jenna karvunidis
Jenna Karvunidis on the "Tamron Hall Show" in December 2019.
Tamron Hall Show
  • California’s El Dorado fire, currently burning in San Bernardino County, has been blamed on a gender-reveal party gone wrong.
  • This prompted Jenna Karvunidis, the blogger credited with starting the gender-reveal trend more than ten years ago, to condemn the practice on Monday.
  • “Stop it. Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis,” Karvunidis wrote on Facebook.
  • Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The woman who popularized the gender-reveal party is calling for an end to the practice after a gender reveal was blamed for one of the wildfires burning in California. 

In a Facebook post on Monday, Jenna Karvunidis wrote that it was time to “stop having these stupid parties.” 

“For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone abour your kid’s penis. No one cares but you.

“It was 116 degrees in Pasadena yesterday and this tool thought it would be smart to light a fire about his kid’s d—. Toxic masculinity is men thinking they need to explode something because simply enjoying a baby party is for sissies,” Karvunidis wrote.

https://www.facebook.com/HighGlossSauce/posts/3526972507321132

Karvunidis is believed to have started the gender-reveal trend when she wrote a blog post back in 2008, detailing how she revealed the gender of her unborn child with cake that had pink icing on the inside. 

Karvunidis sought to show that there was a difference between her gender reveal and the more dramatic ones involving pyrotechnics that expecting parents have been coming up with lately.

"Excuse me for having a cake for my family in 2008. Just because I'm the gEnDeR rEvEaL iNVeNtoR doesn't mean I think people should burn down their communities," Karvunidis wrote on Facebook. "STOP."

el dorado fire
A plume of smoke from the El Dorado Fire seen from the Interstate 10 in Loma Linda, California, on September 5, 2020.
Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP

California's El Dorado Fire, which is currently burning in San Bernardino County, has been blamed on a gender reveal gone wrong. Fire officials said Saturday that the fire was sparked by a "smoke generating pyrotechnic device, used during a gender reveal party." 

As of Tuesday morning, the El Dorado fire has grown to nearly 10,000 acres, CNN reported.

Gender reveals were also blamed for 2017's Sawmill fire in Arizona, which spread to 47,000 acres, and a 10-acre brush fire in Florida in April.

california fires
A firefighter battles the Creek Fire in Madera County, California, on September 7, 2020.
Noah Berger/AP

This isn't the first time that Karvunidis has expressed regret over starting the popular trend. 

Last year, she wrote about how she now has "mixed feelings" about celebrating a child's gender before they are born. 

Her perspective on this was changed after becoming a mother, and her firstborn daughter, Bee, started defying gender norms by dressing in a more masculine style. 

"Who cares what gender the baby is?" Karvunidis wrote in the post. "I did at the time because we didn't live in 2019 and didn't know what we know now — that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what's between their legs."

In an interview with Insider after writing the blog post, Karvunidis said another incident that made her question gender reveals was when another one of her daughters, who is more "girly," got upset when she was gifted Legos for Christmas.

"She started to cry and when I asked her what was wrong she said: 'Why would Santa bring me a boy present? It's not pink.'

"Everything is being pinkified these days," Karvunidis said. "While it might come from the right place, what is really happening is that they're boxing girls into a smaller and smaller space. That's not what I want. I want all of the things for all of the kids — let them decide."

Read the original article on Insider