Gender Reveal Stunts — Too Much?
Procreating is the ultimate human achievement, right up there with inventing sliced bread and the wheel.
But do we really need to set off explosions, rent out minor league baseball stadiums, and release toxic clouds into the atmosphere, all to announce whether it’s pink or blue?
I remember back then you told your weird aunt Mildred over a cup of lukewarm chamomile tea. “It’s a girl, Auntie!”
Today, parents-to-be only care about one-upping the neighbors in a vicious cycle of Instagrammable insanity.
Next month I’ll be at a party in which the gender will be revealed via a “skywriting display over downtown LA”, shutting down air traffic for miles and giving the local pigeons a fright they’ll be therapy for years to come.
This will be the second gender reveal stunt I attend.
My first time at such an event, the couple in question had invested what I can only assume was their entire life’s savings, and a sizable chunk of the wedding budget into what can only be described as a gender reveal telenovela. The whole thing had enough drama to make a Mexican soap opera writer blush.
For me, it’s all too much.
When did simply embracing the profound mystery of new life become so…trivial? So materialistic?
I can’t help but feel we’ve gotten carried away celebrating biological facts rather than the moral, spiritual and emotional journeys of parenthood itself.
I watch modern moms and dads exhaust their resources creating live-action baroque phantasmagorias just to proclaim “baby has a penis!” or “baby has a vagina!” (or anything in between these days), I wonder what kind of values we’re passing on. Are we raising kids to equate their self-worth with cosmetic fancyness? To see life’s most sacred milestones as just another corporate-sponsored branding event?
But what do I know? I’ve merely been documenting the mentally unwell for profit, not creating new humans myself (for now).
—
Rod
