Man: “Started as a small fire and then
it grew completely out of control.”
Brew: Do you ever look into a disaster and
just find yourself depressed by the cause?
Jim: “This scorched dry brush area is where
the family staged the gender reveal party.”
Brew: Yeah… That’s a thing.
Today’s episode is exploring an
ongoing and controversial topic.
We’ll be looking into the details behind a
California wildfire, how “gender reveal parties”
played a role, and the history behind such parties.
“Gender reveal parties” are a controversial
topic on their own, with much debate surrounding
them and the industries built around them.
As always, we’ve linked our sources in the video description.
So… let’s get into it.
You’ve probably heard something about what’s going on.
The sky turning red and orange in San Francisco, towns gutted,
and wildfires burning from the border of Oregon, all the
way up to British Columbia and down to the border of Mexico.
And what blows my mind is that one of these fires
was caused by a gender reveal party of all things.
In particular, a fire that has burned over
*22,000 acres of land around El Dorado in
San Bernardino County, Southern California.
So, what exactly happened here?
And how did this “gender reveal party” fad get
started, and when did it become so destructive?
Well, if you’re an old fogey like me, you may be
asking yourself, ‘Wait, what’s a gender reveal party’?
Well actually, yes.
I am wondering that myself.
Huh.
According to internet knowledge amalgamator and invalid
college-essay source, Wikipedia, a “gender reveal party”
is, quote, “an event or celebration had during pregnancy.
The primary goal of this event is the eponymous ‘reveal’ of
the baby's sex to the expecting parents, family, and friends.”
This is usually done through some kind of means involving
the color blue or pink being hidden somewhere—like
icing in a cake, confetti in a balloon, or...
some kind of smoke grenade I guess?
But as bizarre as some of the current trends—like throwing
pies at people or grown men dressed as giant babies
bursting forth from giant cakes—have become, these “gender
reveal parties” have an oddly innocuous origin point.
A fairly recent one too.
2008, blogger and expectant mother
Jenna Myers Karvunidis had an issue.
She wanted to throw a party, but her family had just
celebrated the birth of a highly anticipated nephew,
meaning that she needed something to, in her own words,
get her family “jazzed up” about her own pregnancy.
And if there was anyone who was going
to get them excited, it was herself.
So she came up with a then-novel idea.
During their ultrasound, Karvunidis asked her midwife
to keep quiet about the baby’s biological sex.
Instead the results were printed on a
sealed note and hidden away in an envelope.
For this first “gender reveal party”,
there weren’t any explosions or fires.
Instead there were two cakes, one with blue filling,
one with pink, marked as such with a discreet toothpick.
Once the family gathered, Karvunidis took a look,
then cut into the cake and revealed the pink center.
Her family was thrilled.
To quote an article from The Guardian, “There were gasps,
tears and someone shrieked: ‘I feel like she’s been born!’”.
Her plan was a success and she wrote about it
in her blog - a story that led to her being
interviewed by pregnancy magazine The Bump, and
leading to the spread of the sweet and sugary trend.
Chill: Well that seems nice!
Just trying to do something to stir up excitement.
Brew: Yes, and if it had stayed that
way, things would probably be fine.
The issue is—
Grill: The issue is, is that people are idiots!
Brew: Not quite the words I was going to
use but yes, things started to go awry.
The concept of a “gender reveal party”
spread like—uh… well like wildfire throughout
the 2010s, especially on social media.
With baby showers already growing more lavish and
shared on sites like Pinterest and Instagram, is it any
surprise that “gender reveal parties” would do the same?
Grill: Nothing’s ever good enough anymore,
everyone’s gotta top the next big trend.
It starts small, it starts simple, a cake here,
some balloons there, and then you’re gassing people!
Brew: That’s sadly how things started going.
As the trend started, it started sparking concerns about harm.
Especially as Pinterest moved from “blue and pink”
to “guns and glitter”, $140 “Gender Reveal Lasagna”,
and cannons that shoot colored confetti or powder.
