Unikum desember 2019

ing over at the dude’s house late at night without
supervision. Highly inappropriate ! But she wants
to stay, something a Good Girl is not supposed to
do or want, so she puts up a token resistance so that
she can later claim that she tried to do what a Good
Girl is supposed to do. You see, it was all perfectly
reasonable for her to stay, and the dude gives her the
necessary excuses by countering her arguments.
“I really can’t stay (but baby it’s cold outside)”.
“(But baby it’s bad out there)”, “(No cabs to be
had out there)”, “(Look out the window at the
storm)”, “(Never such a blizzard before)”, “I’ve
got to get home (But baby you’d freeze out there”),
“(It’s up to your knees out there”).
“My mother will start to worry”. “My father will
be pacing the floor”, “The neighbours might
think”, “My sister will be suspicious”, “My brother
will be there at the door”, “My maiden aunt’s
mind is vicious”, “There’s bound to be talk tomorrow”,
“At least there will be plenty implied”.
Notice how they all have to do with society’s judgement
of the situation? She’s quite literally afraid of
getting slut-shamed. “I ought to say ‘no, no, no sir’”.
Because, gosh, a *lady* could not possibly stay over
alone at a man’s house! That will certainly lose her
all her Good Girl points! No, there would need to
be a perfectly good explanation for her stay. The
storm was just too much. And there were no cabs!
And she did try: “At least I’m gonna say that I tried”.
But she just couldn’t. I mean, she could have DIED
if she tried to get home (“If you got pneumonia and
died”), so she stayed where it was warm and safe.
I only really provided the dude’s counter-arguments
above, but what are her arguments?
Well, they all have little to nothing to
do with her wanting to leave the dude:
See? Definitely not about sex. Totally innocent !
Even the line “what’s in this drink” has a completely
innocent meaning in the original context. Apparently,
it was a staple joke in movies at the time, where
someone would comment upon the alcoholic contents
of their drink in order to excuse whatever they wanted
to do but could not due to societal expectations.
The joke is that there is actually little to no alcohol
in it at all. The are no drugs or alcohol affecting her
DESEMBER 2019 UNIKUM NR 10 19