Latest gender reveal disaster causes plane crash in Texas
An Air Tractor AT-602, the same model of plane that was used in the gender reveal stunt (Marty Melville/Getty)
In yet another case of straight madness, an elaborate gender reveal stunt involving 350 gallons of pink water has gone horribly wrong and crashed a plane in Texas.
Gender reveal parties – or the concept of celebrating your unborn child’s genitalia with family and friends – are currently having a moment, much to the regret of their creator.
A trend that initially started with simple blue- and pink-coloured cakes stressing outdated ideas about sex and gender has quickly developed into Jell-O-filled watermelons thrown into hippos, thousand-acre wildfires and, while less dramatically but still on the weird spectrum, blue lasagne.
A couple enlisted a hippo to do the honours in what some Twitter users are calling the “worst gender reveal” party ever. (TikTok)
The latest gender reveal disaster caused a plane crash that resulted in “substantial damage” to the aircraft and one person sustaining minor injuries, according to an accident report released on Friday.
The pilot, who arranged the stunt for a friend, planned to drop 350 gallons of pink water out of the sky from an Air Tractor AT 602. Although this is a single-seat airplane, the report notes that there were two people inside.
He told officials that he was manoeuvring at a low altitude when the plane “got too slow,” causing it to aerodynamically stall before crashing.
“The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, right wing, and empennage,” the accident report read, adding that there were “no pre-accident mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.”
The pilot was not harmed in the crash but the other passenger had minor injuries.
Heteronormative gender reveal cake (@GerryRessler/Twitter)
Unfortunately, other gender reveal parties have ended more tragically. In October, a family in Iowa inadvertently built a homemade pipe bomb for a party that exploded and killed a grandmother.
And in 2017, hundreds of people had to evacuate their homes in Arizona after an explosion at a gender reveal party sparked a wildfire that burned across 47,000 acres.
Critics of the parties have called them unnecessary and potentially harmful to children as they reinforce restrictive gender-based stereotypes.
