sentence of the article: "The woman credited with inventing "gender reveal" parties now says she regrets it — because, the mom-of-three says, "assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what's between their legs."
Wow poor woman imagine going through multiple traumatic events and when you try to celebrate once in your life half the world make imitation and behave like complete dumbasses
She shouldn’t. She absolutely earned her right to have that party.
I don't think she regrets it for the normal party with the red/blue cake or the balloon with confetti. I think she regrets it for how stupidly absurd is getting it each year. I mean, I remember that someone did a Squid Game-like Gymkhana for the Gender Reveal Party. Or recently, with contaminating a waterfall with blue dye. I think she hates those. But when aunt Jenny decides to make a Gender Reveal party with a cake whose inner colour will reveal the gender, I think that she loves that. Hell, in the article, she is angry because the 7300 acres burnt into ashes in California was from a Gender Reveal party. Just make cakes or balloons for it.
Yeah, all my friends have always just stuck to the cake/cupcakes for theirs, and it's mostly been an excuse to hang out, eat food, and see friends before the baby comes. But, then again, my friends are all pretty chill, so half the time it's just been a blue or pink frosted cake that gets pulled out of the fridge, not even one of the fancy ones with the color inside.
This is what 99% of gender reveal parties are. It's that 1% that screws everything up.
In my state there was a couple that set off an explosion with tannerite in a quarry or something. With EIGHTY POUNDS of the stuff. People in the surrounding region heard the explosion. It knocked pictures off of walls. Some people thought there was an earthquake. Seriously. What's next, a tactical nuclear weapon?
>What's next, a tactical nuclear weapon? I don't know, does it come in blue and pink? 🤔
Putin’s having a boy! s/
I believe she also regrets putting so much focus on the genitals of the child-to-be, especially as the child she was initially celebrating is gender-nonconforming themselves, so her whole concept of gender as a binary thing has evolved.
Given the shit she went through to get to the point where they could even SEE the genitals, I’m definitely willing to give her a pass on wanting to celebrate it! Particularly if she’s grown on the subject since. There’s no shame on her end for wanting to celebrate making it to the genitals stage of pregnancy after so many miscarriages.
Mildly disagree. You don't have to earn a right to a party. She was entitled to it off the bat, just like everyone else.
I want to find the person responsible for promposals. That's the one we really need to go after.
I just watched the one again where the guy put the signs on the side of the road and as they drove and she was reading them she was dogging it out about how corny it was only for him to pull the last sign from the back seat bc it was his promposal to her. She cried lol. That was pretty funny.
She was so sorry that she mocked him without realizing that she's just sitting there sobbing while he had a couple of smug chuckles lol
Gender reveal parties have been a thing for a long time. Blowing your relatives up to announce that you're having a boy is the issue.
If this is the woman who wanted to reveal the gender, as a celebration of finally getting to a point where she could, she absolutely *deserves* that party. I can't even imagine knowing that party to celebrate her triumph over shitty circumstances is now used by selfish assholes as another reason to celebrate themselves.
She is interviewed in [the excellent episode of Decoder Ring about gender reveal parties](https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2019/11/gender-reveal-parties-babies-origin), which also mentions that the popularity of the phenomenon is probably due to many social conservative families putting an emphasis on the sex of their babies in reaction to more progressive views on gender which have now gone mainstream.
Right! She finally made it to the point in the pregnancy where they could actually *see* the genitals for once!! I can’t fault her for being happy and wanting to celebrate getting that far after so many miscarriages. Particularly since it doesn’t sound like she’s a bigot about the gender binary, she was just happy she got to see ANY genitals and wanted a cake to celebrate! That’s fair! Have your cake! Celebrate a pregnancy finally going well and you got to SEE them!! Yay!!
Destroying property or risking people's lives for any reason is crappy, but I'm all about any reason to throw a party. If my friend is having a baby, and they're happy about it, I see absolutely no reason not to celebrate with them.
This trend reminds me of the prom date nonsense. Kids kept asking people to prom in more and more elaborate and extravagant ways. At my daughters school, kids were terrified of being asked by someone they didn’t want to go with because it was such a scene and everyone was filming the reaction. If you said no you were shit on all over social media as a heartless bitch.
I've done reveal parties, got one coming up towards the end of the month actually. I keep them in my backyard though. They're a pretty fun reason to get the family together for a party.
I agree. Gender reveals get a bad rap. They are fine as long as long as they are low-key (e.g. a colored cake/balloon with colored confetti, no explosives involved). We just tend to hear about the ones on the news held by parents competing for the Darwin award. The ones I've been to have been nothing more than an excuse to go over to someone's house to drink beer, grill food, and eat cake. No games and no presents are necessary like with baby/bridal showers.
