Sadie Hawkins in American Life,1937-1957

The “Sadie Hawkins” Dance has been a tradition at American high schools and colleges since the late 1930s. The concept is premised on a girl asking a boy to a dance, upending the traditional “boy asks girl” societal norm. The mid-century embrace of Sadie Hawkins contributed to an entrenchment in American gender roles and ideals. A belief that men feared marriage, even to beautiful women, and that women were always desperate to be dating and married, fueled the passion for this traditional, heteronormative phenomenon. Supposing it to be her highest priority, Sadie Hawkins dances simultaneously condemned women for their inability to find a mate and basked in the exceptional nature of women’s power to have one day on which they could select their date. Promising girls and women power in choosing a boy to chase and pretend to marry ultimately reveals an ugly tradition, created by a man who disdained women and sought to sort them into desirable and undesirable categories, and invited America to play along.

The cartoonist Al Capp introduced Sadie Hawkins Day in the fall of 1937, another colorful storyline in his wildly-popular comic strip, “Li’l Abner.” Capp set the action in Dogpatch, poor, white, and Appalachian, populated by Li'l Abner; his parents Mammy and Pappy; his principal love interest, the scantily-clad Daisy Mae; and a large cast of hundreds of other characters that offered up social and political satire. His 43-year success led Capp to be acclaimed at his death as the “‘Mark Twain of cartoonists,’” reaching 60 million readers a year and appearing in over 900 newspapers in the United States alone. Critic David Manning White noted that author John Steinbeck considered Capp to be “probably the greatest contemporary writer” and that in 1964 his strip was “Avidly followed” by everyone from Queen Elizabeth to Charlie Chaplin. ¹

While his commentary may have been biting and distinctive, he signified the desirability of Daisy Mae and other women in the familiar, classic form, “accentuated legs, eyes, mouth, and breasts to connote beauty and allure. Long, flowing, wavy hair signifying passion and sexual power.” The physical attractiveness of Li’l Abner, a dark haired, strong jawed, tall, muscular man, and the petite, blonde haired, voluptuous Daisy Mae were an important counterpoint to the slovenly world they inhabited, and particularly to the ‘homely’ character of Sadie Hawkins. One further twist, was that Li’l Abner was, as Arthur A. Berger characterized it, “embarrassingly uninterested in women.” Abner did not desire Daisy Mae, which allowed Capp to present even the most desirable women as desperate for marriage. ²

Al Capp eventually publicly demonstrated both hatred and a capacity for violence against women, which must also inform our understanding of his creative output. A description of his attendance at Sadie Hawkins events appeared in the New Yorker in 1947, with the observer E. J. Kahn Jr. noting that although initially enthusiastic, halfway through the eighteen events he’d agreed to “look in on” he was supposed to have said, “‘What have I wrought!’” At the conclusion of the eighteenth party, he “dashed off a snarling Li’l Abner sequence about the kind of people who go to Sadie Hawkins Day parties.” Neither his disdain for those who enthusiastically embraced Dogpatch nor his work demands or health difficulties stopped him from attending community celebrations of Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae. Victims of his animosity and violence eventually reported his sexual aggressions and attacks. Capp exploited opportunities to judge costumes or otherwise be feted to assault women he met on these visits. Scholar Jean Kilbourne’s recounted his efforts to assault her in 1967 and by 1968 we have evidence Capp used engagements on college campuses to pursue crimes as a sexual predator. Publicly exposed in a column written by Brit Hume and Jack Anderson, and later taken to court by a college student, Capp was a predator and a rapist, barred from college campuses. His biographers, in an interview, reported on women telling them informally of his vile, predatory reputation and so those who encountered him knew earlier than the broader public. It was not until the late 1960s that we have newspapers and magazines reporting on his crimes. ³

Thirty years earlier, Americans embraced Sadie Hawkins as a named stand in for female empowerment, although Capp’s storytelling established a much bleaker origin for the day. In his comic strip, both in the 1937 original and in modified strips, comics, and publicity on subsequent anniversaries, Capp used a historical flashback to establish the history of the day and assert that it struck “terror” in Li’l Abner. In his historical vignettes, Capp revealed the quiet desperation with which Sadie approached her father, Hekzebiah Hawkins, when she was 20 years old. She was unhappy to still be single, but he was able to persuade her to be patient. However, he was not so sanguine when she approached him again fifteen years later, at age 35, asserting that if he did not act, she would be a burden to him “fo’ th’ rest o’ yo’ natcheral life!!” According to Capp’s written and visual account in the strip, Sadie Hawkins was “the homeliest gal in all them hills” and had failed to attract a husband. Her father, one of the earliest settlers of Dogpatch, used his authority to proclaim a race. His daughter would chase all the single men and the one she caught had to marry her. According to Capp, “the other spinsters of Dogpatch reckoned that it were such a good idea that Sadie Hawkins Day was made an annual affair,” and Sadie Hawkins Day was born in the comic strips. While Sadie was the historical originator, she was married after capturing a man in the first race; the reenactments of the original race focused on single women chasing Li’l Abner and other men in Dogpatch (Figure 1). ⁴

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Figure 1.

