On a stage decorated with a column of balloons on each side, one blue and one pink, Carmen Romero Gómez (30) and Daniele Selvaggio (34) prepare to reveal the great unknown that has summoned their family and friends. His family traveled from Italy to attend the celebration. “We invite you to the reveal of the sex of our baby,” stated the card they had sent to their inner circle. “Is she a girl or a boy?” she asked below.

In the video, provided to La Vanguardia by its protagonists, the guests of the party chant the countdown for future parents to activate the “explosive”, a box with the acronym “TNT”. After the “burst”, three trails of pink smoke reveal the long-awaited response. In about three months, Carmen and Daniele will have a girl. They kiss and hug. The rest receive the news with shouts of emotion. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!” someone is heard saying.

“We were very excited to find out if it was a boy or a girl. We didn’t care if it was either one. But the fact of knowing makes her stop being “the baby”, so that we can now address her by her name, ”explains pediatric nurse Carmen Romero Gomez. When the obstetrician asked them if they wanted to know the sex, they decided to postpone that moment to experience it together with their loved ones, in the garden of their house.

“Not everyone can enter the ultrasound. You find out and then communicate it by Whatsapp. We wanted to amplify and share that beautiful moment in an original way. That we could all celebrate it, shout it out, or even cry with emotion like we did,” she says. The doctor wrote the sex on a piece of paper that was left in the custody of her mother, who was in charge of finalizing the details with the organizing company.

The “gender reveals” category gathers more than 20 billion views on TikTok. The hashtag

There are options for all tastes. There are those who cut a cake with a pink or blue filling, those who open a box full of balloons, those who press a smoke cannon or those who kick a sort of soccer ball-shaped piñata with paper inside. Some even simulate a fight between two giant baby dolls, one a boy and the other a girl, until a “winner” remains.

“We have no limits,” says Clara Sánchez, director of Gender Reveal Barcelona, ​​the company in charge of organizing the celebration for Carmen and Daniele, and adds: “Whatever the couple comes up with, we do it. There are couples who want a mega party and others something more discreet. We adapt to your idea and budget”. As she explains, it can start at 350 or 400 euros. In the case of Carmen and Daniele, it was about 1,200 euros. “It is a bit expensive. We celebrate it at home, so we didn’t have to rent a space. But we did order a cake, food and decorations”, explains the nurse.

According to Sánchez, far from being something only for influencers and celebrities – “as people tend to suppose”, he says – his clients are mostly “anonymous young couples who simply want to surprise their loved ones”. Regarding the ideal time to have the party, she explains that “the more advanced the pregnancy is, the better, because we can already be sure of the sex. It is usually from the fourth month, but there are couples who do a blood test that allows them to know exactly before.

The businesswoman assures that “there is a clear growth trend in this type of party. At the beginning, our potential clients were people from Latin America and the US. Now more and more are Europeans”. Her cousin is the owner of Gender Reveal Miami and she started offering the same service in Barcelona just over two years ago.

“It is one of the booming parties. I think that maybe there will be about two years left before they finish exploding here in Spain”, says Marta Muñoz, director of Metamorfosis Events. Although they specialize in weddings, they decided to start offering this service as well. Your company offers the comprehensive organization of events, which includes the rental of a space, catering, photographer, furniture, etc. “Like it was a mini wedding,” she explains. Their fees range from 1,000 euros onwards.

The gender reveal party dates back to a viral blog post made in 2008 by Los Angeles attorney Jenna Karvunidis, when she was pregnant with her eldest daughter. “My family was not excited about my baby coming and I thought of it as a way to make my pregnancy fun for others. So I scheduled my ultrasound for a family member’s birthday and made the pink-filled cake part of the surprise. I wasn’t thinking about sex itself at all,” Karvunidis explains to La Vanguardia. For her, “it was surprising and surreal to see how this trend turned into. It makes sense that it would catch on: it’s a really good way to cheer people up.”

“I see a bit cold the fact that the doctor tells you the sex in a consultation and then you simply communicate it,” says María (31), who had a gender reveal party in July last year, with four months pregnant. “I think it’s something important and special that should be celebrated. Not because of what the sex itself is, but because it defines whether it will be a man or a woman, ”she indicates.

“It was an idea that came up talking to my cousin, who had been living in the US for a few months,” explains María. “Social networks also make it something that we see more and more in our day to day. People find it funny and see it as a cool celebration,” she says. They announced the sex of her baby with a smoke cannon, in this case blue. Before the big moment, they made a cheer with stickers where each guest could choose between “team boy” or “team girl”.

