Sadie Hawkins Day, a 1937 invention of ‘Lil Abner cartoonist Al Capp, was originally a day when single women chased the bachelors of their town in a race, and whichever one they caught, they married. As the event caught on in popular U.S. culture, particularly on college campuses, it was marked on November 13 and became a day to celebrate gender-role reversal, most often in the form of single women asking single men to attend a “Sadie Hawkins Dance.”
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‘Lil Abner stopped running in 1978, after which the popularity of Sadie Hawkins Day and Sadie Hawkins Dances waned somewhat. But Al Capp, who notably fought to admit women into the all-male National Cartoonist Society, created a memorable “holiday” that will always be associated with bold women and gender equality. And that’s a holiday worth celebrating!
