To say that gender reveal parties have gotten out of hand would be an understatement. The trend of sharing your baby’s sex with family and friends has often turned into a dangerous endeavor, harming both people and the nature around them. There have been explosions, injuries, and even deaths related to gender reveal parties.
And we can’t even count the number of times we’ve seen parents — mostly men — have full-on tantrums when they learn they’re having a daughter instead of a son. It’s concerning, to say the least. All that this trend has become led Jenna Karvunidis, the woman who sparked the entire gender reveal party trend, to shun them. Yup, that’s right. She says they’re canceled.
More from CafeMom: Dad-To-Be Throws Tantrum at Gender Reveal Party When He Finds Out Baby Is a Girl
In 2008, Jenna had no clue what her idea would become.
Jenna and her husband, Niko, had experienced several early pregnancy losses before the two conceived their oldest daughter back in 2008, Today reported. In an effort to celebrate reaching the stage in pregnancy where she could know the baby’s sex, Jenna decided to document the moment with a party and a duck-shaped cake filled with pink frosting.
Jenna didn’t think much of the little shindig. “I’m the type to bake a cake for every occasion,” she told Today. “We like to party! I had absolutely no thoughts in 2008 of the greater implications of gender reveal parties.”
'I cringe when I see them now,' Jenna said of today's gender reveal parties.
Jenna wrote about the party on her blog and in a parenting forum in July 2008. Later, The Bump magazine interviewed her, and Jenna was dubbed the creator of gender reveal parties.
Today, it’s a title she’d like to distance herself from.
“Gender reveal parties are canceled,” she told the magazine. “I cringe when I see them now. The insane levels people are taking them just to celebrate one of the most mundane facts about their child is just bizarre.”
Even with her pink cake, Jenna wasn't overly concerned with her child's gender.
Even when Jenna threw her own little party, she didn’t participate in the traditional gender norms many new parents do. “Her nursery was done in blue and yellow,” Jenna explained. “So it’s not like I was trying to create a pink world around the baby.”
On the flip side, more than a decade later, parents are “burning down forests and blowing up cars to shout what is essentially a very boring detail,” Jenna said.
Jenna has spoken out about the real dangers caused by gender reveals.
Furthermore, Jenna has been particularly concerned about the environmental damage people have done during their gender reveals. “For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “No one cares but you.”
“It was 116 degrees in Pasadena yesterday,” she continued, “and this tool thought it would be smart to light a fire about his kid’s dick. Toxic masculinity is men thinking they need to explode something because simply enjoying a baby party is for sissies.”
Jenna's daughter has helped expand her thinking about gender.
Jenna’s own perception of gender has changed since her oldest daughter was born. The child she celebrated with a pink cake is expressing herself in more nonbinary ways, wearing her hair short and dressing in suits.
“PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” Jenna wrote in a 2019 Facebook post. “As for gender in general, I’m taking my daughter’s lead,” Jenna told BuzzFeed News.
