It's scientific fact that women give birth to more male babies in times of war. Using the final data available from the CDC (2009 and 2010 data is still considered preliminary), boys are still out numbering girls 1048 to 1000, which is apparently a trend that's been holding in the United States for the past 60 years. I came across this article recently in Fast Company "The Birth of An Idea: Ads to Rebrand Girls". I thought it was particularly humorous because, as a Chinese woman, it's quite common to hear talk about how it'll be a boy "if you are lucky" and how giving birth to a boy somehow means you possess some magical power in your loins. I'm not bitter, because (thankfully) my mom decided to keep me, but the sad fact is that female orphans still outnumber male orphans by a staggering degree in China, and infanticide is still practiced, particularly in the rural areas.
Ironically, as I have mentioned before, the Asian fixation on male babies have left a generation of "little princes" (the only male child in a family) that are woefully without wife. Put quite simply, there's just not enough women to go around anymore. Combine that with the average Asian woman wanting to wait longer before marriage, and you've got a lot of sad, single males wandering around China. (Funnily enough, this has spawned a whole sub-industry of matchmaking services that bring women in from other countries and regions--mainland inland to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to mainland coast, etc.-- in a sort of internal, mail-order bride weirdness.)
But I digress, the article is a good read and there are some pretty good ads... The one above is by Cramer-Krasselt, a Chicago-based agency that has done ads for Corona, Hilton and Porche. (If you can sell over-priced, plastic sports cars that guzzle gas when it's $4.50/gallon, you can certainly sell the world on female babies can't you? Can't you?!)
Oh, so what's with the title? Me and my friends (by the way, both me and my sister were originally predicted to be boys until we came out of the womb, so scientifically, I'm pretty sure "hoping" doesn't do anything) joke that people always say "I hope it's a [fill in baby's gender here]!" and in Chinese culture people always hope it's a boy. My friends and I don't really care either way, we just want to make sure it's a baby-- so we've decided that when that fateful day comes that we want more of little us-es running around, every time someone says "I hope it's a boy!" or "What sex do you want the baby to be?", we'll simply smile, rub our alien-like bellies and say "I hope it's a T-Rex!".
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