Someone counts down; something explodes in blue or pink; the parents-to-be hug; a grandparent enters the frame looking thrilled and slightly confused. And, of course, there’s a camera rolling, meaning my daughter could have in theory earned her first “like” long before she drew her first breath. The gender reveal has evolved from a modest party trick into a full-blown genre of internet spectacle, complete with its own newborn industrial complex.
Private ultrasound companies now sell “gender-reveal experiences,” with rooms that glow pink or blue and teddy bears containing recordings of an unborn baby’s heartbeat. Online, the reveals have become more elaborate: smoke bombs, pyrotechnics (one of which started a wildfire in South California in 2020), choreographed dances, skydivers and, in one particularly memorable case, a Louisiana alligator called Sally biting through a blue jelly watermelon. But the spectacle has moved on.
A new kind of gender-reveal video is becoming a genre of its own, one in which a particular reaction is the main event. A recent compilation racked up 33 million views and three million likes on TikTok. Expecting couples do not scream with delight when the color appears.
The reason is nearly always the same: it’s blue. What looks like internet absurdity may actually point to something much bigger. Last year, The Economist published data showing that in mostly higher-income countries, the centuries-old preference for sons is starting to reverse.
And in some countries, the data shows that opinion has fully flipped: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and the Czech Republic are showing evidence of a preference for girls. In the US, the same trend appears among adoptive parents. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, prospective parents were willing to pay an average $16,000 more for a girl than a boy.
Among couples having IVF in the US—where, unlike the UK, sex selection is legal— leading clinics have reported that 75–80% of patients want a girl. This is a big demographic plot twist. On one hand, it’s what progress looks like.
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