Gender reveal parties have been a growing trend in our Pinterest-perfect world. For those not familiar with the term, a gender reveal party is when expectant parents come up with some cute, creative way to find out the sex of their future baby in front of their closest family and friends. Ideas include slicing open a cake to see either pink or blue frosting inside, hiring a bartender to concoct either pink or blue cocktails, or any other variation of revealing the gender using–you guessed it–pink and blue.
But for one couple, their gender reveal party came to a crashing halt when whomever was left in charge of filling a box with either pink or blue balloons didn’t quite get the memo. Watch what happened instead:
Surprise! It’s a… rainbow? Clearly the parents were upset with this outcome, and I don’t mean to belittle their anger–they were expecting, and most likely paying for, something very exciting, and it didn’t deliver.
But I do have to wonder if this is all one big statement about the necessity of parties like these in the first place. I’m not saying the balloon store did this on purpose… but if they did… it would kind of be a brilliant commentary on our society’s persistent ignorance when it comes to sex versus gender–namely, that one doesn’t necessarily beget the other. Finding out the genitalia of your future child doesn’t tell you anything about their predilection for pink or blue, or anything else about the ways in which their gender will manifest. Our insistence that we divide gender into such black-and-white (or should I say, pink-and-blue) categories ignores the fact that gender, like most things, runs on a spectrum.
So, to these parents who are now going viral because of this video: I’m sorry the party didn’t turn out how you expected. But hey, you’re having a baby! How exciting is that?
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