"The big news just can't get bigger than this as the world's tallest building lights up to reveal the biggest gender reveal ever!” tweeted the official Burj Khalifa account on Sept. 8 to congratulate Anas and Asala Marwah, an influencer couple living in Dubai, on publicly announcing the sex of their second child. In a video posted on the Anasala Family YouTube channel, the couple can be seen crying in excitement as the phrase “It’s a boy!” is displayed in large, bold letters as the tower lights up in blue — apparently the favorite color of every male kid on the planet. The couple is speculated to have paid an astounding USD 100,000 to organize this reveal, an expense almost as absurd as the concept of gender reveal parties themselves.

This tradition of throwing extravagant events to disclose the sex of one’s child is fairly new. However, they reinforce not just obsolete but also extremely problematic notions of sex and gender. In many ways, these bizarre celebrations are essentially blue and pink themed parties for couples to show off their newly acquired knowledge about their child’s genitals.

This trend overly simplifies the concepts of sex and gender by presenting only two options: male and female. Additionally, by conflating the socially constructed idea of gender with biological sex, it affirms the assumption that sex and gender are fixed at the time of birth — or even earlier — and are unalterable, invalidating the experiences of individuals who identify outside the gender binary. With each grand reveal, between the blue and pink confetti couples are completely erasing the diverse spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations. In a world where we are finally taking small steps towards embracing trans and genderqueer folks, the term “gender-reveal” takes a huge leap towards marginalizing an already vulnerable community.

This phenomenon of branding unborn children with color codes not only reinforces the archaic notion of the binary, but also strips children of the agency to explore and decide their gender identities as they grow up. These flamboyant parties accomplish nothing more than publicly burdening fetuses to conform to society’s gendered norms before they are even born, let alone learn to walk. Children are prescribed a certain set of characteristics and roles that they are expected to follow — based on the color of the cupcake or sometimes the Burj Khalifa — for the rest of their lives.

Couples are feeding into a consumer capitalist machine with these elaborate events at the cost of their children's freedom to experiment with their gender identities and expressions. Especially with the rise of social media platforms, couples have to navigate through social expectations surrounding parenthood and consumption. As a result, they are constantly trying to outdo each other in celebrating these archaic notions of gender, to such an extent that sometimes they even turn dangerous. This trend that began with some mysterious colored cupcakes has grown into events with pipe bombs, concerns about animal abuse, forest fires and even the tallest tower in the world.

As someone from Nepal, where revealing the sex of your unborn child is illegal due to the high cases of female infanticide and sex-selective abortion, this cultural trend feels unimaginably frightening to me. As I watched the video of the Anasala family celebrating their unborn baby boy, I couldn’t help but wonder if they would be as happy if it was a girl. While gender reveal parties don’t aim to promote a preference for one sex over the other, ascribing so much value to the sex of a child in itself is very perplexing. Basing one of the first celebrations of a child’s life on their genitals as seen in an ultrasound treats sex as an achievement and undermines the infinite potential they possess beyond that. It also contributes to creating a culture where an individual’s self-worth is strongly tied to how well they perform gender according to society’s expectations.

Gender reveal parties are pointless at best and destructive at worst. There is so much to rejoice about an unborn child but throwing events to emphasize their sex is definitely the wrong way of doing so. Couples need to move beyond these narrow minded celebrations and start embracing their children’s journey of experimentation, exploration and discovery.