busybee fluffy rambles

It’s December, when people start on the Baby, It’s Cold Outside discourse again.

The song was written in a different era when different idioms were in place. It is not a song about aggressive sexual advances (much less date rape!), it’s a song about an unmarried couple trying to come up with excuses to spend the night together, in a society where that was extremely frowned upon.

There’s a pretty good explanation of it by Pessoa on Genius Lyrics:

In a modern climate, these lines are often seen as Marilyn catching Dean putting a roofie in her drink, followed by simpler date-sexual assault. Dean also defends that his feelings are ostensibly more meaningful than Marilyn’s.

When the song was written in 1944, it was seen as scandalous for women to stay the night with someone who wasn’t their husband. As seen earlier (and later) in the song, the girl has a strong desire to stay with the man, regardless of the social norm—not to mention there’s a strong blizzard outside.

The line “Say, what’s in this drink?” was a common phrase women would use as a way to attribute their deviance to a strong drink. The phrase was originally a nod to the idea that alcohol is “making” them do something unusual when there is actually nothing in the drink—the drink is to blame. In Frank Loesser’s original version, the girl pretends to resist his advancements so she can tell others it wasn’t her fault for deviating from the then-current societal expectations.

There’s also a pretty good discussion about this song in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Also the song was originally written by Frank Loesser to have something he and his wife could sing to their party guests when it was time for them to go the fuck home.