Hot Take: Gender Reveals Shouldn't End With Explosions And Dead Spectators

Listen, we need to talk about gender reveal parties. I’m not going to give you (too much) grief for a celebration honoring the genitalia of an unborn child. But I am going to focus on the new trend of using explosives to announce the pink or the blue. Way back in 2017, a border patrol agent and his wife used a reveal kit that explodes with pink or blue FLAMMABLE powder to announce the baby’s sex. This explosion is caused when YOU FIRE A GUN AT THE EXPLOSIVE DEVICE.

Already, there are several things wrong here. One, an exploding item at a baby celebration. Two, gunfire at a baby celebration. Three, doing this instead of just posting on Facebook like normal people.

At this particular April 2017 event, the colored powder inside the explosive device caught on fire and spurred a wildfire that caused $8 million in damages. The father-to-be became responsible for restitution, paying $100,000 upfront and then $500 per month for the next 20 years. I believe that would keep me from ordering explosives from Tannerite, the makers of a Gender Reveal Boom Box that say upfront their product contains the highly flammable corn starch. Yet, the product is still for sale so someone is buying it.

Fast-forward to this past October 2019, where a 56-year-old woman died from shrapnel wounds caused by a gender reveal explosion in Iowa. In this case, the family — or whoever threw the party — inadvertently created a pipe bomb.

Her family members had started experimenting the day before with various explosive materials, investigators said. Gunpowder was placed inside a homemade stand that was welded to a metal base.

They put a piece of wood on top of the gunpowder and some powder of an unspecified color on top of that, according to the sheriff’s office. The stand had a hole drilled in the side for a fuse.

Finally, tape was wrapped over the top of the assembly. The idea was for the gunpowder to blast the powder indicating a boy or girl out the top of the stand. Instead, metal shrapnel was sent flying through the air, instantly killing Kreimeyer.

A day later, another gender reveal explosion in the same area was loud and strong enough to alert neighbors two miles from the party. Guess what they used? That’s right, the commercially available Tannerite product I mentioned previously.

In a vacant lot outside of the city limits, the party set up the explosive and shot it with a gun to reveal the junk of their impending bundle of joy. No charges were filed since the big boom happened outside of the city limits and the gun was fired in America.

I thought it was bad when people had cakes asking “guns or glitter” about their upcoming child (we all know guns are girls and glitter is FABULOUS BOYS) or jammed items into the mouths of alligators or hippos, forcing them to clamp down and reveal the putrid blue or pink innards within. I thought it was a tad ridiculous to draw so much attention to the least important aspect of parenthood, but I never imagined we would arrive here. Mostly because I don’t think about it enough, as if I had I know “actual gunfire” and “explosions” would have definitely crossed my mind.

Can we all just calm down a little bit about screaming on high which set of reproductive organs our children will have at birth? At the very least, can we all agree that anyone that requires gunfire and explosions at their unborn child’s celebration of gender probably needs to reevaluate their priorities?

I’m begging you to go back to balloons released from boxes, cakes with tinted interiors, or even painting dog butts to correlate to a baby’s business if it means we’ll stop blowing things up around pregnant women and old people to whoop about antiquated ideas of gender.