What Is This, Opposite Day??

In junior high, and possibly high school, we had Sadie Hawkins dances. If you've never seen a Miller-Boyet sitcom, a Sadie Hawkins dance is where the girls ask the boys. As if, you know, girls weren't allowed to do that normally.

Anyway, my entire life, I assumed Sadie Hawkins was some sort of wacky feminist from the 60s who *gasp* asked a boy to a dance, was shunned by her school and community, and eventually went on to Berkley to have numerous abortions. I decided to wikipedia her, just to prove my own correct assumption, and I was horrified to discover that this feminist icon (from 1937!!!!!) is FICTITOUS!

"Sadie Hawkins Day is a fictional holiday that originates in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. It was a day-long event observed in Canada and in the United States on the Saturday that follows November 9, named after Sadie Hawkins, "the homeliest gal in all them hills." Each year on Sadie Hawkins Day the unmarried women of Dogpatch pursued the single men. If a woman caught a man and dragged him back to the starting line by sundown, he had to marry her." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadie_Hawkins

So somehow, this morphed into a school-sanctioned event for PATHETIC ladies who can only get a date by running down a boy and catching him in some sort of giant butterfly net.

It kind of makes me sad that this feminist/sexist dance is the elaborate construction of some old-timey male cartoonist. Though, it's nice he wanted even the ugly spinsters to get men, albeit in a pretty criminal way, when you think about it.

Good thing I actually never went to one of those dances. I was too busy committing my fossil collection to memory to waste my time with social interactions.