Plane Crashes During Gender Reveal in Mexico, Kills Two People

Yet another gender reveal has ended in tragedy.

A gender reveal stunt resulted in the deaths of two people when a small plane crashed into the ocean Tuesday near Cancun, Mexico, U.K. newspaper The Sun reports.

A family had traveled to Nichupte Lagoon in the Caribbean and hired the plane from the company Xomex to fly overhead, releasing a banner proclaiming "It's a girl."

The plane was flying above the lagoon performing stunts when it let out the banner. It seemed to perform a flip and then took a nosedive towards the water. The disaster was filmed by some members of the family. Someone can be heard joking in the video, "It's all good as long as it doesn't end up crashing into us."

Cheers at the gender reveal quickly changed to gasps and screams as the family watched the crash. "!No mames!" one man shouted, an idiom roughly equivalent to "I can't believe this" or "no way."

The pilot died during the rescue effort and the co-pilot died while receiving first aid on land. Two others in the plane survived.

Gender reveals have been criticized for reinforcing the gender binary and the idea that gender is fixed at birth, and they have become increasingly dangerous and disastrous. Last year a gender reveal sparked a wildfire in California that burned over 21,000 acres and resulted in the death of a firefighter. An explosion at a similar party in 2019 led to the death of a woman who was attending.

In February, a father-to-be in New York State was killed by a gender reveal device he built himself. Christopher Peckny and his brother Michael both died when the pipe-like contraption they were building to reveal Peckny's baby's gender exploded.

Jenna Karvunidis, the woman who popularized the parties, has since said that she is no longer in favor of them and wishes people would stop or at least scale them down. "Stop it. Stop having these stuipd parties," she said after the California wildfire incident. "For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid's penis. No one cares but you."