BY: MARY THEW
The tradition of the Sadie Hawkins Dance has inspired women to step outside of their comfort zones and societal norms for nearly 100 years. The same holds true for the women of Franciscan University, who were faced with the annual Sadie Hawkins Dance as hosted by Servants of the Savior on Valentine's Day.
Servants of the Savior have been hosting a Sadie Hawkins Dance for eight years now. Traditionally the dance has been hosted in the fall, but due to scheduling conflicts the dance was postponed until Valentine's Day this year.
"SOS started the Sadie Hawkins as a fundraiser to replace the Servants Auction which we had previously had. We needed a theme and we liked Sadie Hawkins because it forces the girl to ask the guy," said Andy Anderson, a member of SOS.
The original idea for the Sadie Hawkins Dance actually came from Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic strip in 1937. On November 15, 1937, Capp debuted what he called Sadie Hawkins Day in the once popular comic strip. The Sadie Hawkins character in the strip was described by Capp as "the homeliest gal in the hills." Her father, Hekzebiah Hawkins, was a prominent resident of the fictional Dogpatch.
Hekzebiah's fear that Sadie would live at home for the rest of his life prompted him to create a day when the single young women of Dogpatch pursued the town's eligible bachelors in a footrace. The consequences of winning the race were that the bachelors who were caught were forced to marry their pursuers, and so the Sadie Hawkins Day was born.
Because of the popularity and fan mail triggered by Sadie Hawkins Day, it became an annual event in the comic strip, despite Capp's original reluctance to restrict his "freewheeling" writing with any annual events in the strip.
The concept quickly took off in the United States and Canada, when dances in which the women asked the men to dance instead of vice versa were established. The first recorded Sadie Hawkins Dance took place on November 9, 1938, a year after the original comic strip was printed.
The dance took on a life of its own and- according to Lil-Abner.com-Life Magazine reported that some type of Sadie Hawkins celebration was hosted at more than 200 colleges nationwide in 1939, just 2 years after the air date for the original Sadie Hawkins Day comic strip.
Today, the Sadie Hawkins Dance is still inspiring people, both in annual celebrations and even in the media. The Sadie Hawkins Dance has been featured on Disney Channel, including an episode of "Lizzie McGuire," and has even inspired its own song.
The band Reliant K wrote a song entitled "Sadie Hawkins Dance," just about the event. Featured on their album, Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek, "Sadie Hawkins Dance" goes through the various dramas involved in Sadie Hawkins from the guy's perspective.
True to the lyrics of the song, "The Sadie Hawkins Dance, in my khaki pants, there's nothing better ... Baby, do you like my sweater?" many of the men who came to the Sadie Hawkins at Franciscan arrived at the dance dressed in khakis and sweaters to celebrate the dance.