Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1538990
IT'S always fascinating to me how we latch on to the latest trends and embrace them with such fervour that they eclipse everything else which is really important. I'm not quite sure where these frivolous fads started, although many point their fingers at the US, which could very well be the case. Take these blessed gender reveals. Gone are the days when the father would emerge beaming from the maternity ward and proudly proclaim, ''It's a girl/ boy!" to the joy of the grandparents and other relatives in the waiting room. It used to be perfectly normal to wait nine months to know the gender, or at the very least the parents would know it but keep it descreetly to themselves until the baby was born. Then someone had the bright idea to turn the announcement into a party be- fore the birth of the baby. (Baby showers are also a thing, another American cus- tom, but the gender reveal is an addition- al, extra, event). What started as a harm- less, innocuous slicing of a cake with blue or pink filling, gradually turned into a bigger, more elaborate, production: Confetti, balloons, fireworks, and what- ever the couple could dream up to make it even bigger and more lavish. It became very much like the 'whatever you can do, I can do better' competition which prevails with weddings. Venues are now rented for gender reveals, or public spac- es are taken over and who cares if a mess is left behind. The environment obvious- ly suffers, as it always does, but in some cases in the US, there have even been gender reveals which have gone tragical- ly wrong. In 2017, a father-to-be started a fire with an explosive target emitting blue smoke, which ignited a wildfire in Ari- zona. The fire destroyed 47,000 acres of land and cost $8.2 million to extinguish, with nearly 800 firefighters battling the blaze. In 2019, a woman in Iowa was killed when her family built a handmade pipe bomb as part of their gender-reveal party and she was hit in the head with the blast. In 2021, a pyrotechnic device used for a gender reveal sparked the destructive El Dorado fire in California, which de- stroyed five homes and killed one fire- fighter. In 2023, a pilot died after the plane he was flying as part of a gender reveal party in Mexico crashed. Of course it is not enough to have the gender reveal; it has to be filmed and uploaded to social media (otherwise it didn't happen). Call me judgemental all you like, but when is all this obsession with filming intimate moments going to stop? This week I saw a TikTok of a mother cradling her newborn baby while eating a dish of sushi because that was her heart's desire. My immediate reac- tion is always: But why? I'm dreading the day which will inevitably come, when we are going to see a live birth being shared in all its gory glory for all to see. Talk about too much information. New, frankly, absurd trends seem to mushroom all over the place and this week I read about another one. Appar- ently childcare centres are now holding graduations. Yes, you read that right. Toddlers barely out of their nappies who will be starting kindergarten in October, will be paraded around in a faux gradua- tion ceremony complete with a mini toga and a cap. Can we be more ridiculous? The bottom line is that parents will ob- viously be asked to fork out money for these shenanigans. First of all, more parents should learn to say a firm "no" to these things if they can't afford them. The children won't remember it and they will be moving on to kindergarten anyway, so it's not like they are going back there the next day and made to feel they have missed out on something. In any case, saying no to children never hurt them in the long run. These money-making schemes are sim- ply putting more financial pressure on parents forcing them to cave in because of guilt. Honestly, what's next? A gradu- ation ceremony when they become potty trained? There is also another important issue here: What message are we giving chil- dren? That everything is a milestone and requires a party? Graduation should be from university and that's it. Everything else is simply a natural progression from one stage of education to another, as it has been for centuries. I think it's time we all got back to basics and injected a dose of realism into our lives. We also need to stop manipulating parents into spending money on these unnecessary, frothy, materialist things. Because let's face it, if everything is considered a mile- stone (including childcare of all things), then real milestones will become mean- ingless. If children are thrown incredibly ex- pensive lavish birthday parties at the age of 5, for example, how on earth are par- ents going to keep outdoing themselves each subsequent year? If pricey toys or clothes are bought for no reason at all, rather than waiting for an event which merits a grand present, then how are they going to be grateful (let alone impressed) when their birth- days or Christmas come around? I recently stumbled upon a podcast by two women—Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan—which sums up a lot of my own sentiments. It's called I've Had It. I can really relate as they take a metaphorical pin and burst the bubble on a lot of all these newfangled ideas and crazes which really do my head in. I often feel that we have well and truly lost the plot, so when I find people on my same wavelength I breathe a sigh of relief that I am not the only one who cannot take any more of this insanity. The wave of narcissism, self-absorp- tion and sheer entitlement which have taken over western culture, which I am convinced started with Facebook and have spread like bacteria into all branch- es of social media, is so out of control that we need people like these two ladies who call a spade a spade, with a good dose of humour, to bring us back down to earth. Callers also chime in with their own pet peeves and it all goes down deliciously, like a satisfying drink. They have cheerfully lampooned and put a lid on number of topics with their phrase, "I've had it". From mothers who think their children are so very special, like no one has ever had kids before ("all kids are special, your daughter is not a princess, get over it') to brides who are so engrossed in the minutiae of their own wedding, that they assume everyone else is too. Basically they try to hack through this aura which seems to have gripped not only American society but Maltese society as well (because we are never far behind when it comes to emulating such things) which can be summed up as "everyone look at me, I'm important". The reality is that everyone is so intent on portraying themselves with this care- fully curated and often filtered image that it is difficult to establish what is authen- tic or not. It is also extremely unhealthy to live in a society where the focus is al- ways on "me" and this can be seen in the way we treat one another. Our egotistical driving, our rudeness to shop assistants, our inability to say please and thank you. Acts of kindness are so rare that when I come across them, I am so pleasantly surprised that I immediately have to tell someone about it, such as when a young lady recently allowed my elderly mother to go in first for a doctor's appointment, even though she was there before us. Such a simple gesture, but it made my day; it touched my heart and restored my faith that not everyone is as vapid and self-centred as the impression which I often get from social media. There might be hope for humanity yet, if more of us put our foot down and flatly say, "I've had it!" and stop submitting to new trends just to go with the flow. 3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 AUGUST 2025 OPINION Josanne Cassar If everything is celebrated as a milestone, then real milestones become meaningless She has worked in the field of communications and journalism for the last 30 years File photo