I remember my tenth birthday almost perfectly. I was just getting over pneumonia, and my pregnant mom had been trying to care for me without getting sick herself. However, my birthday was special for another reason. It was September 11, 2006, and it just so happened to be the date the doctors said we would be able to tell if I was going to have a little brother or sister (although you can never really know that until they form their own identity… but more on that later). I remember hoping so badly for a little sister because I wanted to dress her up like a doll and make her the most fashionable baby anyone had ever met. I wanted to put her in brightly colored tank tops and ruffly skirts and show her the ways of being a girl in this world. I was proud of being a girl and felt like there was no way I could be as close to a brother as I could a sister. We walked into the OB-GYN exam room and waited for the doctor to come in. She slathered that weird goo all over my mom’s belly and told me to look at the screen. The doctor told me that when she put the camera in the right spot I was to look at the screen and tell her the shape I saw. If what I saw resembled a turtle, that meant I was having a little brother, but if I saw three parallel lines next to each other, it meant I was having a little sister. Now, at the time I was very into journaling and had brought a new journal just for this occasion. I held the journal open, pen poised, as I looked at the screen and saw… three little parallel lines staring back at me! I freaked out, started screaming, and immediately wrote down in my journal “ITS A GIRL!!!!!!!!!
This was my first and only experience of a “gender reveal.” I look back now on that experience and realize that gender was never really explained to me as different from assigned sex. I did not know that the “three lines” I saw on the screen did not automatically mean she would like wearing glittery tank tops or playing barbies with me. That ultrasound did not reveal my sister’s gender, it revealed her biological sex at best and society’s need to set children into the gender binary before they are even born at worst. While I did not understand then the implications gender reveal parties potentially have on the perception of gender, I now see social issues surfacing from the pervasiveness of gendering a fetus. I am curious about the implications it may have on trans* or other non-binary gender identities, as well as the use of pink and blue to denote gender. Gender reveal parties have become increasingly popular due to the effects of social media. People share their lives every day on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others for a variety of reasons. Some people are hesitant to share themselves on social media, but others enjoy it and feel it connects them to their friends in a casual way and simultaneously updates them on their lives. Gender reveal parties have become an extension of this wish to share your life online and keep your friends “in the know.”
Just when I thought society was moving towards having a better understanding of the differences between gender identity and assigned sex, gender reveal parties feel like a step backward. I feel as if they not only support the conflation of gender and sex but also set up an expectation that the child is cisgender (cis) and non-intersex. Children who are trans*, agender, bigender, non-binary, or any other gender identity complicate this societal assumption simply by not being cis. Additionally, I do not think it’s healthy for cisgender individuals to be presented with only gendered clothes, decorations, and toys. A child should be provided with many different choices of toys or types of clothing so that one set of gendered stereotype is not expected from them. By having a non-gendered baby shower and parenting based on his/her/hir/their interests versus assigned sex, it would benefit both trans* and cisgender children by removing the expectation of gender norms in their lives.**
For the past several months I have seen numerous videos come up on facebook like this one, this compilation of twin gender reveals, or this reveal where the couple spent 3 days setting up a Rube Goldberg Machine, which is one of the most extra things I have ever seen in a gender reveal. I have to be completely honest and say that every time I watch these videos I involuntarily smile. In my own life, I have a vested interest in sexual, relationship, and neonatal/maternal health and education, so I can’t help empathizing with the ecstatic happiness of these couples as they find out something new and exciting about their child.
One of the biggest issues I have with gender reveal parties, of course, is not the couples desire to celebrate their child, but the conflation of the definitions “biological sex” and “gender.” Generally, biological sex is thought of as a label given at birth based on a person’s genitals, often thought of as a representation of the chromosomes and hormones present within a person. A large issue with this definition is that it entirely excludes individuals who are intersex or do not fit these “typical” definitions of male or female based on genitals. Now, for the rest of this blog I am going to adopt Heather Laine Talley’s term “junk” when referring to genitals or any other part of a body that is deemed gendered and/or sexualized according to gender because it is just as she says, “junk” and not indicative of the person’s gender, identity, or sexuality in any way. Talley points out that while we would like for this “junk” to mean nothing, in actuality it can sometimes mean a lot to us. Most parents want the best for their children, sometimes taking that to mean they should make sure they have the least societal obstacles. In that regard, knowing the “junk” of your child before she/he/ze/they are born allow parents a sense of preparedness. If it’s a “girl” they may paint her bedroom walls pink, buy her a doll, and start saving for her wedding someday. If it’s a “boy” then maybe the walls will be blue and his dolls will hold guns and they might buy him a little onesie that says “ladies man.” Though I am not a parent myself, feeling like you understand at least a little bit of who your child might be, and who society might see them as could be helpful in an uncertain time like family planning. It can bring a sense of comfort to a family to have at least one unknown accounted for, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing to do.
