I recently read an article with a story of the woman who created the trend of hosting

gender reveal parties and how she came up with it, but, most importantly, the article focuses on

the fact that shortly after the global impact her ‘creation’ has had in the media, the woman,

Jenna Myers Karvundis, regretted having ever started it. The article explores the idea that

gender-reveal parties seem to set out the gender of the child before it even gulps fresh air;

therefore interfering with the freedom of choice that is so ardently fought for in the 21st century.

Due to the fact that gender-reveals are always linked to two colors, blue and pink, it also

correlates to the way of knowledge which is sense perception, from which derives or which

derives from imagination. However, we perceive blue as related to boys and pink as related to

girls as a given, without even questioning it. Therefore, the extent to which imagination plays a

key role in forming our perception of things is a matter up for discussion. Plus, as in this article

the author explains how damaging assigning labels can be for the growth of a baby, the subject

of ethics also comes to mind. The statement according to which we are born with a certain label,

however, comes into disagreement with one of 17th century key thinkers, John Locke. He came

up with the term “tabula rosa”, which basically translates into “clean slate”, stating that we are

born with an unformed mind and acquire all of our ideas through the process of development.

Taking all of the above into consideration, I have come to ask myself ‘To what extent

does society set a framework of who we are as people?’ I believe it is one of the questions all of

us must ask ourselves at least once in the course of our lives, because it is pivotal to

understand whether you are following your own guideline in life or the one somebody else

created for you. In an era of easy exchange of information and data it is also easy to lose

yourself among the labels that are linked to you throughout the web of connections that is the

internet. Now imagine how it feels to be born with a label already attached to you. It deprives

you of identity or, better said, it gives you the illusion of making the choice of who you are by

yourself, when in reality from the moment you are born you are already following someone’s

plan, usually your parents’.

 Maybe I am biased due to the fact that I am still in the process of growing up, which

means figuring out where I stand in society, but even such a position gives me the advantage of

being able to construct an opinion based on personal experience and feelings towards the

subject. Indeed, there are skeptical views on the LGBTQ+ community. The people who share

them, whom I would call classical conservatives, might look at the discussed issue weirdly,

because for them, I think it is obvious that there can be no more than two acceptable genders

which are easily recognized by the two colors society assigns to them.