Elaborate Gender Reveal Leads to Plane Crash, 1 Injured

A plane crash in Texas was revealed this weekend, marking the latest catastrophe to happen in a “gender reveal” party. According to local ABC News affiliate 7 News Amarillo, a crop-duster stalled in mid-flight while dumping pink water over West Texas, signifying that expectant parents were having a girl. One person was injured in the crash.

The small prop plane crashed in Turkey, Texas back in September, but the details of the accident were just reported on Friday. The plane was reportedly carrying 350 gallons of pink water, dumped in celebration of a couple’s gender reveal party. After letting the symbolic payload mist out for party guests to see, the aircraft stalled.

The crash site was reportedly about 260 miles northwest of Dallas, Texas. One passenger on the plane suffered minor injuries in the accident, which took place on Sept. 7.

The story of the plane crash follows a few other viral accounts of gender reveals gone wrong. Last month, a woman in Iowa was killed at a gender reveal party when a homemade device exploded like a pipe bomb, rather than the confetti-like effect its creator hoped it would have. Before that, a viral video showed a black balloon with the gendered color inside refusing to pop, floating away into the sky while the parents chased after it.

These mounting stories have led to a new genre of jokes on Twitter, and they are taking off. Over the weekend, many popular accounts and celebrities made light of the absurdity of these various accidents, proposing that the “gender reveal” fad be put to rest once and for all.

“Hey everyone you can reveal your babies gender with a mass text,” wrote comedian Whitney Cummings.

Others suggested that this ominous string of accidents was a strong case for transgender rights.

“You’ve been warned. Heteronormativity kills,” one person wrote. “Remember: rigid gender stereotypes are potentially fatal. Proceed at own risk.”

Meanwhile, many people described even more outlandish ways a gender reveal could go wrong in a series of elaborate, narrative tweets that sometimes got hard to follow.

“A pink bullet traveling over 1,000 feet per second passes through my prefrontal cortex, severs my corpus callosum, and exits through my occipital lobe, killing me instantly,” one person wrote. “Everyone cheers. It’s a girl.”

As far as anyone can tell, gender reveal parties began to rise in popularity around 2008, when Jenna Karvunidis wrote a blog post about her party. It was shared across various parenting blogs and spread like wildfire, but this summer, Karvunidis revealed that she regretted helping set this particular trend.

“Plot twist! The baby from the original gender reveal party is a girl who wears suits,” she revealed in a Facebook post in July.

“She says ‘she’ and ‘her’ and all of that, but you know she really goes outside gender norms,” she added in a radio interview later. “She’s telling me ‘Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types,’ and I take her lead on that.”