No, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" isn't creepy

Finally, there is the song itself. It’s not difficult to understand what is really happening. The lady guest never says she wants to go, and there is no hint of her being held against her will. What she says is that, “I really can’t stay” and “I ought to say no, no, no, Sir” (emphasis added).

All of her reasons for going have to do with what other people will think — this being a long-ago time when a young woman wasn’t supposed to be alone with a man. Mother will worry, father will pace, the neighbors will talk, sister will be suspicious, and “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious.” But for all her objections, the female guest allows that she’ll stay for “maybe just half a drink more.”

Of course, neither the boy nor the girl is being completely forthright, which lends the song its playful charm. The male host is coming up with excuses for why she can’t go (It’s practically a polar vortex out there! Just imagine the Uber surge pricing!), because he desperately wants her to stay; and she is coming up with reasons why she has to go, even though she wants to linger.

Those horrified by the song perversely wonder if when the lady guest asks, “Say, what’s in this drink?” she is being drugged. Pop-culture mavens explain that this line often shows up in movies of the time as a sly way for characters to blame a drink — even if there is no alcohol in it — for something they don’t themselves want to own up to.