Sadie Hawkins is a traditional dance where girls break the traditional role of waiting to get asked by a boy and instead are the ones to ask the guy of their choice to this dance.

Many have been questioning the name of this dance; so “Who is Sadie Hawkins?”  Is she even a real person? Why was a dance named after her?

This famous tradition began with the early American comic strip Li’l Abner. This comic, by Al Capp, illustrated countrified America and it’s characters who lived in Dog Patch, USA.

Sadie Hawkins was one of the characters mentioned. Although she had a very wealthy father, Sadie was very unattractive and every man in town avoided her.

One day her father held this event that would allow her to choose a man. He gathered all the men and fired a shotgun. This signaled the men to begin to run for their lives. The firing of the gun also signaled single women to chase down their man.

If an unlucky man was brought back, they would be forced to get married.

Capp then got the idea to turn his comic into an actual dance! This caught the attention of college students in the 40’s and 50’s and soon became an actual thing!

Still to this day Sadie Hawkins lives on!