Gender-reveal parties are a huge thing right now. Parents go all out, performing sometimes hilarious, sometimes weird stunts to reveal the gender of their little one to their closest friends and family. And everyone knows that no gender-reveal party is complete without an over-the-top cake. While some of them are admittedly cool and creative, a lot of Twitter users are pointing out that the vast majority of them are either gross, offensive, or just plain weird — sparking an unlikely debate in the process.
Writer Parker Molloy kicked off the discussion about creepy cakes.
After realizing the huge number of "weird" gender-reveal cakes shared online, she began showcasing photos of them in a Twitter thread that quickly went viral.
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Molloy pointed that many of the cakes were pretty inappropriate.
Weird slogans with sex innuendos were a little too common for comfort.
Some of them had crass comments straight up asking about the unborn baby's penis -- or lack thereof.
We're not entirely sure who came up with the "stick or no stick" slogan, but they probably deserve some type of award.
A lot of them were also pretty damn graphic.
Granted, these cakes were probably made for a baby shower rather than a gender-reveal party, but is there any occasion that truly requires an edible, life-sized diagram of a bloody baby coming out of a vagina?
The problem, of course, isn't the cakes themselves; it's the way they reinforce antiquated gender roles.
Because nothing says "I'm excited about my baby" like delegating it to a life of either "pistols or pearls" before it's even born, right?
In many of the cakes, the supposedly "cute" sayings managed to be incredibly sexist and nonsensical at the same time.
What does that even mean?
A lot of people said the cakes -- and gender-reveal parties, by extension -- were sexualizing infants.
They argued that parents' emphasis on these reveals sets up a trend of needlessly exposing infants to gendered language, colors, and activities way too early in life.
Of course, not everyone found the cakes to be offensive.
Some also pointed out that they were obviously a way for parents to add a little humor to their gender-reveal parties.
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And some people were actually impressed with the creative cake ideas.
And we definitely can't deny that these ideas are creative. (It takes a ton of imagination to come up with a cake that accurately depicts a live birth!) Still, we have to admit that people go way overboard.
Parents may not actually be handing their baby boys or girls pistols and pearls right out of the womb. But they do use gender-reveal parties and cakes to reinforce dangerous ideas about gender roles that have a tendency to make people really damn uncomfortable. You can totally have your gender-reveal cake and eat it too — just know that you don't have to resort to played out gender stereotypes in order to do it.