Baby, It’s Culturally Vapid Outside

I realize the controversy is old. In Internet years, it’s already a relic. But the public discourse has missed some key points that merit review.

In early December, the folks at Star 102 FM, “Cleveland’s Christmas station” declared that the 1944 Frank Loesser classic ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ would not be a part of their rotation. The reason, according to host Glenn Anderson is that the song “seems manipulative and wrong.”

“In a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve,” Anderson said, “the song has no place.”

He has a point. For decades, the song has drawn ire of the feminists who bristle at the pressure the guy puts on the girl and the girl’s blatant pleas for help, made all the more maddening by the nonchalant jazz and airy rhyme scheme. It has been dubbed, after all, a “Christmas Date Rape Song” by editors at the Urban Dictionary.

Star 102’s midday host Desiray put it succinctly: “if you…read the lyrics, it’s not something that I would want my daughter to be in that kind of a situation.”

Now, we can’t be sure what her daughter will face, but we can be pretty sure it won’t be anything like the scene that unfolds in the song—the P.C. Brigade will have made sure of that. But is that such a good thing?

Let us, for the moment, forget that the song is musically delightful and lyrically inventive (“There’s bound to be talk tomorrow/think of my lifelong sorrow/At least there will be plenty implied/if you got pneumonia and died” is musical genius).

Let us also forget the fact that the song has charmed audiences (women included) since the ‘40s with dozens of recordings and variations, and winning the 1949 Academy Award for Best Original Song.

We can forget the fact that any number of popular songs today feature blatant sexual content and misogyny and are nonetheless completely unnoticed by the P.C. Gestapo.

We can forget the fact that the heated interplay between the two in the song is what makes it entertaining and, as any parody has shown, getting rid of it makes for a complete farce.

We can even forget the fact that this controversy erupted in Cleveland, of all places, home of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and supposedly good taste in music.

Forgetting all of that, one still has to conclude that the ban is nothing short of a travesty. That’s because ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ is not only not the patriarchal, oppressive anthem it has been made out to be in recent years, it’s one of the last remnants of charming repartee that our culture is treated to anymore, and—gasp!—it’s actually a model for social interaction and mating rituals that we should be fortunate to carry on if we can.

These days, everyone focuses on the guy’s efforts to get the girl to stay—he lies, he covers the blinds, he tries to liquor her up (“Say, what’s in this drink?”). The original score even calls him “Wolf” to the girl’s “Mouse”. Clearly, he’s a bad dude.

But everyone forgets the girl’s efforts to break free. What we see, line after line, is a woman who is confident without being rude, stern without being insulting, and resourceful without resorting to prevarication. She presents everything that a woman should be in a tough situation, and gives her suitor a very respectable way to let her go.

What gives this little mouse the confidence to fend off the bloodthirsty wolf? The clues are in the lines themselves: “My mother will start to worry/My father will be pacing the floor/The neighbors might think/My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious”, etc. Though she gives these excuses facetiously, it is clear that they are backed by social norms, and she could rely on them believably if she desired.

It’s no wonder the modern critics overlook this aspect—it would make them face a very uncomfortable fact that the mouse is able to fend off the wolf, not by her own guile alone, but by the traditions and barriers that guided the mating game up until Feminism and the Sexual Revolution destroyed them. The repartee in this song works because the woman has more power than the man, and she has power because of the norms and mores that Feminism obliterated.

Consider how a woman might conduct herself in a similar situation today. These days, as Wendy Shalit first pointed out, the girl cannot fall back on the notion of brothers and parents waiting at the door. No one would take seriously the threat that “There’s bound to be talk tomorrow”. Indeed, any appeal for modesty is no longer a credible option at all as our post-feminist norms have removed the concepts of virtue and chastity altogether.

As a result, she is powerless. She is forced to take one of three courses of action: Either she could lie, a course which could be awkward at best; she could hurt the guy’s feelings by saying she is not interested; or she could stay and admit the consequences of a probably intimate episode and all of the physical and emotional repercussions that entails.

The critics of ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ realize how difficult it must be for women these days. But, instead of pointing to the true culprit—the degradation of the family due to Feminism run amok—they content themselves by stringing up a charming song, an endangered masculinity, and a grand hallucination that is the patriarchy.

No, our daughters probably won’t face anything like the scene in ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. And what a shame that is.