Christmas can be controversial. Take for example last year’s Starbucks Christmas cups debacle, or Trump’s insistence on “Making America Christmas Again” instead of using the all-encompassing term “holidays.” Then there is the classic holiday song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside, ” which has been an annual topic of offense and debate for decades now, probably.
In the newfound spirit of not molesting/sexually intimidating/creeping out women, let’s consider cooling it on Baby It’s Cold Outside this holiday season.
— kaitlin olson (@KaitlinOlson) November 22, 2017
It's that time of the year, when we talk about how problematic 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' is because it's literally a song where a man doesn't give af about consent and actually spikes a woman's drink.
Happy Holidays.
— ☾♡ (@demuresunflower) November 27, 2017
Motion to ban “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from the Christmas song rotation given the current state of things. Call me crazy, but a lighthearted song about a persistent man holding a woman against her will seems ill-advised in 2017.
— Brohibition Now ?️? (@OhNoSheTwitnt) November 28, 2017
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is a call-and-response duet in which at the end of a date, a woman attempts to go home while a man pleads with her to stay. Viewed from our beyond rightfully wary 2017 lenses, the lyrics “I really can’t stay” and “Hey, what’s in this drink?” have, for lack of a better word, hella rapey connotations.
So singers/songwriters Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski revised the lyrics to emphasize the importance of consent in sexual relationships, and their song instantly went viral. The new version “replaces any trace of the problematic aspects of the vintage song with feminist, proconsent lyrics.” The following is a sampling of the revised lyrics:
“I really can’t stay (Baby, I’m fine with that)
I’ve got to go away (Baby, I’m cool with that)
This evening has been (Been hoping you get home safe)
So very nice (I’m glad you had a real good time)
My mother will start to worry (Call her so she knows that you’re coming)
Father will be pacing the floor (Better get your car a-humming)
So really I’d better scurry (No rush)
Should I use the front or back door? (Which one are you pulling toward more?)
The neighbors might think (That you’re a real nice girl)
What is this drink? (Pomegranate La Croix)”
And yet, despite the fact that Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski’s voices are absolutely lovely and the cover itself is worth listening to if not shipping more than the original, the YouTube comments absolutely tore it apart.
While many of these reactions were a little too aggressive, their purveyors have a point. A feminist Tumblr defense from 2016 making the rounds again this year spins “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in a very different and decidedly non-rapey light. A self-proclaimed “former English nerd/teacher” and big jazz fan laid out how when presented in a historical context, the song is far more innocent than our 2017 brains allow us to believe.