The big reveal: More and more expectant parents are throwing themed parties to announce their baby's gender.

       In todays day in age, more and more parents are throwing themed parties to find out their babies gender, along with a normal baby shower. This article, by Samantha Melamed for the Inquirer,  describes how in the past year, these baby gender reveal parties have become full-blown, pocket denting, events.

      The purpose of this article is for Samantha Melamed to bring attention to the increasing popularity of baby gender themed parties. The targeted audience is expected parents or parents of young children who would be interested in learning more about this increasing cultural change. The exigence is the fact that these types of parties are so popular now, which pushed the author to write this article.

     Samantha Melamed uses numerous rhetorical devices in order to get her point across to her readers. For example, she appeals to the logos of the reader by including direct quotes from parents who have either thrown a baby gender reveal party or who have attended one for a friend or family. The importance of including this is it makes the whole idea of this type of party real in the readers minds. If direct quotes were not embedded into her article, many readers would really not believe that this is such an increasing idea; however, because it is included, the reader instead has examples in front of their eyes to convince them that this really is gaining momentum in the baby world. Besides appealing to the readers logos, she also appeals to their ethos, and through this uses structure that keeps the reader hanging. To go off of ethos, in addition to including direct quotes, she embeds a real life story from a couple who did throw a gender reveal party. It was a cute and friendly story of a couple who's first babies gender, which happened to be a girl, was revealed infront of family and friends. This convivial story shows readers how exciting and fun a baby gender reveal party is, and may in some cases, convince couples to have one. In sharing this story to her readers, Samantha Melamed also uses structure to keep her readers on their toes. She writes about the story in pieces, seperated by factual information, and does not reveal the most important part, the gender of the baby, until the very last paragraph of the article. This keeps readers wanting to read more in order to figure out how the party turned out and what gender the baby was.

    After reading this article, I do believe that the author, Samantha Melamed, conveyed her purpose to her readers and achieved it very well. Through her use of rhetorical devices, Melamed was able to keep her readers reading untilt the end of the article, thus allowing them to get the full affect of her writing. She also appeals to their logos and ethos which helps her convey the validity of her topic to her readers while sharing with them a heart-warming story.