“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was originally written and performed by a husband and wife in the 1940’s. They sang it at the end of parties, as an indication to the guests that it was time to return home. It’s a call-and-response song between two characters “Wolf,” typically male, and “Mouse,” typically female. When the rights to the song were sold to MGM in 1949, the song began a decades-long journey towards ubiquity and was, until recent years, cemented in place as a fixture of the holiday season. Read the lyrics here.
The first point, and it’s a valid one: society and culture today are not what they were 80 years ago, and so a 2020 interpretation of the song looks nothing like a 1945 interpretation did. This is true of almost anything. However, to interpret it differently today is not to misconstrue or misunderstand it. The song, like a painting, is a piece of art. It exists as a statement, or commentary, of the time in which it was created.
But “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is not just any piece of art. It is a Christmas Song. It has enjoyed the status of near-perfect preservation for nearly a century. Unfortunately, however, while the song has stayed put, it stayed put in the 1940’s. The culture of romance has long left it in the dust. We do things differently now. We date online. We talk about consent. We talk about respect.
The internet has afforded us the enjoyment of acceptance as openly gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, transgender, beautiful people. The norms that existed during WWII are not only ancient but obsolete. As such, they belong in museums and in textbooks, to be studied, observed, and remembered. We have moved on.
So yes, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is a part of history. But to place something on a shelf behind a pane of glass does not equate changing it, much less destroying it.
The argument is this:
“‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ is a piece of musical art that embodies outdated societal norms which when placed into the culture of today have the appearance of advocating, among other inappropriate behaviors, coercion.”
In the first half of the song, the male character:
Repeats the titular line (3 times)
Offers physical touch
Compliments physical appearance (4 times)
Instructs the female character what to do (2 times)
Pours a beverage
Alludes to the impossibility of returning home
Takes a piece of the female’s clothing
Asserts his pride, imploring the female character to respect it
Requests intimacy
Then, finally, the female character says “You’re very pushy, you know?” To which the male character responds “I like to think of it as opportunistic,” revealing both (1) a degree of self-awareness and (2) a blatant disregard for his own pushiness. For reference, the first of nine dimensions used to classify a rapist, according to the only validated rapist classification model, MTC:R3, is “opportunistic.”
In the second half, the male character adjusts his approach slightly. He:
Repeats the titular line (5 times)
Compliments the female character’s lips, calling them “delicious” (3 times)
Alludes to the female character’s death (2 times)
Touches the female character’s hand
Maligns the female character for impugning his pride/character (2 times)
Instructs the female character what to do (specifically, to do away with her desire to leave)
Then the female character agrees to have “another drink,” and the male character sums it up thus: “That took a lot of convincing!”
The other parallel I’d like to draw here for a brief moment, linguistically, is practically already drawn, and that is the comparison between the male character and a “hunter.”
The character’s name is “Wolf” and female's is “Mouse.”
He claims to be opportunistic, a clear feature of hunting.
He uses the word “delicious” to describe a part of her body, twice.
He alludes to her death, twice.
All of this is certainly damning, even if none of it was intended in the 1940’s, which it purportedly wasn’t. However, it does not excuse us from the social responsibility to promote a culture of respect in today’s world. We, as a society, have done a great deal to grow up, and we should embrace and enjoy the progress we’ve achieved. Plugging antiquated norms into our heads, even via cherished pieces of Christmas history, is not only irresponsible but damaging to society.
A counterpoint to this responsibility would be the argument that we should just teach people the history of the song. If people, and in particular young people, know the history or the context of the song, they’ll understand that it doesn’t apply to the standards we have now. It is a valid, academic point, and it is precisely the moment to bring up blackface.
Blackface, the use of make-up by non-black people to perform caricatures of black people, is nothing short of harmful and malevolent. As recently as November 2020, TV shows making even the briefest use of this outdated and racist practice, even the ones in which black characters are given the voice to speak against it, and white characters are given the chance to visibly listen to that voice, are making the choice to remove the showing of blackface itself from the silver screen. This is telling! And it is social progress.
Blackface harms black people. Stop blackface.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” gives us an appalling example of how not to execute a romantic advance. It harms women because it teaches men and boys that verbal coercion is acceptable.
Stop playing the song.
Though we’ve made progress, we have a long way to go. “Fifty-three percent of millennial women have received a “dick pic,” and of those women, 78 percent received unwanted sexual images.” Clearly, we’re not doing enough to teach our sons the right way to act, and keeping things like “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” around, despite the detriment its message may cause, indicates to me, at least, that we probably don’t intend to do more in the years to come.
We cannot change or destroy the past. All we have is today, and today influences tomorrow. Why don’t we smartly assess the tokens of yesteryear, make deliberate use of the good ones, and write about the bad ones in the history books.
I don’t care if the song had merit in 1945.
It doesn’t today, and I’m looking out for tomorrow.