An image of Sadie Hawkins serves as a backdrop for Daisy Mae chasing Li’l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day on the cover of Li’l Abner comic book, No 86, January 1952. Credit: Capp Enterprises.

Scholar Sandra L. Ballard contended that Appalachian storytelling could center the importance of the hill peoples’ good qualities, things like “family loyalty, honesty, trust, fair treatment of others, and generosity.” Critic Edwin T. Arnold went so far as to say that Dogpatch was “based on decency and fair play”; he contended that Sadie Hawkins Day embodied the notions of fairness. Capp’s storytelling may have resonated with an American audience because of the importance of fairness, but the myth making around Sadie Hawkins Day, using a “fair” race, with men getting a head start before the single women were freed to chase them, was ultimately predicated around an entirely unfair gendered system that demanded women’s aspirations and adventures extend no further than yearning for heterosexual marriage. ⁵

Embraced across nearly one hundred years in Capp’s comic strips, comic books, theater productions, movies, songs, food advertising, and popular reenactments of races in junior highs, high schools, colleges, and communities, Sadie Hawkins Day and the Sadie Hawkins Dances it inspired, celebrated the false empowerment of girls and women who chased boys and asked them to a dance. A symbol of the desperation borne out of a girl’s supposed unattractiveness, most people ignored Sadie Hawkins and dressed up as Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae and competed for corn cob pipes and boxes of Cream of Wheat, which featured the comic strip icons in their mid-century advertising. While the appeal of the dances appeared to be the gender role reversal in seeking a date to the dance, the history of Sadie Hawkins was predicated on Capp’s suggestion of women’s desperation to be married. ⁶

On November 1, 1938, just one year after Capp introduced the day, Morris Harvey College held Sadie Hawkins Day. The day was sponsored by the local newspaper, which hoped to encourage an interest in its comics page. The students staged a race on the football field, with the captured “Li’l Abner” men being ceremoniously married to “Sadie Hawkins” women by “Marrying Sam.” As one of the first college celebrations and in the midst of the terribly depressing social and economic news dominating the cycle, and likely at the request of the comic strip’s distributor, a news reel company filmed the festivities. Ardent movie attendance meant that the concept of Sadie Hawkins Day played in movie theaters around the country, well beyond a small town in West Virginia. ⁷

Just five years after introducing the Li’l Abner character to America, and only one year after the introduction of Sadie Hawkins Day in the comic, more than a dozen colleges and universities in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas joined West Virginia in embracing this opportunity to dress down in ill-fitting overalls, short skirts, and torn and tattered clothing to hold girl-chase-boy races and girl-ask-boy dances in the fall. They may have been struggling financially, but they could distance themselves from poverty by assuming the Dogpatch costumes. Schools held contests, pageants, and parties. Some accounts of the festivities used hyperbole to situate their celebrations in a longstanding tradition, but in fact, Capp had created the American custom in 1937. Young people heralded Sadie Hawkins with poetry, photos of themselves embodying Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae, and extensive coverage of the events in newspapers and yearbooks (Figure 2). Although Capp facetiously had Li’l Abner dismiss the custom as a “foolish ole mountain sooperstishun” that had brought “modernity” to Dogpatch by inspiring twice yearly baths, he and his publishers relished the opportunity to promote the celebrations and all things Dogpatch. Capp even drew the characters attending a Sadie Hawkins Dance, something that was first done by students and communities, inspired by the world he created. ⁸

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Figure 2.

Sadie Hawkins Day race, 1951. Kentuckian (1952), University of Kentucky, special collection research center.

Life magazine heralded Sadie Hawkins Day in 1939 as a particularly co-ed celebration, a playful, interactive event centered on “Girl Dates Boy,” and marveled in the article title: “Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges.” A Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper proclaimed it such a November fixture that “it would take an act of Congress to abolish it.” Capp relished the power to set the date, in keeping with his identity as what one historian characterized as “‘the most egomaniacal self-promoter in comics history.’” So while it never gained the immovable traction and celebration of the set dates of Halloween or Thanksgiving, Capp did create mystery and excitement about which day he would choose. About six weeks in advance, he planted a notice with the upcoming Sadie Hawkins Day and used it to illustrate Li’l Abner’s fear of getting caught. Of course, schools were not bound by the date, and races, days, dances, and even a week of festivities appeared each year, ranging from late September through late April. Occasionally people blurred Sadie Hawkins day with other celebrations, most commonly Halloween and Valentine’s Day, with a varied emphasis on costuming and romance. ⁹

Students readily integrated Sadie Hawkins into their fall events, but Capp also played an instrumental role in promoting festivities. Just one year after its introduction, students at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville reached out to Capp hoping he might attend their costume contest and serve as a judge. Even though he did not attend many of the tens of thousands of celebrations, he did send the student organizers at Knoxville, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Oklahoma Sadie Hawkins artwork from the strip, to encourage and endorse their embrace of Sadie Hawkins Day. The Oklahoma News also included a copy of an ornate telegram sent by Capp that featured his artwork and the typed wish “may the best men lose.” Capp cheered on the chase and celebrated his creation brought to life. ¹⁰

Beyond the students and Capp, local and student newspapers also embraced the opportunity to promote Sadie Hawkins activities. Among the earliest sponsors, community newspapers recognized an opportunity to center attention on a comic strip they carried, incentivizing newspaper subscriptions. Moreover, the organized events generally offered at least two revenue opportunities for newspapers, with notices promoting upcoming events and then subsequent reporting showcasing those who won races and costume contests. At the national level, the United Feature Syndicate capitalized on the marketing potential and “offered Sadie Hawkins kits and handouts suggesting ways of making the parties more successful (Figure 3).” ¹¹

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Figure 3.

Female students at East Carolina College participating in a Sadie Hawkins Day race, 1953. Credit: East Carolina University Digital Collections.

Organizers frequently tied their festivities to football games, as it proved mutually beneficial to hype both activities. Holding a race during the halftime of the game provided entertainment to fans awaiting the resumption of the game, and sponsoring a dance later that evening provided a culminating celebration. Other schools tied their Sadie Hawkins Day to their Homecoming, and featured parades with floats and other elaborate schemes.

For many small, religious schools lacking football and forbidding dancing, their efforts to host Sadie Hawkins events appear to have suffered from the lack of action items and, at times, willing and available men. Initially Houghton College tied Sadie Hawkins Day to their “moving up” day, only later adopting costumes, which was reported with much glee and the conviction that the event would “long be remembered in Houghton history.” However, the school struggled when the war broke out and further subverted the empowerment of the women, by declaring that their 1944 event would be a “‘Harem Version,’” with more than one girl escorting the same boy. They declared “A maximum of three girls to any one fellow is a precautionary measure to provide for an equitable distribution of the ‘Sadies’ among the ‘Li’l Abners.’ In 1950 the faculty disallowed the celebration because of the lack of rule following, with women following men into off-limits buildings and using cars in their hunt. Other celebrations struggled to gain momentum, with a 1950 account of a Sadie Hawkins party at the Seventh Day Adventist Union College dismally finding, “Really, you should have seen some of the poor Sadies sitting around on the hay-strewn floor.” ¹²

The vast majority of the festivities appear to have been in the South and the Midwest, although there were thousands of Northern celebrations, as well. Some scholars have questioned and critiqued the embrace of Li’l Abner; critic James Branscome absurdly asserted it as “‘the most intensive effort ever exerted by a nation to belittle, demean, and otherwise destroy a minority people within its boundaries.’” Writing from her perspective as a native Appalachian, Sandra Ballard maintained that Capp balanced his satire and cruelty with a just, empathetic portrayal that did not alienate or anger. As M. Thomas Inge reflected, “the strip was as popular in the South as it was elsewhere, and Southern newspaper readers never for a moment believed that Dogpatch was anything by fictional community that bore no resemblance to any real place or people on earth.” Beyond embracing the strip, Southern and Midwestern communities emphatically embraced the Sadie Hawkins events each fall. ¹³

Capp promoted most events through the mail, but appeared to be impressed by the dedication of Morris Harvey College’s early and sustained dedication to the day. After the close of the Second World War and the return of male students, the college was able to reinstitute football. Adding to the excitement, the town held a parade and a street carnival that drew 16,000 people, and welcomed Al Capp, who rode in the parade in a convertible with the winning Daisy Mae and Li’l Abner. He was quoted in the college newspaper as stating, “Of the thousands of schools and colleges that annually prepare a Sadie Hawkin’s Day festival, this is the best representation of the characters I have seen.” Capp’s knowledge of Appalachian culture was wholly fictional, so the embrace of the Charleston, West Virginia community was wholly gratifying to the artist and leant authenticity to his fictionalized world. ¹⁴

The promotion and commemoration of Sadie Hawkins events at these schools centered on the false empowerment of girls and women. The most glaring evidence of this faux embrace of Sadie Hawkins is that she rarely appears in the promotional material or as an aspirational costume. Although named for a woman that men run away from, in fact women also ran from her and right into the short skirt and low-cut blouse image of Daisy Mae. Men encouraged the imitation of the scantily-clad character, with one Arkansas school boasting a “chairman of the scissors and shears committee” that called for “skirts well above the knee” to be authentic Dogpatch fashion. While the coverage of the women often referred to them as Sadies, their attire suggested that they imagined themselves to be the desirable Daisy Mae who wanted to chase and marry the most attractive man. ¹⁵

In a note addressed to “Sadie’s Followers” in the Howard Payne College (Texas) student paper, the author congratulated the women for following their “patron saint” and coupling up during the week of festivities. The extent to which Sadie Hawkins offered them guidance, however, was more likely to be found in the “what not to do” category. A yearbook photo of a college woman dressed as Sadie Hawkins appeared at a school that awarded prizes for most hideous boy and most hideous girl, and placed her in front of a “portrait of Sadie Hawkins.” The caption for the photo read, “No wonder Lil’ Abner runs so fast.” Some celebrations added insult to injury, barring unsuccessful Sadies, who could not secure a date, from attending the dance. Although yearbooks revealed successful women who caught a man being ‘married’ in faux shotgun weddings, the marriage tradition was not common at most schools, occurring principally in southern schools. ¹⁶

Sadie Hawkins, a supposed symbol of freedom for girls to ask boys to dance, was never an aspirational character. Explanatory articles promoting Hawkins regularly referred to her unmarried status at the advanced age of 35 and consistently referenced her appearance as the sole explanation for why no one wanted to marry her. In one 1948 strip, Li’l Abner characterized a 23-year old woman who was trying to catch him as “middle-aged.” Historically, no such women (unmarried, unattractive) have ever served as an inspiration to guide young women on how to find and catch a man, and Sadie Hawkins was no exception. She was not the patron saint, she was the cautionary tale. Hawkins's desperation made palatable an age-old reversal of gender roles. ¹⁷

Even women who could pursue were expected to be ideally thin and attractive. One 1939 newspaper column at the College of William and Mary offered some advice for the day, offering “five essentials of a good date.” Two of the admonitions were “She is good looking” and “She is a good dancer. The remaining three repeated the same warning: “She doesn’t eat much.” This narrow prescription for women’s behavior, based entirely on their bodies and appearance, clearly subverted any supposed empowerment being advanced. Men’s girth also playfully cost women, when dances charged women admission based on her date’s waistline, but the pressure on women to be thin pervaded Capp’s imagined world and women’s lived world. ¹⁸

Scholars have critiqued the world Capp created, skeptical of the authenticity that a northern, urban man could bring to a southern, rural story. In the storyline of Sadie Hawkins, however, Capp did not create the concept of the gender reversals. He drew on a longstanding European and American embrace of unusual, periodic opportunities to disrupt male prerogatives by introducing female empowerment in a limited, exceptional way. Dating back hundreds of years, mythologies abound of exceptional days of reversals, such as the German tradition of Weiberfastnacht, dating back to the Middle Ages, with women in the 19th and 20th centuries freed to cut off men’s ties (emasculation) and to kiss them in public one day a year. For Americans, the Leap Year tradition that women could ask men to marry them or attend a dance on February 29 or in a leap year were even more familiar. So too was their faux history, lending legitimacy to the tradition as respectable and traditional. ¹⁹

Students reveled in the reversal, at pains to enforce the “rules” of the day or week, and marveling at the costs to women, required to pay for dates, and the benefits to men free to be pursued. A 1939 yearbook characterized a week-long celebration as “the biggest thing that’s come to Howard Payne since the fire trucks came to put out the flame of the old gym.” Newspaper accounts reported with mock horror at women’s seeming unbridled power, comforted in knowing that it was granted by men and exceptional in its existence. Even with the justification of the cartoon, schools sometimes layered these reversals in their promotional coverage, taking more familiar, sometimes local customs like “crawfish,” “Golddigger’s Ball,” and “TWIRP” (The Woman is Required to Pay), as well taking especial note when the holiday fell on a leap year. While the exceptional appearance of these celebrations only briefly disrupted the gendered responsibilities, men may have relished the opportunity to escape the financial burden of paying for the dances. Historian Beth Bailey notes that in 1953 costs for a college man taking a date to meals and dances ran an average of $83 for the weekend. Even the costs for just one date across the country could range from $25 to $35, so men may have had a financial incentive to host Sadie Hawkins Day events. ²⁰

In 1940, the male-only student body at Yale hosted a Sadie Hawkins dance and one headline claimed “Amazons to Have Field Day at Yale’s Sadie Hawkins Orgy.” The Connecticut College for Women newspaper reported on how hapless men, lacking dates, “empowered” women to solicit men for dates to an “orgy” following the Yale-Brown football game. Like other schools, they would have a “girl-chase-boy melee between the halves” of the game. The “Amazons” coming from all-women’s colleges, such as Smith and Vassar, would do their initial ‘hunting’ by mail, given the “prohibitive” distance from New Haven. A member of the committee hoped that “even this relatively inexpensive week-end might be valuable experience for the paying females, who would subsequently be more thoughtful of their escorts’ pocketbooks than formerly.” In addition to disparaging the women who attended the race and the dance as Amazons who participated in an orgy, the organizers hoped that the experience would school women into being more appreciative of the costs borne by men in the traditional dating scheme. ²¹

Women were traditionally supposed to be submissive to men’s dominance in dating. Even “Dutch” dating, according to Bailey, “was probably the most condemned such breach of etiquette” in women’s changing roles. If sharing the costs was the most reprehensible behavior for women, imagine the disruption done by women paying outright. Having the power to pick the man they wanted to spend the day or evening with disrupted expected proscribed gender roles. A 1948 advice book laid out the law: “Any man who allows a girl to pay for her own entertainment ‘deserves to lose her respect.’” ²²

The hostility to this supposed freedom was, at times, pronounced and the language describing the women reflected violence. Social critic Arthur Asa Berger characterized and endorsed the tradition as an overt expression “of the popular conception (which may be true) that actually, though covertly, the female is more aggressive than the male in seeking out a partner.” In addition to deriding women seeking men as dates as Amazons and “domineering”, the tradition itself was referred to in less-than-flattering terms. A 1945 military newspaper described the tradition as “stampedin’ females out to hawg-tie a man for themselves.” In 1947, for example, the Houghton College newspaper referred to it as a “man-killing” tradition, while a 1950 article described the transformation of the Hartford High School “into an inferno of ‘gun-toting females.’” ²³

In spite of that animosity and distrust by men toward women, men often played a central role in sponsoring and coordinating Sadie Hawkins events. This pattern reveals one of the contradictions that Capp explored in his comic strip. While the fictional Li’l Abner and the other single men are almost always on the run and suggested that they preferred death to marriage, the embrace of the races and dances by men does not reflect the same kind of animosity toward women and fear of marriage characterized by Capp in his strip. Arguably, the true risk was not ritualized nuptials by a pretend Marryin’ Sam or going to a dance, but was in fact to be married. Still, Li’l Abner’s aversion to marriage was so pronounced and absolute that Capp depicts him stating and acting on his thoughts that he would rather be dead than be married. He envisions many scenarios, including nearly falling to his death from a tree and racing into a forest fire, all to escape marrying Daisy Mae (Figure 4). ²⁴

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Figure 4.

In this strip, Li’l Abner wishes he would be struck by lightning instead of having to be caught and married on Sadie Hawkins Day, while Capp lays out the history of the Day in the Lancaster Era News (Pennsylvania), 29 September 1938. Credit: Capp Enterprises.

For some schools, it was not a one-time race or dance that defined their Sadie Hawkins experience. Instead, they created a week-long extravaganza, with women able to secure multiple dates for themselves. While some coverage presented this reversal as a ‘win’ for men who could expect to be treated to food and entertainment on each date, there is little precedent in American culture in encouraging women to have multiple dates or partners. The coverage was frequently glib, like Nadine Hardage and Mary Sue Spiller, who “had dates seven nights in one week.” However, for all the fun of the week and the triumphant campus wins in securing so many dates, coverage also highlighted their single status. ²⁵

As women embraced the festivities in their community, they frequently embodied Daisy Mae as the most hopeful in securing a man to marry. Perhaps reflecting the largely religious foundation of many schools celebrating the day, some women instead chose to dress up as Li’l Abner’s more demurely dressed mother. With her distinctive personality and corn cob pipe, and a central, commanding role in the strip itself, Pansy “Mammy” Yokum drew her share of admirers and was one of the female characters commonly imitated by fans. The other option embraced by a few women was to dress as Wolf Girl, an animalistic resident of the woods whose identity as a human was suspect but who captured Li’l Abner’s heart in at least one episode. ²⁶

Perhaps most perplexing of all, and evidence of the allure of role reversals as opposed to truly empowering women, was the embrace of female roles by men, with men dressing up as Sadie Hawkins, Daisy Mae, and Mammy Yokum. In one 1941 event “Slim Tumlin, all six feet-four of him, went as the original Sadie Hawkins.” In those instances that women adopted the male character of “Marryin’ Sam,” it effectively took them out of the running to compete for single men and helped ensure that other women got their man. ²⁷

Capp’s introduction of Lena the Hyena character played an important role in the evolution of Sadie Hawkins Day celebrations. Unveiled to audiences in 1946, critics marveled at Capp’s master manipulation of his readers. He pretended to ‘censor’ the appearance of this female character; he claimed it was so horrific that “the mere sight of her drove a man insane.” The purpose of creating a gruesome new female character was to normalize Sadie as just unattractive and desperate and to give the misogynists someone to feign even greater fear and hatred toward. Capp promoted a national contest soliciting artists’ interpretations of Lena the Hyena, “the worlds ugliest woman.” Able to attract luminary judges, Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff, and Salvador Dali selected Basil Wolverson’s version, with a sinewy, long neck, huge oversized and open mouth, with missing protruding teeth that exceeded her lips, topped by a long, flat, wide nose, furry brow behind both eyes, bald with drooping hair (curled at the bottom), and protruding ears. The image appeared on the front page of newspapers nationally and in Life magazine (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Capp’s creation of the hateful image of Lena the Hyena reflected his misogyny toward women and encouraged these mean attitudes in the public at large, contributing to a belief that ugly women were destined to be alone (Scranton Tribune, 21 October 1946). Credit: Capp Enterprises.

Interestingly, just as he had generally done with Sadie Hawkins’s image, Capp only depicted the ugly women’s heads and shoulders, but did not provide the potential that men could have been attracted to their body types. He used tall, broad, heavy-set women, and many combinations, thereof, in depicting aggressive and dangerous women in Dogpatch, but for these two most extreme characters, he generally limited their depictions to Sadie’s head/shoulders/small cleavage, and depicted Lena only as a gruesome headshot. Schools and organizations started to tease and actually bring costumed “Lena the Hyenas” in actual cages to entice and scare attendees to their events. It appears that in most instances, from the evident names and photographs, boys and young men dressed up as Lena the Hyena. In one example, costumed characters “led Lena the Hyena…by rope and 10-foot poles through the streets.” Being left to their own imaginations did not slow enthusiasts. ²⁸

Capp introduced Lena the Hyena from her home country of Lower Slobbovia into Dogpatch by having her enter a Sadie Hawkins Day race. As evidence of her power, in a 1946 strip in the University of North Carolina newspaper, one of the men officiating the race was paralyzed at the sight of her, while another begged, “soon’s yo’ kin – put th’ bullet through mah brain!! Ah seen her t-too!!” Men and women were driven to suicide by the mere sight of her. In the same vein, men sought to marry other women, rather than be caught by Lena and having to marry the ugliest woman alive. In a 1947 Li’l Abner comic, “th’ unluckiest soul in Dogpatch” saved himself by marrying “th’ second ugliest hoomin in th’ world.” This was not real power. When Li’l Abner agreed to be caught by Daisy Mae, she is moved to tears and says “ah is mighty grateful you picked me as th’ (*sob!*) lesser o’ two evils!!” Lena the Hyena served to mitigate against the fear of the other women chasing men, by being a deadly force. ²⁹

By 1941, the number of annual Hawkins celebrations skyrocketed to over 500. ³⁰ Although many schools suspended their celebrations during the Second World War, with so many young men serving in the military, it returned with gusto thereafter. By 1948, it was “celebrated annually by an estimated 44,000 colleges, high schools, clubs, sororities and fraternities.” Newspapers, yearbooks, and letters home all attest to the popularity of the tradition, with Jean Detzur from East Detroit writing home to her parents with ads for Sadie Hawkins Day events in 1949. She asked a boy named Roger the first time and bemoaned the rule-breakers who made it difficult to find a boy who had not been asked. The next year she ended up going to the Central Michigan University dance with Paul. The university’s yearbooks reveal a week full of events, including faux shotgun weddings and pig races. Girls chased boys and boys chased pigs (Figure 6). ³¹

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Figure 6.

Al Capp drawing Li’l Abner at a Sadie Hawkins event that drew more than 1,500 people. The image appeared in the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), 24 November 1938. Credit: Capp Enterprises.

Particularly in the postwar period, part of the day’s empowerment of young women blurred easily with an encouragement to get engaged while still in college. Earlier gossipy mentions of dating couples merged easily in the late 1940s into engagement announcements. One in the McMurry College newspaper lit a fire: “Sadie Hawkins Day is at hand. You can now do, without unjust comment, what you secretly yearned to do for the past year – chase that man and track him down.” The notice then proceeded to identify as engaged “Those who were caught before Sadie Hawkins,” perhaps to save women from pursuing promised men. For many school celebrations, being married by “Marryin’ Sam” was the culminating goal of the event. The false empowerment of women promised that they would have the freedom to choose a man, with the only acceptable goal being marriage. And the schools often made it against the rules for the men to say no. In order to empower women and hold the events, Sadie Hawkins events simultaneously had to guarantee that men could hold no power for this one day. ³²

Students were not alone in their embrace of Sadie Hawkins, and many varied community groups held races and dances (Figure 7). The first Sadie Hawkins event was a race held by a social group, the Beta Sigma Phi Sorority in Borger, Texas on October 8, 1938. The male author of an article about the event cautioned “single boys and my guess is that some of you married men better watch out too.” He noted that he was also going to lace up his “track shoes.” Later that month, a textile mill in Berryton, Georgia invited the local community to participate in a race. A group of Scout mothers met at an Episcopal church to hold a Sadie Hawkins evening card party, with the game-playing guests in costume. The members of the Griffin Creek Grange (Oregon), an agricultural association, announced that Lena the Hyena would be in attendance at the 1946 dance held in their hall. In addition to dancing and refreshments, the announcement included a notice: “A prize will be given to any man who dares risk his life dancing with her.” These small embraces of Sadie Hawkins abounded across the country. ³³

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Figure 7.

Grace Nichols, many years before her star turn as Lt. Uhura in Star Trek, photographed dressed as a Sadie Hawkins in the Chicago Defender, 25 November 1955.

The embrace of Sadie Hawkins Day by young people who entered the armed forces also extended the reach of the custom nationally and internationally. For example, during the Second World War, “servicemen carried Sadie Hawkins Day into Tokyo, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Iceland and Korea.” Base newspapers like the Signal Corps Message at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey carried stories about stateside dances, too. According to Capp, a West Virginia man, who went on to be editor of the Charleston Gazette and a commander in the US Navy, recounted that where he grew up, “Sadie Hawkins Day was taken so seriously that once when a caught man refused to marry the girl, her brother shot him.” While an undoubtedly embellished story, it has the effect of showing the reach and power of Sadie Hawkins lore, as well as the pride with which Appalachians embraced it. ³⁴

The reach beyond white Americans is also notable, as many people of color also embraced the day. Capp did not include any African Americans in Dogpatch, but many black individuals, groups, and schools embraced the opportunity to dress up in costumes and playfully imagine themselves as the white characters. Most of the available reporting suggests that organizations held Sadie Hawkins events to raise money for their charitable works or their social and religious organizations, including the Phyllis Wheatley Society and the NAACP. A 1939 event was held at a Cleveland home to raise money for the Grace AME Church. The news coverage also suggests that some events played out a little differently than dances and events held by majority white communities and groups. For example, in one 1939 Cleveland dance, male guests received tokens that they gave to the “young lady he thought most popular,” and she was crowned the Queen of the evening. Rather than women holding power, they were being ordained by male popular opinion. A couple of years later the Chicago Defender described women in slacks who tagged men for dances “in true ‘Sadie Hawkins’ manner,” while another in 1946 described a man who “stole the show” when he “wrote the name of each girl who asked him to dance.” Other variations included photographs of the sponsoring groups, dressed formally, rather than costumed and dancing. Still, there were many similarities in the reporting, from “corsages of carrots and onions” to “cute little short dresses.” One of the most striking Daisy May images to appear in a newspaper featured Grace Nichols in the Chicago Defender (Figure 8). In a low-cut polka dot blouse and a short black skirt Daisy Mae outfit, the “talented young dancer,” many years before her star turn as Lt. Uhura in Star Trek, was part of the reporting about the South Side Art Center’s party and “‘mass wedding’ for the lucky gals and their guys.” ³⁵

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Figure 8.

Sadie Hawkins day party to initiate future housewives of America and future farmers of America in the Andalusia Star-News, 25 September 1955.

Some of the most unusual Sadie Hawkins-themed events took place during the Second World War. In Hawaii, in February of 1944, the Chinese Catholic club held a massive Sadie Hawkins party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Ching to honor “service men of Chinese ancestry,” with approximately 75 service men and 100 Catholic club members in attendance. The following year, Japanese Americans interned at the Tule Lake Relocation Center in California found a notice in their detention center newspaper alerting them to a “Sadie Hawkins Hop.” While those held against their will undoubtedly lacked the ability to dress in costume, it is a testament to the role of the Sadie Hawkins dance in American culture that it was scheduled by the War Relocation Authority. ³⁶

When community groups sponsored Sadie Hawkins events they usually focused on costumes, games, and food, rather than on dancing. For example, a church group gathered at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Clark Brown in 1944, competed for costume prizes, played games, and, in their business session, took up the “matter of adopting a European orphan.” Parents planned Sadie Hawkins races and games for their child’s birthday party, still reported with complete guest lists of attending children in local papers in the 1950s. An Oklahoma group of Future Homemakers of America and their guests rented out a local community building to hold a Sadie Hawkins Day event in 1946, with couples competing for prizes and “appropriate games were played” by the 40 people in attendance (all listed). In an upscale celebration that year, two of the prizes were live pigs, and 250 guests danced at the Hotel Brunswick underneath “an eighteen-foot reproduction of the heroine of the evening, Sadie Hawkins.” Life-sized drawings of Lena the Hyena, Wolf Girl, and other characters decorated the room. The American Legion’s Sadie Hawkins Dance in 1947 distributed a souvenir page to their guests featuring Sadie Hawkins’s face and cleavage in a frame, exposing her to all: elongated neck, oversized mouth, two buck teeth, freckles, bulbous nose, googly eyes, baby bangs, horned top knot. ³⁷

One of the biggest mediums for spreading Sadie Hawkins Day in the broader culture came in the form of supermarket promotions and magazine ads. Newspaper and magazine ads for Cream of Wheat appeared in homes across the country. As scholar Kyle Asquith notes, the corporation explicitly targeted children with their advertising, starting in the 1920 and by the late 1930s ads featured the dual benefits of Cream of Wheat for both young male children and their fathers. Ads with fathers in suit and tie represented one type of aspirational masculinity, but lacked the type of virility that the company found in Li’l Abner. Staid photograph and text ads limited their appeal to the more restrained energy needs of white-collar men, so the company looked for an opportunity to appeal to men with a more physically-commanding icon. ^38,39

In 1949, one ad man stated that the company believed that “Li’l Abner [was] the one character in current fiction who could endlessly exaggerate their story without ever blunting the point - that Cream of Wheat is a proved good food.” They continued to use Rastus, their black chef image, to signify their brand, but also purchased the rights to use the Li’l Abner comic strip characters and did so extensively in the 1940s and ‘50 s. This allowed the company to draw on the strip’s popularity and familiarity among children and adults alike. Placing ads in local newspapers and national magazines, the storylines tended to follow Daisy Mae in some kind of scrape and Li’l Abner eating the cereal to enable her rescue. Part of the success of the campaign lay in its repetitive simplicity, with the same characters effectively saying the same thing each week or month, reinforcing the nearly inviolable connection between Li’l Abner and Cream of Wheat cereal.

One of the favorite situations to place Li’l Abner in was to have him nearly be caught by another woman that he was going to have to marry. In 1947, he was not only captured, but hoisted over onto the back of a muscular woman who declared, “Shaddup! Yo’ is about t’ become Mister Joan L. Sullivan.” By capturing him, being able to physically lift him, and being the namesake of the “first great American boxer” John T. Sullivan, she was effectively subverting gender roles, which was epitomized in making him not only marry her, but take her name as well. Daisy Mae, after he escaped that terrible fate, said she could make him happy if he would marry er, but he replied: “Yo’ cain’t git no happier than when yo’ is eatin’ deelishus ‘Cream of Wheat!’” As in the comic strips, advertising Li’l Abner did not want to be married to any woman either. A few years later, Cream of Wheat ran another ad and again a strong woman held Li’l Abner aloft over one shoulder as she ran off with him. In this instance, Wolf Gal, who lived among the wolves, did not actually intend to marry him, but instead set him in a cauldron to soften him up to eat him. Cream of Wheat promised to strengthen men to avoid all danger, even the most dangerous threat: desperate women who wanted to marry them. ⁴⁰

In 1952, the chase came to an end. The voluptuous, scantily clad Daisy Mae told Saturday Evening Post readers, “Ah got mah man wif dee-lishus ‘Cream of Wheat’! So kin you!!” Li’l Abner, finally caught by Daisy Mae in this installment, offered women male approval of the cereal when he affirmed, “Hit’s th’ world’s bes’ mate-bait! Ah knows fum experi-unce (Figure 9).” Cream of Wheat ads used Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae to simultaneously be validated by male authority, while also granting female consumers the authority to endorse products in the context of using their expertise to reinforce traditional gender roles. ⁴¹

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Figure 9.

Supermarket advertisement featuring Li’l Abner characters and Cream of Wheat, Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), 15 October 1952. Credit: Capp Enterprises.

Ranging from small, text-driven ads featuring “Li’l Abner’s Cream of Wheat Apple Pudding” in newspapers to full-page, two-color ads in Life magazine, the company sought to associate their company with the comic strip, so that when they began to promote Sadie Hawkins Day in their supermarket advertising, consumers already strongly associated Li’l Abner with Cream of Wheat and his deadly fear of marriage. This association was so pronounced that articles describing Sadie Hawkins dances abounded with references to Li’l Abners carrying boxes of Cream of Wheat to lend authenticity to their costumes or winning Cream of Wheat prizes. As one 1949 Bedford, Indiana reporter characterized it, the winning Daisy Mae secured a “pair of play handcuffs to keep her man, Jim got a package of ‘Cream of Wheat’ to help him escape.” In other contests, the winners, male and female alike, took home boxes of Cream of Wheat. ⁴²

While party planners made use of props and playful Dogpatch language, with unloaded guns, cabbages, turnips, and Kickapoo juice familiar accoutrements, Cream of Wheat’s 1951 Breakfast Bait campaign left nothing to chance. They included a great deal of point-of-sale materials, including color posters and art work that grocers could use in their localized advertising. Sometimes the messages were as direct as language that stated Sadie Hawkins says Eat Cream of Wheat with the advertised cereal package and its price. Yet just as was true with the dance, the advertising rarely included images of Sadie Hawkins. Instead, the stars, Daisy Mae, Li’l Abner, and his parents were the most popular images in ads that proclaimed, “Git Yore Man with a Sadie Hawkins Breakfast.” ⁴³

The majority of supermarket promotions came in the fall, timed to coincide with local Sadie Hawkins Days. A 1952 Billings, Montana supermarket, for example ran an ad in the local paper that appeared the same day that Billing High School was celebrating Sadie Hawkins Day, declaring, “Git Yore Man with a Sadie Hawkins Breakfast with Cream of Wheat from Clark’s.” The ad featured both headshots and fully body sized images of Daisy Mae and Li’l Abner, as well as smaller images of Mammy (with her pipe) and Pappy. ⁴⁴

The Li’l Abner craze continued to excite people. Capp realized his vision of having a musical made of the strip, and “the 1956 De Paul-Mercer Li’l Abner Broadway musical” was so successful it “inspired the 1959 Melvin Frank Paramount film.” He was able to expand his marketing and sold everything from rubber Sadie Hawkins costume heads to drinking glasses. Capp’s popularity persisted through the 1960s and into the late 1970s, in spite of the documented and prosecuted criminal sexual assaults of a multitude of women on college campuses. While men remembered him in death as a creative genius, women into the twenty-first century, particularly empowered by the Me Too movement, came forward to reveal him as a serial sexual predator. Advertising critic Jean Kilbourne exposed him for his seemingly endless efforts to assault her, all on the pretext of offering her work or working with her. Similarly, actor Goldie Hawn reports having escaped his criminal efforts. Other women were not so lucky to escape him; most famously actor Grace Kelly’s manager reported her to be a victim of his sexual assault. ⁴⁵

Without regard to or awareness of Capp’s behavior, Americans continued to embrace Sadie Hawkins into the 21st century. In particular, Sadie Hawkins Dances continued to occur, particularly in high schools. The supposed feminism of Sadie Hawkins Dances is still being debated, and made relevant in contemporary TV shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Community.” It is a testament to the staying power of entrenched gender roles, that the accepted heteronormative, traditional pattern of a boy asking a girl to a dance remains largely entrenched and the “gimmick” of a girl asking a boy still has disruptive power, permissible in its exceptionalism. ⁴⁶

Americans imagined Dogpatch as a place far removed from their lives, but just as creative people were limited in their ability to see women in outer space dressed in anything by skintight miniskirts, so too could poor, uneducated “hillbilly” women only be imagined as anything but desperate for marriage and dressed in miniskirts and off-the-shoulder blouses. It was empowering, but it was empowering for boys and men, who got to behold supposedly desperate, aggressive women for one day, before resuming their rightful power over them the next. Sadie Hawkins offered an opportunity to enjoy a momentary respite from traditional gender roles and to help keep them locked in place the rest of the time.