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By deconstructing specificintonations(the airhead Valley Girl ofCluelessorBring It On!)
What does that transition mean?
Samara Bay:I think the switch that you just heard is from private to public.
Why do we get in our own way?
But it also unintentionally can make you sound untrustworthy…because who do we trust?
People who will let us in.
When you don’t know where someone stands, its more difficult to trust them.
This immediately calls to mind the Kardashian brand of vocal fryKim specifically.
But once you show somebody what you care about, they can hurt you.
But that’s not what an audience watching the Kardashians is going to think.
Instead, they might think, I don’t totally get her, or, I dont totally connect.
But lower-pitched women’s voices are the ones who end up on all the listicles of sexiest voices.
Amanda Montell, in her bookWordslut, suggests maybe that’s because deeper voices sound like bedroom voices.
But I’m interested in the fact that neither of those voices are deemed powerful.
We’re redomesticating women when we talk about their voices that way and doing so from a male gaze.
This is good: Being pingy means that you’re very present.
When you’re not pingy, you sound underwater.
Both her and Marilyn found a voice that worked for them.
The question, then, is whether they felt trapped inside it in the end.
Is that in part why femme-sounding voices havent been taken seriously in the past?
Well, a lot of us underbreathe.
Some of our vocal habits are not authentically us.
Maybe theyve helped keep us small, unintimidating, or low-maintenance as a means for protection.
It can help us negotiate sensitive topics and encourage the participation of others.
This can be our way of signaling that were part of the same club.
That’s why voice variation around the world exists: It’s tribalism at its most basic.
What do my people sound like?
How do I belong?
What would it mean for all of us to confront our voice biases?
Take good ol Mike Pence in the nowinfamous 2020 vice presidential debate.
Pence was taking on now Vice President Kamala Harris in that debate.
We dont talk to a five-year-old like we would our mother, and we shouldn’t.
Ultimately, its up to them to decide what aspects of their voice and identity feel like nonnegotiables.
One of the things that anyone who’s gone through law school learnsespecially womenis how to sound prosecutorial.
Why do you think the conversation around vocal bias must be had now?
What we’re actually talking about here, from an intersectional feminist lens, is voice justice.
At a corporate level, there currently arent any antidiscrimination policies around sound.
They could say definitively, This is voice bias.
Whos an example of one of these voices?
This cultural amnesia is one of the really subtle ways that patriarchy plays on us.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
