There’s No Gender in the Cabbage Patch
By: Kristen Pizzo
Tags: Gender, LGBTQ, Parenting, Identity, Social Justice

There’s No Gender in the Cabbage Patch

On the Gender Reveal Cabbage Patch dolls

The baby doll aisle is by far my favorite aisle in Target. I don’t play with dolls anymore, but I am greatly entertained by them, especially when they start laughing or crying out of nowhere when I walk by. It’s like a year-round haunted house, right in the middle of my local department store.

The features companies come up with for the dolls get more realistic and complex as the years go on. My baby dolls had bottles of milk-like liquid you could shove in their gaping mouths, and some could be filled with water so that they could “pee,” but they couldn’t breastfeed, cry, or perpetuate archaic and potentially harmful ideas about gender identity.

American toys have been getting more progressive.

Barbie has a wider variety of body types and careers, and there are even gender-neutral dolls. So I was dumbfounded when I found “Gender Reveal” dolls in the toy aisle while Christmas shopping at Target.

The “founder” of the gender reveal party herself, Jenna Karvunidis, is now backtracking and supports the movement to end the pointless parties. But Cabbage Patch (or Mattel, which manufactures the dolls) apparently didn’t get the memo.

I grew up with Cabbage Patch dolls because my late grandmother was obsessed with them. At the beginning of this decade, when gender reveal parties were booming in popularity, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see such dolls. The conversations around gender identity weren’t as prominent then.

Now, however, the product makes the company seem extremely tone-deaf and certainly solidifies Cabbage Patch dolls as a fad from the 80’s that no one cares about anymore.

In case you are wondering, there are no genitals on these cabbage babies.

To conduct the big “reveal,” one would pull down the doll’s diaper and see whether there was a blue or pink heart on its ass cheek. Maybe they are serving children well by not affiliating gender with sex, albeit unintentionally.

After revealing the gender, I guess you take that information and use it to go out and buy clothes, choose between the names Jessica or James, and justify yelling at the baby when it likes baseball instead of ballet or vice versa, and then expect it to grow up and date a doll of the opposite binary gender and then throw it out of your window when it dates the same sex instead?

Were there any focus groups with kids that helped the company determine that this was a worthwhile idea?

Is this gender reveal thing fun for kids who play with dolls? Does it bring them joy? I’m asking honestly. Or does it send them on a roller coaster of emotions? Are little boys angry about not getting sons? Oh, right! Silly me. Male children of the parents who would buy this doll aren’t allowed to play with dolls.

You might be wondering why I’m spending my time writing about a doll. The answer is obvious: I’m a social justice warrior with nothing better to do than rage about inanimate objects! But seriously, I’m not angry at the dolls, I’m angry at the culture that created people who think such dolls should exist in 2019.

Raising children without gender isn’t just for the sake of the relatively small percentage of kids who grow up to be transgender or non-binary, or those who become women who are butch or men who are femme. Gender-neutral parenting promotes equality and might help reduce the occurrences of issues like eating disorders, which sometimes stem from a person’s desire to make their body measure up to cultural expectations based on their assigned or true gender.

When we see babies as a gender first, we construct a whole idea of who they should be, laying out shoes for them to fill before they even have a voice. Of course, everyone has dreams for their children. Why can’t those dreams be gender-neutral? Success, marriage, or starting a family — none of the things that parents often want their kids to experience are restricted to a certain gender.

What is the real point of a gender reveal party anyway?

Your friends and family can choose clothes and gifts based on things all babies like and need — not colors like pink and blue. So why is Mattel promoting the practice to a future generation of parents?

It’s just a doll! And your baby is just a baby.