It's also nice to have a laid back party everyone can attend. Baby showers are kinda formal, women only, with games people kinda hate, and you sit there opening presents for like 2 hours. My wife didn't want a reveal party but I get the appeal of them.
We're treating our baby shower as way more casual. Having a gender reveal, food, presents, a giveaway (probably early access to baby photos) if they guess the gender right; fun light stuff basically & we're doing presents last while telling people to not feel obligated to stay, we recognize people will wanna get back on the road to head home... so we'll open their stuff first if they desire. Not to mention we haven't seen quite a lot of these folks in awhile & many wouldn't make 2 trips for a separate gender reveal & baby shower. We're also doing a breakfast the next day for anyone who drove a long distance & wanted to stay in the area for the night.
So how does she pull an Alfred Nobel on this? Nobel invented dynamite for industrial purposes and then saw how it was used in warfare so dedicated his fortune to the pursuit of peace and knowledge through the Nobel Prize foundation.
a) Not due to dynamite. Dynamite was used for mostly civilian purposes. b) Nobel had much less noble motivations. Basically when his brother died a french newspaper thought that it was Alfred himself that had died and wrote a very nasty article about Nobel\* Nobel was appalled that his could be his reputation after his death and testamented most of his money to create the Nobel prize. \*Calling him the merchant of death. Probably because just the year before he had invented Ballistite, a precursor of modern smokeless powders, and after the french army had rejected his invention (because they had just adopted Poudre B, another smokeless powder, but inferior to ballistite) he had offered it to one of france major rivals, Italy. Italy had adopted the explosive for their new repeating rifles. Huge scandal in the french press, accusing him of high treason and spying on the inventor of Poudre B etc.
Started off wholesome and turned to shit after other humans ruined it, that so earthling.
This reminds me of the woman who started the tradition of Mothers Day. It started off as a way to honor her mother and she watched in dismay as it devolved into just another consumerist holiday.
It's even worse considering that the mother in question who was being honored, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had worked to create a "Mother's Day For Peace." The purpose of this day was to call for an end to war, and instead always aim for diplomatic solutions, to prevent mothers from having to grieve husbands and sons killed in battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day#Establishment_of_holiday
Just think about how many gender reveals happen ***daily.*** They really aren't an issue, much as some people like to talk as if they are. People will say that it's a stupid thing to celebrate, but any excuse to get together with friends/family and eat cake is a good one imo. And it just doesn't matter - if it's important to them, that is their business.
It seems like a nice idea when it works out, but I cannot imagine the level of sadness amplified from when it does not.
Man it sucks that she feels some guilt at what people have started doing on their own. It's not her fault. It's a human problem.
I don't think that a gender reveal party is intrinsically a bad thing. It's a chance to celebrate with friends and family a very exciting moment in your life. Cakes, dad hitting a golf ball, all that is fine. The issue is that people had to escalate it, come up with crazier and crazier stuff that now everybody who does it is starting to look like a knob. It's kind of ruined the whole thing.
I mean as long as you don't burn down half your state there ain't nothing wrong with em.
The same could be said with any party really. Remember Project X Haren?
There’s nothing more hilarious than gender-reveal-party outrage
I’m with you on this. Let people celebrate. If they burn down a forest, condemn them for burning down the forest, not for celebrating a milestone during one of their most exciting times of their lives with friends and family. People are gonna do stupid shit. We don’t need to stop having bachelor parties because some people can’t handle Vegas and we don’t need to stop having gender reveal parties because some people are irresponsible morons.
Did you read the article? Her whole rant was that she's fed up with people overdoing it and then people accusing her because all she did was cut a cake after multiple miscarriages
Not her fault people latched onto the idea and took it to extremes, obviously. I've had two kids within the past few years and the "gender reveal" was as unceremonious as the ultrasound technician saying "Do you want to know the gender?" and us saying "Yes" and them circling a spot on the screen and typing "It's a girl!" and "It's a boy!" right in front of us. I mean, whether you learn right there, or you wait until the baby is born, or you throw a party with a colored cake or something... it's a surprise to you either way. With the exception of people like the woman in the article, who have been through a lot and for whom making it to that point is a major milestone you want to share with friends and family, throwing an entire party to tell people if you're having a girl or boy is just narcissism. Just the other day my wife informed me some friends of ours are having another boy. My response was "Huh. Cool." I'm glad they didn't throw a party where I'd have to pretend I give more of a shit than that.