Gender Reveal Party

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2019

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Jenna Karvunidis invented the gender reveal party, but now she has regrets. On this episode of Decoder Ring, we explore the pink and blue world of the gender reveal party, and how Jenna's small barbecue celebration turned into a global phenomenon that's gotten way out of control. We talk to psychologists, historians, critics, and business owners, to figure out why the gender reveal is having such a big, bizarre moment right now, and how we can best understand the strange power they hold over social media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So it was 2008 that summer I was pregnant and a coworker of mine was three or four months ahead of me with her pregnancy and it was
0:16.1	time for her to have a baby shower at the office.
0:19.0	And so naturally is the other pregnant lady working there.
0:22.2	They were like,
0:22.5	Jenna, you're in charge of the cake. And I was like, great. I made this little cake
0:27.2	that looked like a duck. It had a little separate extra cake for the ducky head
0:31.1	and a little candies for the tail. I just thought I was really fabulous.
0:34.4	It was primitive by today's standards. We had the baby shower at work and I was just so obsessed with like this cute cake. I just love that whole aesthetic of doing things extra and I'm like I need
0:46.4	another occasion like right now I need to make this cake again so I was
0:52.0	pregnant but I mean I was like three months pregnant I'm like my baby
0:57.2	shower is going to be months away and and I realize that my anatomy scan was
1:02.0	coming up the anatomy scan was coming up.
1:02.8	The anatomy scan where they scan for the health of the baby
1:06.5	and you also can learn if it's a boy or a girl.
1:09.7	And so I was like, you know what,
1:11.7	we're going to turn this into an occasion.
1:13.4	We'll surprise everybody if it's a boy or a girl.
1:16.2	I'll make two of these ducky cakes I'm obsessed with.
1:18.4	Yes, overkill.
1:20.0	And I'll fill one with pink icing and one with blue icing, and I'll put them in the kitchen, and I'll fill one with pink icing and one with blue icing and I'll put them in the kitchen and I'll have my sister-in-law deliver the news to a barbecue party.
1:28.2	And so I thought that way we can all find out together.
1:32.2	It'll be such a moment I won't even know.
	...

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