Why Gender Reveal Parties Are Problematic

When Jenna Karvunidis found out she was pregnant in 2008 after many attempts and two miscarriages, she decided she wanted to celebrate it. She finally got to the stage of pregnancy in which doctors can tell the baby’s biological sex, and as she felt more confident that she would make it to term this time, she had an idea. As she told LGBTQIA+ activist Matt Bernstein on his podcast “A Bit Fruity,” Karvunidis ended up having what would become known as the world’s first gender reveal party — something she never imagined would set a global trend.

When Karvunidis had her ultrasound and was asked if she wanted to know the sex, she said no. Instead, she asked the woman to write it down and give it to her in an envelope. Back at home, Karvunidis baked two identical cakes; one had blue icing inside, and the other had pink. Later, she and her partner gathered friends and family, asked her sister-in-law to see what was inside the envelope, and then bring out the cake with the color matching the baby’s sex.

Karvunidis blogged about her party, and it soon got the media’s attention. Her story started appearing in magazines, and a trend was born; more expecting parents started to throw their own gender reveal parties, first with colored cakes, but increasingly, in different, more creative, and even absurd ways. Sometimes, parents get soaked wet with pink or blue ink; sometimes, they’re surrounded by colored smoke. Sometimes, they find out after a million pieces of colored paper appear from an exploded piñata, or sometimes thousands of colored balloons are thrown in the sky. Surfing the web, I’ve seen couples dye a waterfall, light a whole soccer stadium, or even hire lucha libre fighters to perform (the color of the winner’s clothes reveals the baby’s sex). No matter how the baby’s biological sex is revealed, though, the formula is very simple: a color will appear to indicate the baby’s sex. Pink if it’s a girl, blue if it’s a boy.

Social media has made it increasingly easier for videos of gender reveal parties to go viral, and nowadays, it’s common to find parents reacting to the discovery of their baby’s biological sex in TikTok and Instagram content. Search #genderreveal on TikTok and see for yourself.

To wonder about an unborn baby’s sex is nothing new. Many cultures have old beliefs about how to determine the baby’s sex during pregnancy. In my country, Brazil, it’s common to say that if the mom’s belly is pointy, it’s going to be a boy, and if the belly is flat, it will be a girl.

This curiosity stems from the many things that are decided based on the baby’s biological sex: their name, how parents will decorate their room, and even how they start imagining their child living and interacting with the world. That’s because, in our society, biological sex is very much connected with gender and the stereotypes that follow.

Since the invention of ultrasound in the 1950s, many technologies related to gender reveal have evolved, and it’s now possible to find out a fetus’s sex with a blood test as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. As the Brazilian influencer Beta Boecha says in a video analyzing the gender reveal trend, the fetus is only “12 millimeters long, and the gender is already being imposed.”

And therein lies the problem: The frenzy around a fetus’s biological sex leads parents to conflate that reveal with their baby’s gender. Today, Karvunidis is a gender activist and recognizes that gender reveal parties can be problematic.

“I started to examine gender more and the problems related to the concept of gender around the time I had my second child in 2011. I had these two children; they were both girls, but they seemed so different from each other ... And we kept running into this brick wall where everything had to be pink,” she said in her interview with Bernstein. Jenna started to question the gender binary: Why are some things supposed to be for boys and others for girls?

As Karvunidis and Boecha both point out, this binary fails to recognize that biological sex is not the only factor that should be considered when talking about gender. Gender reveal parties contribute to a world in which there are only two possible gender identities. Seeing only two colors instead of the whole rainbow can impact how parents raise their children, who start putting their kid’s identity in a box before they are born.

“The gender reveal is not just about enforcing ‘cis-ness,' but it’s also about enforcing masculinity and femininity based on genitalia, and all of these things that affect us,” says Bernstein in the podcast. Karvunidis agrees. “This party has now gone all around the world, and I think it’s because patriarchy is so strong,” she says. “There’s an idea that men are leaders, that boys will inherit the state, that girls have a different purpose, for serving and not for leadership.”

Having a child is a big moment for many people, and they should celebrate it. However, it’s important to think about the message you want to share with your community about your child from that moment on. What will happen if your child grows up and decides they don’t identify with either blue or pink? What if they are not able to perform the gender stereotype associated with their biological sex? Will you embrace them anyway, or only pressure them to fit in?