The woman who invented the concept of, and immediately cursed this wretched world with, the gender reveal party has begged everyone to please just stop doing them, now that one particularly dumbass one has caused a wildfire in California.
Jenna Karvunidis – the influencer behind possibly the worst trend in recent history – has taken to her Facebook to beg everyone to stop getting in on the fad after finding out about the root cause of the El Dorado wildfire, which she recognised as nothing but toxic masculinity hard at work. Oh, Jenna, let me count the ways these reveals are toxic.
“Oh my god NO. The fire the evacuated parts of California is from a GENDER REVEAL PARTY,” she wrote this week.
“Stop it. Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you.”
“Oh, and of course I’m getting hate messages. Excuse me for having a cake for my family in 2008. Just because I’m the gEnDeR rEvEaL iNVeNtoR doesn’t mean I think people should burn down their communities.”
Since birthing the idea of revealing her unborn baby’s gender with a cake back in 2008 – before then birthing Bianca, the first of her three daughters – Jenna has done a full 180 on the whole concept of telling the world about your future kid’s bits.
Earlier this year, she spoke with The Guardian about her current perspective on the gender reveal concept she single-handedly kicked off all those years ago, and how she now recognises them as problematic because they “overemphasize one aspect of a person”.
“Now I just try to cater each child,” Jenna said.
“The middle one loves dolls so she has 100 dolls. Whereas Bianca rocks her suits. She is the most confident 11-year-old you’ll ever meet.
“The way that started is that it was time to get dressed up for our family Christmas pictures a few years ago and Bianca had been saying for a while that she didn’t want to wear dresses. I was like, “That’s fine. What do you think about a suit?” We both looked at each other and she said, ‘Can girls wear suits?’ I said, ‘Absolutely. Let’s get you one.’”
So if that’s not enough to stop the onslaught of pointless gender reveal stunts, I don’t know what is.
It’s done.