People enjoy revealing who they think their child is going to be based on sex, through yet another social construct: the gendering of the colors pink and blue. I have yet to see a gender reveal party video which used any colors other than pink or blue to share the gender of their child. I would like to delve deeper into the history behind the social gendering of pink and blue because it is a perfect example of how social norms and constructs are never static and can change over time. By looking at the history of pink and blue, maybe some couples who are interested in having a gender reveal party can be more enlightened about the act they are really participating in. Though they believe they are only revealing who they think their child will be, they are also actively participating in the gendered norms of color to construct the imagined gender of their child.
While pale pink and pale blue have often been associated with babies and small children, it was not until the past 70 years that it has brought on such severe gender connotations. Prior to 1950, colors did not have strong gender attachments as they do today, and children often wore mostly white until the age of seven since it was the easiest to clean (Paoletti 87). If anything, the gendered attachments to colors were the opposite of what we think today. It might be odd to think there was a time when pink was associated with boys and blue with girls since that truly was not very long ago, but it’s true. One of the most frequent quotes I have come across while reading other articles, blogs and books is this:
“Pink or Blue? Which is intended for boys and which for girls? This question comes from one of our readers this month, and the discussion may be of interest to others. There has been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”
This excerpt is from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department in the June of 1918 edition. It is highlighted in many blogs, videos, and books that I have read on this topic including but not limited to: this article on infant gendering, this video on the history of pink and blue, and Jo Paoletti’s book Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America. According to the publication, the justification for this was that light blue was thought of as a soft color more appropriate for little girls, while pink was simply thought of as a “stronger” color and therefore associated with boys and masculinity. That’s it. That’s the entirety of the justification for boys wearing pink and girls wearing blue. I don’t think there are many more easily understood examples of social constructs and the role they have in our lives than this. It is as if the part of our culture where boys wore pink and girls wore blue, although only 100 years ago, is completely forgotten. People are actually shocked when you tell them boys didn’t always wear blue and girls did not always wear pink. I decided to research this further to find out some reasons for the changes in gendered colors. One of those reasons was WWII.
During WWII, Hitler made homosexual individuals in the labor camps to identify themselves with pink triangles as a marker of who they were and why they were sent to the camps.
After this, pink became associated with femininity, following the stereotype that if a male was homosexual he had to be more feminine than other men. This is what some historians point to as the “switch” between pink and blue, and all of a sudden men were not as comfortable wearing pink and women began to wear it as a sign of femininity.
While the switch seems to be attributed to Hitler, the popularity of pink in women’s fashion stems from thoughts after the war that we could “banish the black, burn the blue and bury the beige” (a quote from Funny Face, a movie from 1957 starring Audrey Hepburn, which highlights a female editor of a fashion magazine) which were popular colors worn during the war, in order to make way for pink and pink fashion.
Fast forward to today…
There is a lot of this history on pink and blue and the emersion of gender reveal parties along with an increase in social media use…but what kind of effect does that have on the child? Particularly a child who is intersex or trans*? While seeing parents at these parties does make me smile as a reflection of their joy, objectively this practice is exclusive at best and discriminatory at worst. When a fetus is still developing, we gender hir/her/him/them and all it does is further embed gendered norms and gender connotations onto fetuses, but there is no way to determine the gender of a fetus, and therefore I am unsure of how useful this is. Why is a baby shower not enough to celebrate having a child?
I found a somewhat satirical answer to this question in a recent episode of Grace and Frankie, a Netflix original series about women in their 70s whose husbands leave them for each other. Frankie, a generally accepting liberal hippie grandmother, touches on the topic of gender studies when referring to her first grandchild. Her son is expecting a child, and to reveal the babies gender he decides to send his family on a scavenger hunt to find the answer. Frankie is insistent that she wants to be there for it because it is part one of two important gender reveal parties the child will have: one in utero, and the other when the child is 12 and decides who she/he/ze/they would like to be. It was a hysterical scene that really got me thinking about the nature of gender reveal parties. I wish part one didn’t seem necessary to some couples, but some semblance of predictability is comforting. Binaries are comforting to people. It can be difficult to understand the gendered social construct you live in when it is simply normal to you.
