Another gender reveal party has caused a wildfire, this time in San Bernardino County, California, where it burned more than 7,000 acres this week, and now the woman who popularized gender reveal parties is saying it’s time for them to stop.
Blogger Jenna Karvunidis had a gender reveal party in 2008 in which she and her husband cut a cake to reveal the color inside, pink or blue, the original way it was done, and after she wrote about it on her blog, it got attention and the idea spread and became a thing. But people since then have come up with other ways to reveal a coming baby’s gender at these parties and some of them are dangerous and have led to disaster.
After what happened in San Bernardino, Karvunidis posted on Facebook: “Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you.” In another big wildfire caused by a gender reveal party, 47,000 acres burned in Arizona in 2017 when people at the party shot at a target with the words “boy” and “girl,” and a similar method cause a 10-acre brush fire in Florida this past April.
Other gender reveal-related incidents include the crash of a small plane in Texas last year, and the death of a woman in Iowa last October when a device that was supposed to just shoot blue or pink gunpowder exploded, killing the grandmother when she was hit by shrapnel.
