Description
Book SynopsisA decade ago, it was difficult to imagine parents-to-be jumping from planes or dyeing their hair to publicly declare the sex of their unborn children. Yet gender-reveal parties have rapidly grown in popularity, saturating the public imagination surrounding pregnancy and parenthood. As a highly visible trend, gender-reveals correlate with our increased digital capacity for sharing, competitive consumerism, ritualized communitas, and social media currency. At the roots of this trend, there may be motivations to reassert binary identities against a climate of acceptance and progression surrounding gender fluidity. To analyze the divisive discourse surrounding this phenomenon, this book explores issues including technologies of reproduction and media; community and competition; visibility and signifying the unborn; consumerist imperatives; and those uninvited from this trend. In the process of selecting costumes of gender before birth, Gieseler argues, parents-to-be appropriate the unborn body as a contested, discursive site.
Table of ContentsChapter One: Party Planning: Introducing the Gender-Reveal Phenomenon Chapter Two: Technology of Media and Medicine: Exploring the Digital Publication of Reproduction Chapter Three: Social Media Community and Competition in the Gender-Reveal Trend Chapter Four: Marking the Unknown Chapter Five: The Re-birth of an Industry and Ideology: Consumerism and Access Chapter Six: Concluding Thoughts and Last Rites
