The Great Depression left America feeling lovelorn, rejected, and worthless. Cartoonist Al Capp looked at the gloom surrounding him and a lightbulb flashed above his head. He rushed to his pen and paper and began to write a story about a woman who would eventually become a feminist icon: Sadie Hawkins. Sadie grew up in a small American town with her father and mother. She was loud, opinionated, and overall too “unfeminine” for the men of the town, so nobody wanted to marry her. Mr. Hawkins, Sadie’s father, was infuriated by this. He had a young, healthy daughter in a town with a plethora of young, healthy men for her to marry; yet, not one of them found his daughter to be a suitable wife for them! Upon noticing her father’s anguish, Sadie got the brilliant idea to host a running race against all of the townsmen she wanted to marry. The rules were fairly simple: if Sadie could tackle a potential husband to the ground before he reached the finish line, then he would be forced to take her out for a date. Although the unfortunate suitors had very little to gain by entering the race, Mr. Hawkins would threaten the men until they signed their name on the list. Sadie – written by a misogynist man in the 1930s – was completely oblivious of her father’s threats and believed that all of the men were jumping at the chance to date her. To Sadie’s credit, the comic ends with her finding a husband who entered the race and just didn’t run. He literally waited for her to notice that he was not trying to get to the finish line, and that he genuinely wanted to go on a date with her.

The general message of the comic is that young lovers should go after what they want with no holds barred. If you want to date Sadie Hawkins, you have to wait for her to notice you. 

Long story short, the reason that the typical gender roles are reversed when asking someone to go to a dance together is because of Sadie’s race. Women read Al Capp’s comic strip and were inspired by Sadie’s fearlessness, leading the women to be the one to ask their date to the dance. Long Live Sadie Hawkins!

Sources: 

Plevin, Julia. “The Strange History and Uncertain Future of Sadie Hawkins Day.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 15 Nov. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/the-strange-history-and-uncertain-future-of-sadie-hawkins-day/265272/. Accessed 09 Feb. 2024.