Even if youve never attended a gender reveal party, thanks to Instagram, youre probably familiar with the aesthetic: Oh Baby metallic balloons, Baby A and Baby B boxes, carefully frosted cakes, pink streamers, blue confetti, balloons, coordinated lighting, smoke powder cannons.

The methodology may differ, but the narrative arc is always the same: A beautiful (likely heterosexual) couple stands in front of a camera, with friends and family just out of sight. The reveal occurs, displaying something blue for a baby boy or pink for a baby girl. Immediately, the energy soars, usually accompanied by a healthy dose of Woo!-ing and tears. The crowd goes wild and the likes on social media pour in. Record, reveal, post, repeat.

The seeming ubiquity of the ritual makes it easy to forget that gender reveal parties (which are, more accurately, assigned-sex-at-birth reveal parties) are actually a fairly new phenomenon, just over 10 years old. But during a decade full of dizzying digital acceleration, gender reveal parties have gone mainstream, become wild spectacles and faced multiple waves of backlash.

What started with pink and blue frosting became pink and blue cake, then pink and blue confetti, then pink and blue exploding powder.

Then, most recently, the accidental pipe bomb.

In late October, Pamela Kreimeyer, 56, was tragically killed by debris flying from a homemade device meant to emit colored powder. In a statement, authorities said that members of the Kreimeyer family were experimenting with different types of explosive material in an attempt to record a gender reveal that could be posted on social media for friends and family. The device they had been testing out essentially amounted to a pipe bomb. Just a day later, it was reported that police were investigating a second gender-reveal-party-related explosion in the state.

This news set off a predictable wave of tweets including my own glibly expressing horror at the whole spectacle: Please stop combining your wrong ideas about gender with explosive devices. Please stop doing this shit. Gender reveal parties are both stupid AND deadly !

The binary is dangerous, yall, I tweeted .

The news was, of course, absolutely heartbreaking. But there was something about this set of stories, on the heels of several years of viral gender reveal fails, including one that started a 47,000-acre wildfire , that struck a chord. The fatality almost felt like the inevitable, dark conclusion of a binary-obsessed, 21st-century ritual that had mercifully run its course.

Gender reveals occupy a space at the cross-section of hyper-modernity (the impulse to constantly document and curate milestones to be shared across social media platforms) and deeply retrograde attitudes about gender. In 2019, when young people are increasingly likely to reject the labels of boy and girl altogether, celebrating the binary feels passe.

Even Jenna Karvunidis, a blogger who has been widely credited with first popularizing gender reveal parties, is now of the opinion that wed be better off without them.

The Humble Beginnings Of The Gender Reveal

Karvunidis didnt intend to create an international ritual when she held her gender reveal party back in 2008. She was pregnant with her first child and felt like there wasnt a ton of excitement surrounding the impending birth. After making a duck-shaped cake for a colleagues baby shower, she wanted an excuse to make the cake again. Her own baby shower was months away, but she realized that her anatomy scan was coming up very soon.

I was like, You know what? Im going to try to make an occasion out of this, she said.

By todays standards, Karvunidis reveal was incredibly tame and simple. It was on a Tuesday. She made two duck cakes, one with blue icing between the layers and one with pink. She had the doctor put the sex of the baby into an envelope that morning, and then had her sister-in-law carry out the correct cake. Karvunidis remembers everyone grumbling at the beginning of the event, but when they cut into the cake and saw pink icing, the energy shifted.

I swear to God, it felt like the weather changed, she said. Everybody was like, Its a girl! There were no Instagram likes to collect, but at that moment Karvunidis got the validation that she had sought: I should have realized at that time [that] this could really take off.