On Leap Day, Illinois Towns Used To Let Women Run The Government

By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 29, 2016 8:40PM

Aurora, Illinois—one of the three towns in question—in 2015, a little over 20 years after the Leap Day traditions described here came to an end (photo via Center for Neighborhood Technology on Flickr)

There was a whole 30 Rock episode about strange, fictional Leap Day traditions—wear yellow and blue! Get free candy from Leap Day William and uh, grow gills!—but in reality, American Leap Day traditions aren't much more normal than the show's. Especially in Illinois.

Leap Day has long been a day when American gender roles flipped, according to Vox. Finally, on Leap Day, women could finally propose to just about every dude, like they secretly yearned to on all the other days!

(Was the thinking.)

From 1932 through 1980, three Illinois towns—Aurora, Joliet and Morris—put a special spin on this Leap-Day-as-, according to Vox. The towns gave their usual city council members, police officers, and firefighters the day off, and had women work those jobs for a day instead.

The women—because women can't be trusted with jobs! Har har har—then used their political power to jokingly pressure hotties to marry them, according to a 1932 Leap Day newspaper clipping that Vox found.

Here's the bulk of it:

Guilty, pleaded Mr John Livingston, a popular United States airman, when he was arraigned at the police court at Aurora, Illinois, on a charge that while he was the town's most eligible bachelor he refused to marry the police magistrate, Miss Florence Atkins.

Your honour is beautiful, but I have maintained my plea of guilty, said Mr Livingston as he awaited sentence.

Miss Atkins, passing sentence, said: In accordance with the old Leap Year custom.
I must fine you. You are ordered to buy me a new silk dress.

The prisoner was then released and under the care of the dark eyed Chief of Police,
Miss Dorothy Ward, was taken to a shop to make the purchase.

It's so textbook sexist that it's... almost beautiful. Miss Dorothy Ward is "dark-eyed," while Mr. John Livingston has no physical features whatsoever; even Livingston's fine is paid not in cash, but in a dress, the only currency women can understand, I guess.

If you would like some more textbook sexist coverage, never fear: A 1948 Life Magazine feature on Illinosi Leap Day practices, which Vox tracked down, was headlined "SPINSTERS' HOLIDAY: The she-wolves of Aurora, Illinois celebrate Leap Year by running officials out, bachelors in."

Yes, women who show somewhat sarcastic romantic agency for one day every four years are definitely like wolves. Hoo boy! They're insatiable!

Perhaps the most telling thing about this whole stereotype-riddled tradition is how recently it ended, though. Aurora last celebrated Leap Day with a gender-swapped municipal government in 1984, according to Vox.

(For context, computers had been invented by then, and like, Thriller had already come out. It was modern times!)