I sometimes think about what I would do about a gender reveal party if I get pregnant someday. I have recently come to the soft conclusion that I either wouldn’t have one or would only tell people the supposed “junk” of the child but that it has no connotation as to who they would be. I really appreciated Frankie’s take on it. It’s “part one of two”. But how necessary is part one when it does not determine the gender of the child, nor does it fully include all children? Though gender reveal parties seem like an innocent celebration, does it have micro-aggressive connotations towards those who do not fall within the gender binary? Due to its exclusive nature, I truly think it might be, and just like the history of pink and blue, I think gender reveal parties can change as any social construct does over time.
** I am assuming that the families who have gender reveal parties would also be families who would have the means to diversify the gendered exposure they give to their children. I recognize it can certainly be a privilege both to be aware of gender norms and to make a conscious effort to provide your child with non-gendered clothes, toys, etc. This assumption will absolutely not be true for every family.**
Sources used for content:
http://www.thefeministwire.com/2011/03/the-banality-of-dehumanization-the-case-of-infant-gendering/
https://jezebel.com/5790638/the-history-of-pink-for-girls-blue-for-boys
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a10280732/gender-reveal-parties/?src=socialflowTW
The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property: Critical Reflections
Paoletti, Jo Barraclough. 2012. Pink and Blue : Telling the Boys From the Girls in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed February 14, 2018).
Sources used for images:
https://www.pregnancymagazine.com/pregnancy/gender-predictor-quiz
https://iusboverseas.wordpress.com/tag/world-war-ii/
https://www.weekendnotes.com/bent-the-play-theatre-works/
I love how you focused on today’s social media frenzy about gender reveal parties, a new growing trend that I’ve also been frustrated with because it feels like we’re going backwards in a way. The explored history of the gendered-association with colors is fascinating, because this is really the hallmark of gender reveal parties and it determines the gifts, decorations, etc. that are bought for the baby’s presumed gender. I find it almost humorous that pink was once viewed as a strong color and associated with little boys, as today’s society and this “gender reveal culture” stresses the usage of these colors so much, as if pink is naturally a girl’s color and blue is naturally a boy’s color (almost as if at birth the color is tied with you). This binary then makes me think about the retaliation against pink as just a girl’s color and how boys sometimes wear pink shirts displaying “real men wear pink” to express their “breaking of norms”. It is then ironic that the binary of pink vs. blue is not as historically ingrained with human nature as we think, pushing us to look at our norms and question how they were created, and how much they are actually tied to nature–such as our connection with gender and biological sex. I am wondering if this trend will fade as you mentioned the association of gender and colors did. Do you think gender reveal parties are more-so a symptom of the larger problem of the gender binary norm, or is the larger problem that they’re perpetuating and promoting forced cisgender identities to new generations?
Gender reveal parties have always irritated me, so I am glad you wrote about them. It not only seems narcissistic to assume that other people care about your baby’s “junk,” it is also unfair to project gendered assumptions onto a fetus. I like how you pointed out that gendered colors have changed over time, proving that boys and girls don’t just “naturally” gravitate towards their respective colors. I think gender reveal parties may be on their way out as we begin to understand more about gender, but this could also spark a backlash that leads to more over-gendering of children. I think it may be on its way out because I have never heard of someone I know doing a gender reveal party, but my experiences (or lack thereof) aren’t by any means representative of everyone’s. Maybe people enjoy these parties because it allows them to project a personality on a child they know nothing about, or maybe people are really subconsciously committed to reinforcing the gender binary. Either way, I hope that society moves past celebrating a child’s gender and instead embraces the child her/their/hir/himself and all the excitement ze/they/he/she brings.
