Sure, maybe she’ll end up staying because the man won’t stop bothering her and it seems easier to just give in at a certain point. The “rapey” reading allows for the possibility that the woman really does want to go - and if that’s the case, it becomes much more obvious why the man’s behavior is a problem. Regardless of what Loesser intended, it’s a lousy model for romance that normalizes sexual coercion and date rape. The “rapey” reading, on the other hand, finds the events of the song troubling given our modern understanding of how sexual consent and sexual assault work. If you think about it, the song could even be read as a feminist anthem - a subversive celebration of women’s sexual agency in a repressive time. But since it’s obvious to her date that she really does want to stay, he feels no compunction about pressuring her - and she’s also more than happy to be given an excuse to do what she wants to do anyway.īesides, the “romantic” reading argues, Loesser used to perform the song with his wife at parties as entertainment it’s clearly meant to be a cute story about romance, and we’re doing the song a disservice if we divorce it from its historical context. It’s 1944, after all, and it’s scandalous for an unmarried woman to spend the night with a man. In the “romantic” reading, the woman really does want to stay but feels socially pressured to leave. I’ll call these two different interpretations the “romantic” reading and the “rapey” reading. I’ve pasted the lyrics below, with some annotations to help explain why it’s possible to hear the song in two very different - and perhaps equally valid - ways. The debate gets to the heart of a major culture war over sexual assault, consent, and “political correctness” - a war that came to a head in 2016 when America elected a president who’s been accused of sexual assault. ![]() And it’s also about more than just one Christmas song. Which reading is right? Is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” too problematic to enjoy with a clear conscience anymore, or is our perception of it the real problem? For every think piece calling it a “date-rape anthem,” there’s a corresponding “Oh, come on” take about how oversensitive “social justice warriors” are killing romance and seduction and taking the song’s lyrics out of context. The vastly different ways people hear the same short song have set off an annual internet battle over its feminist merits. And in that more prudish time period, women were expected to turn down sex (at first, anyway) even if they wanted it. They note “What’s in this drink?” was a common joke in the 1930s and ’40s made by people who wanted to make an excuse for something that they knew very well they shouldn’t be doing. The song’s legions of defenders argue that those concerns are overblown. The original score even lists the man’s part as “Wolf” and the woman’s part as “Mouse,” making the predator/prey dynamic creepily explicit. At one point the woman asks, “Say, what’s in this drink?” - which is pretty alarming to a modern audience that understands how roofies work. The guy ignores his date’s protests and badgers her to stay, which feels a lot like sexual coercion. The ending is ambiguous, but it’s implied that she decides to stay after all, keeping them both warm on a cold winter’s night.īut when you listen closer, the song’s lyrics also seem, well. ![]() On the one hand, what would her parents or the neighbors think? On the other hand, it’s just so cold outside. ![]() When you first hear it, the song seems like a cute, flirty call-and-response duet between a man and his lady friend who are debating whether she should stay the night. Frank Loesser’s 1944 “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has been a beloved Christmas-song staple for decades, covered by legendary pairings from Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting in 1949 to Idina Menzel and Michael Bublé in 2014.
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