is a journalist and philosopher of technology with degrees from France’s École Normale Supérieure in Lyon and HEC-Paris, where she specialised in innovation and media, before joining Philonomist’s editorial team.
Picture: © CP
Dear reader,
I lost my voice a week ago. I’m not completely voiceless but thanks to laryngitis my voice is switching randomly from squeaky to quivery, husky to deep. I have to admit I rather enjoy the deep phase. Being rid of my high, whiny tones is giving me greater assurance, and a slight thrill at taking on male attributes. All of a sudden my voice is more interesting, more mature and more masculine.
Many women feel their voice is not listened to like a man’s. Setting aside the issues of manterrupting and men monopolising the conversation, it seems that the higher pitch and faster pace of the feminine voice is less convincing. It’s a proven fact that masculine voices inspire more confidence. Some go as far as to claim that it’s an old evolutionist reflex that makes us turn to people who look like they can protect us. We are not entirely wrong in associating a deep voice with virility, though: men and women who have deeper voices generally have higher testosterone levels.
But biology isn’t everything. Cave-dwelling and mammoth-hunting being long gone, you would think we would have got used to high-pitched voices by now. Except that, as anthropologist David Le Breton emphasises in his 2011 work, our voice is the gateway to our subjectivity and will always betray our bodies... and our differences. Women have a smaller frame and a narrower rib cage than men, which gives us a higher-pitched voice. Hysterical, mad and vulgar, or, on the contrary, shy and self-conscious — the slightest vocal weakness is taken as a sign of incompetence.
To shrug off the stigma, most of us adapt. We either try to attain a standard close to our natural voice, or affect a totally different tone. If a grown man suddenly decides to speak with a “virile” voice to conform to a stereotype, for example, it is known as “convergent adaptation”. He is striving to attain an ideal that is not far from his natural voice. A fourteen-year-old girl who tries to do the same will have to severely contort her vocal cords. That’s what’s known as “divergent adaptation”.
The best-known adaptation of this sort is vocal fry, or the intentional shortening of vocal folds. The result is that typically American guttural growl — think Britney Spears or Scarlett Johannsson. Studies show that in the last forty years western women’s voices have deepened as their social roles have diversified. But is that really progress?
“Surely we don’t want to see entire generations of women feeling obliged to undergo speech therapy or mistreat their vocal cords?”
Surely we don’t want to see entire generations of women feeling obliged to undergo speech therapy or mistreat their vocal cords? Is vocal uniformity even desirable? After all, men are capable of high notes. In North Africa, men use a falsetto register much more frequently than in the West. It is also a way of adapting and restraining their field of expression.
Another technique is to attack speaking itself. As Margaret Thatcher said, “in politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” Still, that didn’t stop her consulting a coach at the Royal National Theatre to lower her voice by a half-octave. You can’t be too careful!
If you don’t have a budget for a voice coach and your vocal fry isn’t to everyone’s taste, you can quite simply learn to ignore your critics. After all, musical tastes differ widely and all human beings should be able to cope with the voices of half the population by now. As for me, well I’m going to enjoy sounding like a crooner for a few more days. Although I’m looking forward to getting my shrill back.
Apolline Guillot
Picture © master1305 / iStockphoto
