BABY ITS COLD OUTSIDE CODE

In the 1940s, the phrase was a nod to the idea that alcohol was “making” a person say or do something that she ordinarily would have been constrained from doing by the then-current moral code something, further that she actually wanted to say or do. Today the phrase would refer to an actual insidious substance a man might put in a woman’s drink. “Say, what’s in this drink?” she explains, “is a phrase that was common in movies of the time period,” one that did not mean then what it means now. Her beau in his repeated refrain, “Baby, it’s cold outside,” is offering her the excuses she needs to stay without guilt.”Īs for the infamous line, “Say, what’s in this drink?” Belle believes this is one more excuse for a woman of the day to shirk social mores and get busy. We see this in the organization of the song - from stopping by for a visit, to deciding to push the line by staying longer, to wanting to spend the entire night, which is really pushing the bounds of acceptability. The tension in the song comes from her own desire to stay and society’s expectations that she’ll go. When the song was written, writes Belle, “young, unmarried girls did not spend the night at a man’s house unsupervised. In a widely shared and quoted post in the online magazine Persephone called “Listening While Feminist: In Defense of Baby It’s Cold Outside,” writer Slay Belle suggests that before anyone knocks Loesser’s song, they should consider its historical context and most importantly, its subtext.

Ironically, I’m supported in this view by members of the very group which, according to a raft of online comments, was responsible for getting the song axed from radio stations in the first place: feminists. ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ pulled from some Canadian radio stationsīut the song should be in that rotation right now (and I say this as someone who immediately turns the dial when any Christmas song comes on the radio), because it’s not even remotely the ode to sexual assault some have labelled it. Opinion | Vinay Menon: Why stop at ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside'? The top ten creepiest carols that we need to nix This explanation strikes me as a bit craven because it suggests that should “the times we are living in” change - that is, should sexual assault become less of a hot button news issue next holiday season - Baby, It’s Cold Outside may make its way back into the Yuletide rotation. “While we consider both points of view, and in light of the times we are living in, we have chosen to remove the song, for the time being, from two of our holiday music streams.”

“Song lyrics are always open to interpretation, and we fully acknowledge there are two camps regarding this issue,” he said. Others, responding specifically to the lyric, “Say what’s in this drink?” label it a date rape anthem.ĬBC’s public affairs head Chuck Thompson does neither, but he does cite the intensifying controversy around the song in explaining why the national broadcaster decided the duet had to go. This week three major Canadian broadcasters - Rogers Media, Bell Media, and the CBC - announced plans to pull the classic Christmas duet from their airwaves, presumably because of how the song has come to be perceived in the #metoo era.īaby, It’s Cold Outside, which was composed by American songwriter Frank Loesser ( Guys and Dolls) in 1944, sounds to modern ears like a back and forth between a resistant woman (“I really can’t stay”) who is trying to leave and a predatory guy (“Baby it’s cold outside”). It’s called Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and baby, it’s actually quite hot - with controversy.

It would have been great if they’d banned all Christmas songs but sadly they banned only one - the only one, in my view, that’s not annoying.

Baby its cold outside