Regarding the budget, María explains that it was rather limited. “We did it in a public park and we brought the food,” says the journalist. Her cousin and her sister-in-law were in charge of the decoration-“everything in neutral colors, with very good taste,” she says-and she also kept the secret, so that they too could be surprised at the moment.

“It doesn’t matter what the sex is. What causes illusion and emotion is the fact of finding out together with all our loved ones, playing games where everyone tries to guess what it is and surprise us all at the same time”, says Franceli Coradin (35), who is from the Dominican Republic and has lived in Barcelona for seven years. Five months ago, she celebrated the gender reveal party in the fourth month of pregnancy with her second child, with a cake with a blue filling. She had already thrown a party of this type in her first pregnancy, although this time they used a box that when opened, balloons of the same color fell out.

For Anaïs Barcelona Esteban, a psychologist specializing in perinatal, child and adolescence, this type of celebration is still very rare in Spain or, at least, it is not common among the pregnant patients she receives in her office. “It is something that has become more fashionable, especially in people from the US or Latin America,” says the specialist, although she clarifies that “most of them are very excited to know the sex of their baby, because from there they begin to imagine it. A lot of things move.”

The expert does not advise celebrating this type of party. “They put the focus on a characteristic of the baby that shouldn’t be placed so highly on,” she says. For her, the problem with these celebrations is that “they convey the idea that we can know the gender of a baby simply by knowing what her genitals are. Also, that gender is binary. She is very marked from the beginning that she is a girl or a boy, which is a problem if she in the future is a person who does not fit into that model. Assigning a color pink or blue based on gender also reinforces gender stereotypes.” For her, the ideal is to celebrate the welcome of the baby with the inner circle, more in the style of the baby shower.

“After my first gender reveal party, I realized that focusing on the gender of the baby was not what was important to me. One reason I regret starting it is because a lot of people seem disappointed with what they seem to get,” says Jenna Karvunidis, now a mother of three, for her part. The hashtag

“I was very excited to have a girl. So it is true that at that moment it was a bit of a shock to know that we were going to have a child in front of everyone. Of course, today I’m happy with him and I won’t change my child for anything”, says Maria, although she clarifies: “The experience was very cool in any case. We spent a lovely afternoon with our family and friends where everything was focused on our pregnancy and our baby.”

“I have seen many videos where, depending on the gender of the baby, they are more happy or unhappy. In our case, we would have been just as happy with either. It was simply one more reason for celebration”, says nurse Carmen Romero Gomez and adds: “It is true that the theme of pink or blue is a bit cliché, but it is the standard. That doesn’t mean you’re going to dress your baby that way later. In fact, we plan to use more neutral tones.”

“We have received a lot of hate on social networks for this issue. We totally support the LGTBIQ collective”, says Clara Sánchez, from Gender Reveal Barcelona and adds: “Gender will be defined by that boy or girl later on. What we reveal is the sex that appears in the ultrasound. We offer a service for parents who want to know with their loved ones. Nor do we get stuck in pink and blue. The colors that the parents choose can be assigned to each sex, although it is true that they almost always end up opting for these.

“We seek to further enhance the fact of meeting with the family, welcoming the baby, having a good time and knowing the sex as the final touch. But it is true that couples ask to give this a lot of prominence and want to achieve that wow effect, with fireworks, for example”, indicates Marta Muñoz, from Metamorfosis Events.

“It is very easy to criticize, to say that it is a very American party, that the sex of the baby is not everything… Many people see it from the outside and do not know what that couple has experienced. Maybe they are very excited to live this because they have been looking for their baby for a long time or they want to celebrate it for whatever it is ”, says Maria for her part and adds: “I do not see any harm in wanting to know the sex of your baby a special way. They will then be able to define themselves the way they want when they are older.”

“My favorite reveal parties are the ones trans people throw to affirm their new identities,” says Jenna Karvunidis, though she clarifies, “I don’t want to shame parents for trying to get people excited about their pregnancy like I did. It can be lonely and hard being pregnant. I understand the need to have a party to bring people closer”.

Gender reveal parties have been the subject of controversy not only for what they celebrate, but also for how some people do it. In September 2022, a couple in Brazil dyed the water of a waterfall blue to announce the gender of their baby. A year earlier, a small plane that was maneuvering for a celebration of this type had crashed in Cancun (Mexico) and a couple’s party in California (USA) had unleashed a forest fire due to the use of pyrotechnics.

“We do everything that does not represent damage or contaminate. All the products we use, from our confetti, to our powders and balloons, are biodegradable. After the event, we collect and recycle properly”, says Clara Sanchez, from Gender Reveal Barcelona. For her part, Marta Muñoz, from Metamorfosis Events, indicates: “The limit for creating that surprise effect is set by the couple, but we would never do something that goes against our values.”

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR