A Sadie Hawkins dance or turnabout[1] is a usually informal dance sponsored by a high school, middle school or college, to which the ladies invite the gentlemen to be their dates.[2] This is contrary to the custom of the guys typically inviting the girls to be their dates to school dances such as prom in the spring and homecoming in the fall. These dances are primarily a United States event.
The Sadie Hawkins dance is named after the Li'l Abner comic strip character Sadie Hawkins, created by cartoonist Al Capp.[3] In the strip, Sadie Hawkins Day fell on a given day in November, on which the unmarried women of Dogpatch would chase the bachelors and "marry up" with the ones that they caught. The event was introduced in a daily strip that ran on November 15, 1937. By 1939, Sadie Hawkins events were held at over 200 colleges, according to Life magazine.[4]
The date for Sadie Hawkins Day most commonly reported is November 13, two days before the first appearance in the comics,[5] but the exact date was never actually specified by Al Capp until he finally set it as November 26 in his last Li'l Abner daily strip on November 5, 1977.[6]
The Tolo Dance in the Pacific Northwest began several decades before Capp's comic strip. The word tolo comes from the University of Washington's Mortar Board, which began as an all-women's honor society called the "Tolo Club", from the Chinook word for success and achievement. To raise funds, the group held a dance where women asked men.[7]