Do gender-reveals help break barriers that feminists have been working to crush or merely strengthen them?
Finding out the gender of your unborn child can be a milestone moment during pregnancy to share with friends and family. This is the time for playing around with baby names, for choosing themes for your home nursery and picking out clothes.
However, gender-reveal parties are increasingly becoming a thing – just look at social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube for proof. From simple reveals such as filling the cupcake with pink or blue icing to more complicated reveals like smoke filling the sky. According to a Huffington Post article, gender reveals started making their mark in the world in 2009, and began appearing in Google searches in 2010.
Since then we have seen them all over the internet and it would appear they have no intentions of slowing down.
What is the issue?
The problem that seems to be arising is that the traditional blue is for boys and pink is for girls mantra is only ingraining sexism in our society. While we are working to break the social expectations of what essentially belongs to boys and girls, a party like this works against us.
It comes not only with the stereotypical colours used to mark boys and girls, but also the titles that come with the themes. Wording such as Beauty or Beast, Boots or Bows, and Ties or Tutus bring us back to the times of gender stereotypes. The idea that specific activities and items that belong to girls and others that belong to boys.
Now, I am in no way stating that by throwing a gender reveal party you are breaking all rules of feminism. I am only saying maybe we can go a little untraditional by varying the colours, wording and remember what the true meaning of gender reveals represents. In the grand scheme of things gender reveals are not what create or ruin the ideals of our society. It’s how you choose to raise your children from when they are born.
So throw your shower and have a blast! Just remember, it is with your baby’s upbringing that will change how our society is shaped.