Wow! This post touches on exactly what has been on my mind recently, seeing as every time I open any of my social networking apps I seem to come across at least one or two gender reveal celebration videos. Each video, whether it be depicting a more or less “extra” celebration, is essentially the same. I love how you discuss the history of the gendering of pink and blue and and how this dichotomy of color is simply another way for society to reinforce the oppressive idea of dichotomous gender. My sister and her wife are currently trying to get pregnant, so this post was especially interesting to me. My mom, as well-intentioned as she may be, is so fixated on the idea of what the biological sex of their child will be. Every time we’re in Target she roams the baby section, holding up each frilly dress and pink bow, commenting on how she hopes their child is a girl. I can’t help but be frustrated with this — it simply doesn’t make sense to me within my understanding of gender identities and biological sex. Even beyond my experiences with my own mom, my sister and her wife starting this new chapter of their lives has really opened my eyes to the obsession our society has with gender. This post perfectly captures not only this concept of gender obsession and policing from the moment a child is born, but also the implications of this and how we can think about this idea critically in terms of gender reveal parties. I also really enjoyed the formatting of this post, you did a great job including pictures, links, and even quotes. Although in some cases formatting of blog posts can take away from the quality of the post, your formatting definitely added to it! All in all, this was an awesome post and kept me thinking critically the whole time.
I also see these “gender-reveal” parties as problematic and actually quite trivial. When you think about it, it is a very bizarre practice that so many people – regardless of their politics – engage in. Even people who are hip to gender theory recreate the problematic notion that one’s “junk” when born is tied to their gender when they throw these parties. I feel as if many people would argue that the gender reveal party does not mean that they would not accept their child if they were transgender, but that nonetheless perpetuates the dangerous fallacy that we are all born to be “girls” or “boys.”
I really liked that you discussed the history of gendering colors – another bizarre practice that has become so ingrained in Western culture. I actually never knew that the association of femininity with the color pink came from the pink triangles placed on queer folks. I think it makes sense – men wanted to distance themselves from homosexuality and femininity so badly that our patriarchal reconstructed societal understandings of color. This, as you say here, has become such a normative assumption that many individuals never question it, just as many cis individuals never question their gender because they assume it is dictated by the “junk” they were born with.
These gender-reveal parties are also troubling because they completely erase the existence of intersex children. All of the emphasis on binary gender (boy or girl) reinforces normative (and ableist?) assumptions that all babies are born with one set of “junk” or the other. I am curious as to what a gender-reveal party would look like for a child that is determined to be intersex or with an unidentifiable gender. Would the parents even have one? It is an interesting concept.
You also discuss here a bit about the sexualization of children – another strange thing Westerners tend to do. What is up with the “ladies’ man” onesies?? Why do we automatically associate a baby’s “junk” with their sexuality, and one that is certainly not even existence when a child is in utero? I think challenging the purposes of these parties as you do in this post is very important; they might seem innocent and cute and I (like you) think it is cute when parents are a little extra about their child. But these parties are problematic simply because they continue to normalize stable gender identity that is innately tied to biological “junk.”
I appreciate how you move through your overall discussion, especially with the histories of pink and blue in the social context of gender. Your piece also makes me think about the changing landscape of this association because of the term “real men wear pink” or various iterations of it that I’ve heard growing up. Because this saying also perpetuates this notion of what a “real man” is in a heterogendered way, I’m interested in knowing more about how modern men wearing pink and women wearing blue is perceived. It’s nice to know, however, that these colors haven’t been gendered the way they are now for a relatively long time. It provides comfort in that it points to how society changes and people gradually can realize the effects that things like gender reveal parties and the role of pink and blue as representative of gendered categories can have on people. Especially in more “extra” cases (like I saw something hit a hollowed out ball with a baseball bat, from which a pink cloud bursted out) seeing how seriously people take gender reveals so seriously and necessary to their understanding of their child is honestly scary in a way. This coupled with the way in which sexuality is also ascribed to these unborn fetuses goes back to what many fears about trans people surround – bodies. We have an obsession with other people’s bodies in a way that conflates, as you say, gender and biological sex and misrepresents body parts as indicative of gender. I think your writing breaks down a lot of misconceptions of gender and how it is perceived & represented, and it provokes further inquiry into this subject.
I really like what you said in this article about gender reveal parties, the way we gender kids, and the exclusion of gender non-conforming kids as well. I really liked the part that you included about parent’s intentions. I know I get irritated at the idea and practice of gender reveal parties, but it’s important to remember that many parents do this first of all because they are ignorant of how gender norms affect us and they’ve been socialized to subscribe to them as well, combined with the fact that parents aren’t throwing gender reveal parties because of an evil plan to perpetuate gender norms but because they are excited to know something about their kid! Not that these are good reasons to have one (they aren’t) but it makes it easier to deconstruct these practices and hopefully educate people on how we can be more inclusive and (maybe eventually) stop having these parties.