A mixed-sex couple drew ridicule online for their gender reveal party. (Screen captures via TikTok/@ Ashsam91)
We are saddened but in absolutely no way surprised that the straights are at it again with their gender reveal party shenanigans.
Indeed, even a global pandemic can’t stop people from staging ever-increasingly elaborate ways of celebrating the genitals of unborn children.
Truck driver Sam uploaded a TikTok video of his oddly elaborate gender reveal party on Sunday (30 May) in Rugeley, England.
It shows he and his partner cuddled up by the side of a leafy, residential road as a Volvo FH16 barrels towards them.
At first, the vehicle is caught around the neighbourhood’s curvy roads as the couple expectantly stare with excitement – it then pretty anti-climatically drives by them with a plume of pollution.
@ashhsammOverwhelmed to say the least! ❤️ ##babygender ##NeverJustAGame ##genderrevealworld ##genderreavel ##volvofh16 ##maxplumpjump ##fh750 @paulhawkins03 @adsam93♬ original sound – Ashsam91
“It’s a boy,” his partner hesitantly says. “Keep watching,” booms the voice of the person filming the reveal.
Then a second blue Volvo FH16 from Hawkins Logistics suddenly honks its horn and barrels past as blue smoke billows from it. The overjoyed couple laughs and cries in their excitement.
“Overwhelmed, to say the least!” Sam wrote in the video’s caption.
A second video shows the two trucks on either side as the couple shoot blue confetti at one another. “It’s a boy,” Sam says.
@ashhsammIt’s a boy 💙🌎 ##babygender ##genderrevealworld ##NeverJustAGame ##genderreavel ##volvofh16 ##hawkins ##fh750 ##44tonnearmy♬ Goosebumps (Remix) – Travis Scott & HVME
This party is a relatively tame one compared to the absurdly real gender reveals that have come before it. A legacy of weird celebrations of heteronormativity in the form of the pink-or-blue binary and, for the most part, a lot of videos of fathers-to-be in ill-fitting jeans.
What started as pastel pink and baby blue coloured cakes has escalated into increasingly cursed public stunts: Jell-O-filled hippos, baseball exploits, runaway balloons, smoke-emitting tyres and disturbingly blue lasagne.
But some have become dangerous incidents that spiral into chaos and even tragedy: Earthquakes, plane crashes, two explosions, devastating and deadly wildfires, multiple arrests and a deadly pipe bomb explosion.
So while a couple of trucks driving along a road isn’t the most kitsch – or even hazardous – of the reveals that have come before it, Twitter users couldn’t help but chalk it up to heterosexual nonsense.
your babies gender is. . . ✨transformer ✨ https://t.co/fa3fZ3Zoi6
— 🪱 haunted earthworm (@ragingbullskis) May 30, 2021
Are the straights ok https://t.co/6cbQu4rpak
— Dr Leyla Türkoğlu (@LeylsTurk) May 30, 2021
As a straight, I want to apologise for the way we keep behaving. I’m genuinely sorry we keep doing stuff like this. https://t.co/fTT2e4FYCD
— kiramadeira 🤔 (@kiramadeira) May 31, 2021
congratulations, it’s an ice road trucker 🥺 https://t.co/BiQXM3yWSf
— ︎joe (@jxeker) May 31, 2021
It’s not a gender reveal unless you set fire to 2 millions acres of dry brash and woodland. https://t.co/jSjl0wcUlW
— The real Kester (@K2thebiz) May 30, 2021
They’re having optimus prime https://t.co/lpnenj09S6
— Bad vibeson tiller (@Anxietg) May 30, 2021
Even the person who staged the world’s first known gender reveal party has come to regret it. Blogger Jenna Karvaunidis documented the party for her firstborn in 2008, sparking a wave of copycats as a weird tradition was born.
Now the mother of a proud gender nonconforming child, Karvaunidis says the practice hammers home essentialist, outdated ideas about gender that places “more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby”.