Policing vocal fry1 is another excuse to dismiss women's voices
soecffic way of speaking that we don’t allow for diversity.
BY TOULA DRIMONIS
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
•
In daily life, everywhere we go we hear a lot of talk from
all sorts of people. Turn your ear to the voices of those in
power, however, and it’s likely that you’ll hear one kind of
voice rising above the rest: the voice of white, heterosexual
men. In recent months, much has been made about how
people who don’t talk like them-notably younger women-
stand to lose professional and social credibility.
It all started with an article published in Time magazine
this summer, identifying “vocal fry” (a vibrating^ world-weary
tone of voice) and “uptalk” (a statement that often sounds
like a question) as speech patterns women and notably,
never men need to avoid if they are to be taken seriously
and not jeopardize their career prospects. According to a
study cited in the article, these faux pas made young women
who use them sound “less competent, less trustworthy, less
educated and less hireable.”
Soon, Naomi Wolf (author of The Beauty Myth) followed
Time’s “advice” with her own warning and rallying cry to
women, urging them allto “reclaim their strong female
voice.” Wolf believes that using vocal fry is akin to disowning
your power, because those who hear you use that tone will
immediately think less of you. But here’s the crux of the
matter: assuming the problem is the messenger, when in
fact it’s the person receiving the message. My problem with
Wolf’s advice is that it promotes an assumption that women
who frequently use vocal fry in their speech patterns are
compromising their credibility-in and out of the workplace-
because of the way they speak.
The way I see it, Wolf’s “unsolicited advice” was nothing
more than a variation on the tired old policing that seems to
always take place with women’s behavior. This widespread
criticism and inability to listen to what women are saying is,
once again, another form of dismissal and disrespect.
A n n t l w r p v r n s p t n d i s m i s s w o m e n ’s v o i c e
s - ---- M
closely associated with traditional ideas of performative
masculinity. We should at least acknowledge that patriarchal
power structures still exist. And changing gendered speech
patterns won’t miraculously remedy that.
i ---------------
The “vocal fry” detractions came fast and furious. The
Guardian’s Erin Riley was one of the first to make the
connection between the criticism of vocal fry and a
problematic, socialized desire to dismiss women’s voices.
“Vocal fry is not a problem. It is merely another excuse to
dismiss, ignore and marginalize women’s voices, both
literally and figuratively. And it’s just the latest in a long
history of finding excuses not to listen to what women,
especially young women, say,” writes Riley.
Interestingly enough, many defenders of the popular
speech pattern don’t agree with the notion that vocal fry
keeps women down. Instead, they believe it’s actually a
protective mechanism, a way that many women
communicate that they are unbothered and un-frazzled by
those who represent the establishment. A way to say, “we’ve
got this.”
Instead of asking women to speak differently, perhaps we
should be ensuring that prejudices in our society don’t
always lean in men’s favor. To me, the debate surrounding
“vocal fry” and “uptalk” exists because power is still very
| K
A long h isto ry o f im possible sta n d a rd s
to s S more confident and more credible, when in reality
¿ that advice aims to do is make you sound more hk ran
o der white heterosexual male. By the golden standard, that
automatically sounds more credible and confident to our
ears socialized to look for those cues.
S nap ju d g e m e n ts
LLUSTRATION BY EHREN SALAZAR.
Vocal Iry can T ead d ed 'to Ihe time-honored Iraditionoi
policing women’s behavior. Whether it’s wearing too little,
wearing too much, not “leaning in” enough, appearing too
“bitchy” in the workplace, or appearing too feminine to be
taken seriously: when it comes to their behavior, women
can’t seem to win.
Women’s voices and women’s bodies continue to be
ruthlessly scrutinized, criticized, and held to impossible and
unrealistic standards.
When it comes to the sound of women’s voices, an
additional layer is added to the discrimination. Women are
compared to and judged by what I call the golden standard.
That standard valorizes the speech patterns and
mannerism of an older, white, heterosexual male. Anything .
that veers away from that is perceived to be less credible,
less valued, and less influential to those socially conditioned
to believe that what is credible, valued, and influential must
sound specifically masculine, specifically heteronormative.
Conditioning people to adhere to the heteronormative,
white-male standard begins at such an early age. And we’re
so routinely bombarded with messages to aspire to one
/ / . , ;3 ? h e . C u t t i i i g E d g e ;
O ctober 3Ot 2 0 1 5
Our societal insistence for everyone to sound like the
golden standard spans beyond the male/female binary and
spills over to all minority groups. It s also the ^reason why
society often criticizes gay men for sounding ^ g a y , or
people of colour for not sounding “white enough, and
people who speak accented English as not soundmg smart
or credible enough.”
..
. ..
Linguistic discrimination, otherwise known as hnguicism
or linguistic profiling, is the unfair treatment of an individual
based solely on their use of language. A study m 2006 by
John Baugh, a professor and director of African and African
American Studies in Arts and Sciences at Washington
University in S t Louis, USA, found that many people made
racist, snap judgments about callers from diverse language
communities.
t • u
Tn a series of test phone calls, Baugh had people with
accents and people speaking what amounts to “standard
English call and inquire about a job placement or a home for
ren t Callers who “sounded white” would get the
appointment, while those sounding Latino or African-
American would be ignored or given the run-around-it didn’t
seem to matter that these actions contravened fair housing
and equal-opportunity employment laws.
This study and many others proved similar language
profiling. To me, this is significant in that it recognizes that
white privilege extends way past one’s obvious skin colour
and all it represents. There is privilege in being born and
educated in a system that teaches “standard”'English. That
is something not everyone has had the luxury of benefitting
from. Those who discriminate against people who speak
heavily accented English also conveniently forget that it’s
usually the result of someone speaking English as their
second or third language.
It’s imperative that we recognize these deep-seated,
socialized prejudices in ourselves and in others, so we can
point them out as the discrimination that they are instead of
the “helpful advice” they pretend to be.
Women would do better to ignore “advice” on how to
tackle their dubious “vocal fry” problem and focus more on
concrete political actions (such as voting) that represent
tangible steps towards solving very real obstacles that
continue to affect our daily lives.
Courtesy ofINSPNews Service www.INSP.ngo/Megaphone
in Vancouver, B.C.
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