Lexicon ·
Sadie Hawkins
noun, also 'a Sadie Hawkins dance'
- Stated meaning
- A dance, or a day, on which the woman does the asking.
- Operating meaning
- One day a year set aside for the other party to do the asking, which confirms by its exception who asks on the rest.
- Origin
- Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner, which introduced Sadie Hawkins Day in November 1937. Colleges had turned it into a dance by 1939.
- Antonyms
- the rules
The custom began as a cartoon. In November 1937, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner (opens in a new window) opened a storyline about a “strange mountain custom—Sadie Hawkins Day,” a race in which, as Dictionary.com (opens in a new window) puts it, “single women pursued bachelors.” Colleges ran the race for real. If a woman caught a man, “he was obliged to take her to the newly minted Sadie Hawkins dance,” and by 1939, 201 colleges in 188 cities held one.
The syndicate that sold the strip to newspapers saw the market first, “offering Sadie Hawkins kits and handouts suggesting ways of making the parties more successful.” Two years later LIFE counted “500 schools, colleges, clubs and Army camps” keeping the day. Dictionary.com still defines the dance as one “to which each girl escorts the boy of her choice, or invites him to escort her.” A dating app later made the day permanent, with a requirement that women send the first message. In April 2024 it reversed the requirement (opens in a new window) with a feature that lets women set a prompt “to which male suitors can respond to initiate a conversation.”
Under load, the holiday works by its exception. A day on which women ask is a record that on the others they wait, and the custom held for as long as both halves of that sentence were believed. Given every day of the year to ask on, the app let the men send the first line, in answer to a question the women write.