Outdated & Overrated: The idea of WPA, the Women Pay All dance, is outdated because it doesn’t account for gender roles and isn’t inclusive for all relationship types and people

It’s second semester. WPA — the women pay all dance — is coming up. Every girl you know is deciding who to ask, debating whether they should ask their crush and fighting over who gets to ask their best guy friend.

That’s the mentality behind the tradition of WPA — girls ask the guys. After all, it’s even in the name.

This type of dance is better known as Sadie Hawkins, a tradition where the girls ask guys to the dance and pay for dinner and tickets to shake up traditional school-dance-etiquette norms and be progressive, but the premise of the dance is outdated and restrictive of who does the asking.

Sure, it was progressive to suggest that a woman could ask out a guy and pay for the meal when the dance emerged in the 1930s when women were silenced and confined to being housewives. But dances like these are no longer revolutionary changes — it isn’t uncommon in our current generation for girls to do the asking no matter the dance, so the 85-year-old concept of a dance like WPA is no longer essential. Regardless of gender, anyone should be able to do the asking for any dance and shouldn’t feel pressured into the designated roles of dated rules. 

The idea of a Sadie Hawkins dance first came in a fictitious comic strip from 1937 that was initially intended as a feminist act, but in actuality is sad and sexist. The comic illustrates an ugly spinster named Sadie Hawkins who can’t find a husband, so her father rounds up all the eligible bachelors in the town and has them compete in a race where Sadie gets to marry whichever one she can tackle down — a frankly offensive caricature of women and girls who don’t meet traditional beauty standards. 

While guys did all of the asking in the 1930s and girls waited to be asked, in today’s world, if a girl wants to go with someone then she’ll just ask them out herself if they haven’t been asked already. She shouldn’t need to wait for a dance specifically named to allow her to ask.

With other dances, it’s open, so if you want a date then you can hope to get asked or ask someone yourself. With dances like Homecoming and Prom, while it’s customary for guys to ask the girls, they’re not specifically designed and named for guys to. But WPA puts unnecessary pressure on girls that if they want a date, it’s on them to find one. And it confines the guys as well. If they want a date, they have to hope someone rings their doorbell with a handmade sign.

So why do we need a designated “girls’ dance” when there aren’t any specific asker requirements for the other dances?

Even the Student Council acknowledges the guidelines behind the dance have become outdated as they’ve switched from advertising the dance as WPA to the Sweetheart Dance this year — but simply due to tradition, the original rules are still followed among students.

But traditions can be outgrown. Yes, it was a statement at the time to have girls do the asking, but now it’d be an even bigger statement in our current society if we do away with traditions like WPA to be more inclusive of everyone.

Not only is the concept behind the dance outdated in terms of girls doing the asking, but the regulations aren’t inclusive of the diverse population at East for students having different sexual orientation and gender indentities.

What if two girls want to go together? Who does the asking then? Or two guys?

Plus, the dance’s “tradition” doesn’t account for students who don’t even identify as one of those two genders or have another relationship dynamic. “Women Pay All” assumes that all couples attending are straight and cisgender, which is not always the case. 

While the intention of a girls-asking-guys dance might’ve been revolutionary in the feminist world in the 1930s, the concept no longer holds up to modern day standards. While changing the name of the dance moves toward rewriting the narrative, students need to look past the precedents of the tradition and realize that they don’t need to conform to it. Instead, they should do whatever they feel comfortable with, whether they’re being asked or asking someone themselves.