"Baby It's Cold Outside" is Good, So Bite Me and Happy Holidays

In defense of taking the bad with the good

Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban in the film “Neptune’s Daughter”.

The song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is locked in Cancellation Alcatraz for an unusual reason. Its creators did not commit horrible crimes — its writer, Frank Loesser, is one of the few creatives of his time whose Wikipedia page isn’t sullied with sections like “Prostitute Disappearance” or “Correspondence With Himmler”. It also doesn’t feature an insulting portrayal of a historically disadvantaged group, even though a lot of music of that era traffics in stereotypes that make Al Jolson seem like a candidate for an NAACP Image Award.

No, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is cancelled because the man in the song is aggressively trying to…uh…let’s say “pursue” the woman. He is dying to pursue her. And she clearly doesn’t want to get pursued that night. And if she leaves, the man will end up pursuing himself, so he’s trying to pressure her into a pity pursue.

You can see why that’s problematic. And I’m not here to argue that it’s not problematic — I think it’s problematic as hell! But I also think that only simple people think that decisions about what to keep and what to throw away are, well, simple. And personally, I think this song should be freed from cancellation prison — here’s my argument why.

The song was written in 1944, when concerns about gender roles took a back seat to concerns about whether humanity would make it to 1945. Frank Loesser was an Air Force private who specialized in carpet bombing the enemy with catchy tunes and strafing them with enchanting lyrics — he penned several musicals while in the service. He wrote the song to perform at dinner parties with his wife, Lynn Garland, and it made them a staple of the Manhattan smart set — Garland called the song “our ticket to caviar and truffles”. In 1949, the song appeared in the film Neptune’s Daughter and became a mega-hit, with eight different versions being recorded that year! You weren’t anybody if you didn’t record a rendition of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in 1949; I think my favorite version is the Eleanor Roosevelt/David Ben-Gurion duet — the sexual chemistry is off the charts!

In Loesser’s original draft, the man’s part is titled “wolf”, and the woman’s part is called “mouse”. Which is unsurprising; I might have guessed that they were originally labeled “horndog” and “future plaintiff”, or “Incel” and “OnlyFans performer who is stringing him along and will never, ever fuck him”, but it was clearly something in that area. The song contains a predator/prey dynamic that is as out-of-date as bullet bras and dousing your child with DDT.

The best defense that can be made for the man’s actions is that maybe he doesn’t want sex, per se, but just company. The phrase “get my rocks off” notably does not appear in the song, so maybe the man just wants to play Monopoly, or drink cocoa and read from the bible. Much attention has been given to the line “Hey, what’s in this drink?”, which could refer to a roofie, or could refer to a generous portion of alcohol, a.k.a. “the gentleman’s roofie”. Does it matter that in Neptune’s Daughter, we actually see Ricardo Montalbán mix the drink in question, so we know that it doesn’t contain a roofie? I don’t think it does, especially because one minute earlier, we see him do this:

I think that moment pretty well captures “Baby It’s Cold Outside”: Sophisticated, playful, but with an unmissable “guy who delights in sniffing panties” vibe.

I think the song’s gender dynamics are indefensible. The runup to sex should not involve the man pressuring the woman, nor should it be the woman’s job to fend him off like the Spartans defending Thermopylae. When my son is older, I’ll teach him a simple rule: “Never, ever press. At all.” And I’ll also teach him the second part of that lesson: “If it turns out she was into it, she’ll schedule another date and jump on you like a grizzly on a hiker the second she walks in the door.”

But I don’t think the presence of archaic behavior should automatically close the case. We consume entertainment without endorsing the behavior that it contains all the time. We watch mob movies, but few of us have constructed extortion rackets that depend on violence. We play video games, but we understand that it’s wrong to hijack a helicopter and shoot up a city, or tear someone’s spine out after beating them in a martial arts tournament, or throw an ink-spewing squid in someone’s face while they’re driving. Enjoyment does not constitute endorsement.

And in fact, the old-fashioned gender dynamic arguably adds to “Baby It’s Cold Outside”’s charm. The song is already a severe anachronism. For starters, it’s a duet — how many of those exist these days? It invokes a time when people would perform at dinner parties, which would be completely forgotten if it weren’t for Dick Van Dyke reruns and that Kristen Wiig sketch. Famous renditions come from singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and Doris Day — it’s a time capsule song if there ever was one. If the lyrics were “I really can’t stay / And I respect your self-actualized womanhood”, that wouldn’t reflect the era that the song captures.

It’s also just good. It’s a catchy little ditty that has just the right amount of swing and kitsch for a holiday playlist. It’s non-denominational. And you have your choice of versions: You can listen to the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Jordan version if you’re a hep cat, the Willie Nelson/Norah Jones if you’re a hillbilly, and the Idina Menzel/Michael Bublé version if you’re a sick fuck who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. This all matters; quality is clearly a factor when it comes to cancellation. That’s why Michael Jackson isn’t cancelled — “Thriller” is just overlook-horrific-crimes-against-children good.

It should be possible to acknowledge something as highly flawed without discarding it altogether. And it should be possible to appreciate something without pretending that it’s perfect. I have no argument with people who feel that the gender roles in “Baby It’s Cold Outside” are retrograde; I agree, they are. And…that’s about it. It’s still on my Christmas playlist. It is what it is, which is to say: It’s an artifact from another time. And a good one, if not a perfect one.

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