As the days become longer, and the longing for graduation day to finally materialize on the calendar grows stronger and stronger, the need for a distraction from the final leg of the race becomes ever more apparent. Enter prom, the masked vigilante whose mission is to save Seniors, Juniors, and a few choice underclassman from their humdrum, everyday lives. Oh, and how extravagant it’s become to ask that special someone to prom! Teenagers all over the country are pulling off Hollywood-caliber “prom-posals”. Such invites include but are not limited to: packing a student’s car with live doves, hijacking the north lot announcement board, or even taking the airwaves by storm. The only problem with all of these glamorous “prom-posals” is that the boys are the only ones who seem to be doing the asking. There’s a clear, unspoken rule that boys are the askers and girls the askees. The solution, then, is black and white, right? Hold a dance with the gimmick being girls ask guys, a.k.a a Sadie Hawkins dance. But I don’t think this choice is so clear; the benefits aren’t outweighing the downsides. Are we pushing some misogynistic perspective onto our girls, further brainwashing them into believing that they don’t have as much sovereignty as their male classmates?  

To understand the fully demeaning blow coupled with the idea of a “Sadie Hawkins dance” you have to get the full background of the event.  In the 1930’s, a time when we couldn’t instantly stream videos of dogs wearing socks into our homes, we relied on other forms of entertainment - for example, comic books. Comic books appealed to adults and kids alike, making them culturally influential on the whole of society. One such pillar of culture was a strip called Li’l Abner by Al Capp, launched in 1934, which garnered roughly sixty-million readers worldwide. It focused on the town of Dogpatch, Arkansas and its inhabitants: a clan of hillbillies. In one of the strips, the character Sadie Hawkins is introduced. She was known as the “homeliest gal in all them hills”, and when she reached the ripe old age of 35 – earning the title of “spinster” – her father began worrying that Sadie would never find a man to fend for her. He created Sadie Hawkins Day, which was celebrated with a foot race between Sadie and all of the town’s eligible bachelors. Whoever Sadie caught first would be the unlucky gent forced into marrying her. To think that something so riddled with sexism could go on to become a “girl power” initiative is to be put on an express line to Pukesville. (side-note: it’s so frustrating to me that it’s called “girl” power. I mean, yes, girls should undoubtedly be empowered, but this shouldn’t be a phrase that only relates to young girls. Why not woman power, or female power? When people say “girl power” it gives off this automatic connotation of inferiority.)
The more I delve into this abhorrent cultural phenomenon, the more it makes my lunch want to come back up. Specifically, how many young women and girls don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with a Sadie Hawkins dance. A short time ago I posted the following question on my school’s Facebook Page: “Should we have a Sadie Hawkins dance?” Out of the thirty-one people who cast a vote, not a single one voted no. Out of that thirty-one, eighteen were girls. Now, I’m not saying that these are all horrible women haters who promote the superiority of men–far from it. Some of these women are even apart of Girl Up, a group dedicated to improving the lives of girls globally. So what’s the deal? Why aren’t we seeing what’s right in front of our faces? Is it because we grew up watching twenty-minute-episodes of Lizzie Mcguire, Zoey 101, iCarly, Even Stevens, Phil of the Future, and Kim Possible, during which our always spunky lead heroines decide to partake in their school’s Sadie Hawkins dance, asking the super cute guy of their dreams… Wait, huh? It’s almost like we’ve been trained all our lives to believe that women can be the “other” as long as we get our one day to “take control”... That we’ve once again been dazzled by that hollywood glamour into thinking that such a dance is just some quirky-but-cool  thing that all the kids at PCA got to do. Like we were so distracted by all the hype from our favorite Friday night television shows that we couldn’t see the disgusting, misogynistic beast cowering beneath it. But I could be wrong. After all, I’m just another silly girl who can’t trick a guy into going to prom with me, right?