Woman who 'invented' gender reveals now wants them cancelled

Gender reveals have sparked wildfires causing billions of dollars worth of damage, ruined perfectly good lasagnes and lead to crackdowns from police fed up with "backyard burnouts". 

And now, even the woman who "invented" them wants them cancelled.

In a post to her Facebook page High Gloss and Sauce, Jenna Karvunidis, writes: "A weird thing came up on Twitter, so I figured I'd share here. Someone remembered it was me who 'invented' the gender reveal party."

Ms Karvunidis explains that back in 2008 she baked a cake with pink icing inside to reveal the gender of her daughter to her friends and family. After writing about it on her blog, The Bump magazine also featured her story "and the idea kind of spread from there".

But her views have changed since welcoming her firstborn.

"I've felt a lot of mixed feelings about my random contribution to the culture," Ms Karvunidis continues. "It just exploded into crazy after that. Literally - guns firing, forest fires, more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby."

Asking, "Who cares what gender the baby is?", Ms Karvunidis concedes: "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."

And, she notes, there's a significant plot twist: "The world's first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!"

Ms Karvunidis told The Cut that her part in the gender reveal trend left her feeling guilty.

"I started to realise that non-binary people and trans people were feeling affected by this, and I started to feel bad that I had released something bad into the world," she said, adding that her eleven-year-old daughter doesn't conform to gender stereotypes. "I'm letting her lead me," she said. "She has her opinions about there being many genders and she is informing me about things. She was biologically born a female and she is still 'she' and 'her' and says she's a girl, but she is still doing things her way."

In an updated post, Ms Karvunidis added: "I don't want to parent shame - Bottles! Breasts! Co-Sleeping! Cribs! We can fight all day about everything. Instead, let's just pause and consider other viewpoints. Like, that gender reveal parties are cancelled."

And the internet couldn't agree more.