Culture

This Couple Tried To Reveal Their Baby’s Gender With Pink Fireworks, Which Was A Bad Idea

This was probably not the plan.

by Jared Richards  23 July 2018
Gender-reveal

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Pregnancy trends come and go, but among the weirder of the past decade is the warped spectacle of gender-reveal parties — separate from baby showers, these parties see parents share their baby’s biological sex through dramatic, colour-coded reveals.

At first, the parties were pretty low-key: a cake would be cut to reveal a blue centre, or pink balloons would be released into the sky. But in time, the trend has become prone to some pretty batshit levels of one-upmanship — nothing quite says “it’s a boy!” like shooting targets into a blue haze with rifles, or training an alligator to snap down on a watermelon filled with blue ooze.

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Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before people nearly killed their friends and family in the quest to upstage their frenemy from pre-natal class.

Enter an expecting Philadelphia couple, who last week decided to reveal their baby’s sex through some backyard fireworks, which lit up pink. The couple placed the fireworks on a clothes-drying rack, which was a mistake. Once the first few flew off, a couple of crackers fell to the floor due to the jolt, then catapulted themselves directly into the crowd.

“It’s a girl!”, people screamed, moments before they all started running for their lives, realising that they may not live to see the baby be born.

The 30-second video, posted by US TV station KETV, has attracted a good amount of attention — particularly on Twitter, where gender-reveal parties can considered a bit of a joke.

Which we get: despite being a new trend, the whole concept feels outdated. Firstly, they often rely on gender stereotypes: a quick look at Pinterest will show that games and themes like “wheels or heels” or “sports or sparkle” are super popular.

Then there’s the matter of conflating gender and sex, which ignores that gender expression is up to the individual. It’s clear that this baby, through some womb telekinesis, agrees — and via some Matilda-style magic, it’s protesting. And since MSN reports that nobody was seriously injured, it’s probably fine to laugh about it.

We, for one, welcome this mysterious new gender. Some say it’s been waiting for an aeon to be revealed, biding its time — we can only wildly speculate that this is what lingered within that ancient black sarcophagus.