1. Leap year freakery: why 29 February is
seriously weird
It's a big year 2012, a year fat with events. This summer there's the Olympics (double PE with
an inflated sense of self-worth and even more rules about plimsolls), there's the end of the
world itself in mid-December (argh!), and before that, on 29 February, there's Leap Day, the
one day every four years when women are encouraged to propose to their boyfriends.
One day every four years. One day out of 1,460. That's around 0.068% of the time, compared
with, like, 100 minus 0.068% of the time, when it's thought to be completely inappropriate
and really quite gauche. That's weird, isn't it? Seriously – isn't it? I do have to ask, because I
know sometimes I get things wrong. Sometimes I think things are weird and then they turn
out to be completely unweird, like keeping condiments in the fridge, or belief in God, so I do
need to be told. It feels like bad maths, more than anything. It feels like the marriage
equivalent of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, a day of mild hysteria and awkward chat
about GCSE options. A day that occurs so infrequently it seems to revel in its oddness, its
wrongness – it's the antique stamp with a missing perforation, a thing whose abnormality
adds value.
And it happens on 29 February. Because this is a day that shouldn't really exist. It's a blip on
the calendar. It's out of time. It's the midnight of the year – a no-man's land, a gauzy curtain
between night and day, a time when ghosts appear. Leap Day is the day when weird things
are allowed to happen, when the usual structures can melt just slightly, when spoons bend
and women are given this inch of power, this moment they can ask for what they want.
The American tradition, Sadie Hawkins Day, is based on a 1930s comic-strip character who
was so ugly no man would ever propose to her. Some historians believe the British tradition
(dating from the 19th century) spans the whole leap year. Others say it was tightened to just
one day as men felt too vulnerable: if women were planning to propose, they were expected
to wear red petticoats as a warning – the opposite of a red rag to a bull; a sign for the man
to run away. Online, postcards from leap year 1908 show women catching men with butterfly
nets, and old maids with many chins setting silver bear traps.
But it's not that women actually do propose on the 29th – it's that the day highlights the fact
that the rest of the time it's the man's decision. In the "tradition that legitimises the
subjugation of women" charts, it's right up there with the taking of the husband's name, isn't
it. As a day of pseudo-strength, when the woman is gifted a few hours of power, it serves
only to underline her powerlessness the rest of the year, the rest of the four years.

2. Why do we perpetuate this bizarreness? Why today, when it's widely realised (in my
extended world at least) that men are no more afraid of commitment than women, why might
they feel emasculated by a proposal in 2011 but not 2012? And what would happen if women
were encouraged to propose marriage whenever they were ready for it? Would more
relationships shatter? Would the high street be a parade of weddings? Would Britain turn
into a 3D-version of Bridezillas, one long, long hen night, the sky dark, sunlight obscured by
penis-shaped deely boppers, a wave of black sambuca slowly washing all rubble, all mini-
sausage rolls away to sea?
Or would it be, sort of, OK? Would it help make us all less freako about relationships?
Would it help make women less anxious, less driven by "rules", and men more likely to
phone them the day after simple sex? I do have to ask, because sometimes I get things wrong.