Sadie Hawkins is not a real person she was a character created for the comic strip Little Ab’ner by Al Capp. Sadie was the ugliest girl in the mountain town of Dogpatch and so her father created a day when the women of the town could chase the men, if a man was caught he had to, by Dogpatch law, marry the woman.
Sadie Hawkins Day became a social craze and Sadie Hawkins Day dances were held. For this dance the women asked the men. It was simply a reversal of traditional male female roles. The Idea of Sadie Hawkins was even recently used in the TV series GLEE. By 1939 college campuses had embraced the idea much to the delight of the female students and much to the dread of the male population. It was reported in 1952 that Sadie Hawkins Day was celebrated at over 40,000 different locations.
In our more liberated time Sadie Hawkins Day is not as necessary. Women have been empowered to break a lot of the old social conventions and one of them is to ask the men out on their own, without a special day to get the privilege. Maybe the next step will be a Liberace Day, where men can ask men to a dance.