{"id":95098,"date":"2016-02-29T18:21:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=95098"},"modified":"2016-02-29T18:32:56","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:32:56","slug":"leap-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/29\/leap-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Leap Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_95113\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/postcardleapyearbecarefulclara1908.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-95113\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-95113\" class=\"wp-image-95113\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/postcardleapyearbecarefulclara1908.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"382\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/postcardleapyearbecarefulclara1908.jpg 655w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/postcardleapyearbecarefulclara1908-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-95113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Another leap year in another time.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Before Sadie was a baby name or even a dog name, hearing it would elicit one of two responses: singing (either \u201cSexy Sadie\u201d or \u201cSadie Sadie, married lady\u201d) or references to Sadie Hawkins. Since for most of my childhood I had pretensions to neither man-hungry spinsterhood, sexiness, nor marriage, I found all of these references obscurely humiliating. Sadie Hawkins Day\u2014which falls on February 29 and only on February 29\u2014was the worst one. All those desperate old maids chasing after unwilling mediocre men once every four years struck me as deeply troubling, not unlike Ginnifer Goodwin\u2019s character in <em>He\u2019s Just Not That Into You<\/em>, which is not to be confused with the equally execrable <em>Leap Year<\/em>. Why did they want them so much? Why were the guys so reluctant? Why was this one day considered so unnatural?\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/leapcats.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-95112\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-95112\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/leapcats.jpg\" alt=\"leapcats\" width=\"194\" height=\"296\" \/><\/a>You could say I\u2019ve disliked leap years ever since. <em>Li\u2019l Abner<\/em>, which invented Sadie Hawkins Day in 1937, made me despise the men and pity the spinsters, and the punch line was cruel. The image\u00a0to the left\u00a0is a perfect illustration: somehow emboldened by custom and the pagan pull of the moon, the kitty has cast aside all maidenly shame. Her frank sexuality is terrifying to the male tomcat. Probably not least because lacking knuckles, it\u2019s hard for them to tell when leap day is, and as such it\u2019s taken him by surprise. The cat\u2019s chapeau, incidentally, seems to suggest that the cartoon was playing on larger fears of the era: that of suffrage. But in the end, let\u2019s face it: they\u2019re both naked.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review<em>, and the <\/em>Daily<em>\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before Sadie was a baby name or even a dog name, hearing it would elicit one of two responses: singing (either \u201cSexy Sadie\u201d or \u201cSadie Sadie, married lady\u201d) or references to Sadie Hawkins. Since for most of my childhood I had pretensions to neither man-hungry spinsterhood, sexiness, nor marriage, I found all of these references [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[8017,21327,21326,21328,9295,21330,21329,14679],"class_list":["post-95098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-cats","tag-leap-day","tag-leap-year","tag-lil-abner","tag-names","tag-sadie","tag-sadie-hawkins","tag-traditions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Perils of Sadie Hawkins Day (When Your Name Is Sadie)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 29, 2016 \u2013 Before Sadie was a baby 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