Take some anti-nausea pills before reading further. The author of this Cosmo Magazine is triggered by gender-reveal parties. Why? Because there’s no such thing as gender. These parents are abusing their fetuses with a social construct.
For starters, gender-reveal parties don’t actually reveal gender—they reveal anatomy. Gender is a wholly different thing, inextricably tied to the social constructs around it. (Fun fact: Blue used to be the color most associated with little girls, due to its association with the Virgin Mary. But Hitler—yes, Hitler—feminized the color pink by forcing gays to wear triangles in that shade during World War II.) A gender reveal conflates the two.
“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,” a report published last January in the Journal for Gender Studies. “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. We’re affixing a label to a child who hasn’t even had a chance to enter the world and assume that identity.”