Grill: Ugh!
Brew: Alligators snapping down
on blue-jelly-filled-watermelons.
Grill: Oh!
Brew: Hippos doing the same!
Grill: Come on!
Brew: What’s up Grill?
Grill: Look, I know where this is
going—flagrant disregard for safety.
So tell me, coffee-man, where does this fire come in?
Well, the fire happened—as you
surmised—when things started exploding.
Oh, there it is.
Brew: April, 2017, an Arizona border patrol agent
by the name of Dennis Dickey held a gender reveal
party with a bit more of a bang than normal.
Dickey had set up two signs, one labelled “Boy”,
the other “Girl” and loaded one of them up with
coloured powder - and an explosive known as tannerite.
And of course, he set those targets up in tall, dry grass.
Grill: Brilliant.
Brew: Firing at the signs with a rifle, the target
exploded into a burst of blue, but the resulting fire
reached the dry grass, setting off a wildfire that
would go on to consume around 47,000 acres of land.
Who would’ve guessed that?
The blaze cost over $8 million to combat, and Dickey pleaded
guilty to starting the fire and was ordered to pay $220,000
in fines and restitution plus five years of probation.
Two years later, April 18th, 2019, a gender reveal party
on the Gold Coast of Australia sought to release blue smoke
from a car “burnout”—where a stopped car spins its wheels to
burn the rubber of its tires and billow out coloured smoke.
The party began as planned only for the tires
to burst into flames, which spread to the car.
The driver was convicted of dangerous
operation of a motor vehicle as a result.
November, 2019, a party in Turkey, Texas
went wrong when a crop-duster that was meant
to drop pink water stalled out and crashed.
The pilot emerged unscathed, though a
passenger did suffer minor injuries.
But at least in those cases no one died?
Which I wish I could say was
something that would stay consistent.
In October, 2019, a group of six family members gathered
for a “Gender Reveal Party” where a jerry-rigged explosive
device was intended to blast pink powder into the air.
Instead, they had inadvertently built a pipe bomb, and when
it went off a 56-year-old woman and grandma-to-be 45 feet
away was tragically struck by debris and killed instantly.
The most recent in this series of disastrous “gender reveal
parties” took place in El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa.
After a fire ban in June 2020, the group lit a
pyrotechnic device on September 5th, at 10:23 AM,
intended to release colored smoke in long grass.
Under dry conditions, the grass ignited, and despite the
party’s attempts to fight the fire with water bottles
the flames spread to surrounding areas, resulting in
evacuation orders for the communities of Oak Glen,
Yucaipa Ridge, Mountain Home Village, and Forest Falls.
Currently, the fire has burned more than 22,000 acres.
Firefighters are still battling the blaze and as of
October 10th, 2020, have managed to contain about 95% of
it with an expected containment date of December 31st.
And, look, this is just physical damage.
There are many studies and articles discussing the
issues that placing specific gender role expectations
on your child before they’re even born may cause.
But I think it’s better to end this with the
words of the same woman who started the trend.
In a July 2019 blog post, Karvunidis stated:
“Who cares what gender the baby is?
I did at the time because we didn't live in 2019 and didn't
know what we know now—that assigning focus on gender at
birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents
that have nothing to do with what's between their legs.
PLOT TWIST, the world's first gender-reveal
party baby is a girl who wears suits!”
Though, maybe it’s more important to
heed a more recent quote from her.
Specifically, “For the love of God, stop burning
things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis.
No one cares but you."
Grill: I know you thought this day may never come.
But I’m done sitting on the sidelines people.
It’s time this bird grew some wings and got his show back.
You may not even know that I ever had a channel.
And that’s fine, really.
It’s fine.
Because all that matters is here and now.
Cause I’m back baby and this video you’re about
to watch is gonna change your life forever.
So go ahead, click it.
Click it, and take the first step
towards a better future today.
Click it.