When I was growing up, my voice served me well. It won me public speaking competitions, almost hit the high notes during my solo as Mrs. Luce in my grade 10 production of Little Shop of Horrors, and read my really bad angst-ridden poetry aloud to my English class. In school, my voice got the odd compliment, but for the most part no one really noticed it, including me. When I graduated high school and moved to the big city of Toronto, however, my voice suddenly got a lot of attention.
Within a few days of settling into residence, one of my floor dons was taken aback when I asked him was whether or not he’d be using the washing machine much longer.
“Woah! You’ve got a really unique voice.”
“Oh, um, thanks. Do you mean unique in a good way or a bad way?”
“Oh, in good way! It’s really expressive.”
I thanked him and thought, “Huh. That was weird.”
Later that week at the first and only kegger I went to in residence, I was making small talk with some jock engineering students when one of them interrupted me.
“Okay Girlie, can you start speaking in your real voice, please? You can stop with the fake voice now.”
I was gobsmacked.
“What are you talking about? This is my real voice.”
His eyes went really wide.
“It is? Oh God!”
And then that bastard and his fellow meatheads had the nerve to walk away from me. Never in my life had anyone made such a rude comment about the way I sound. Two weird comments about my voice in one week. What the hell was going on?
I mean, sure I spoke kinda fast and sounded a little breathless from time to time. And, yes, my voice could get a bit squeaky and high-pitched once in a while, but I’m a petite woman with a petite voice box. What do you expect?
As the year went on, the remarks kept coming. A barista said that my voice would be perfect for radio or a podcast. My professors praised my cadence when I narrated short documentaries in my film production class. In our creative writing class, I always got picked first to read the scripts because my voice was so animated. Then there were the comments from the peanut gallery.
A woman at the library mocked something I said in the style of a valley-girl. A hipster fine art student said I sounded like a “yippy chihuahua.” Customers at the pub where I worked asked me how it was legal for a 12-year-old girl to be serving beer, and during a UFC fight night my table informed me that my voice was so high-pitched and annoying it reminded them of Elmo. (Interestingly enough, the women these guys had been hitting on at the table next to them all had very high-pitched sexy baby voices. So clearly, they didn’t mind a high-pitched voice that much.)
People either loved or hated the way I spoke. My voice had become as divisive as cottage cheese or Marmite. Now, do you think that an ultra-nerdy, socially awkward 19-year-old Jenn decided to ignore the haters and focus on the other half of people who really liked her voice?
Nope.
All of this unwanted attention made me extremely self-conscious. I was petrified to open my mouth which made things worse because the anxiety made me speak faster and my voice went even higher. Staying quiet caused problems because I didn’t ask questions in class when I was struggling, and I didn’t make a lot of friends because I was too nervous to speak to people. I was even too afraid to laugh, and I love laughing. My breaking point came at the end of first year when I was having a conversation with a nasally interior design student on my floor. She looked at me exasperatedly and said, “Your voice. It’s just… Ugh!”
I couldn’t take it anymore. When I arrived in the big city, I thought that the bullying I’d been through my whole life would stop and I would finally be accepted for who I am. Instead, I was insulted round the clock by a bunch or morons and spent my nights alone bingeing 30 Rock as I ate extra cheesy vegetarian nachos. If I didn’t adapt and start fitting in, I’d end up dying alone. Desperate times called for desperate measures and I needed to completely transform myself.
My first goal was to give my wardrobe a makeover, but I got really overwhelmed by the amount of research it required. (I was the kinda gal who wore bright pink checkered board shorts and flip flops to a hip night club.) I needed results fast, so I figured that changing my voice would be easy. I was pretty good at mimicking so it should be a piece of cake.
There was no shame in changing my voice in order to be taken more seriously. Sidney Poitier did it, Grace Kelly did it, and evil mad scientist Elizabeth Holmes did it (albeit unsuccessfully). I did some experimenting to figure out what the New Jenn sounded like. I tried going a bit huskier a la Kathleen Turner, but I sounded like I was possessed. Next I looked to Lord of the Rings for inspiration. I attempted Cate Blanchett’s deep and clear voice which didn’t work at all, and neither did Liv Tyler’s soft, very intense whisper.
I needed a change that was noticeable but subtle enough so it didn’t sound like I was trying too hard. Then Eureka! Who has that perfect combination of sounding authoritative, wise, and soothing? Yoga teachers.
Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Every yoga teacher I’d come across had a voice that was calming and trustworthy. Jesus, no wonder so many cults start out in yoga classes. I studied countless YouTube videos to mimic their soothing, measured way of speaking and after a week of practising in front of the mirror and listening to recordings of myself, I was ready to test it out.
The majority of my first summer in Toronto was spent working at the pub and my customers were going to be my guinea pigs. At first it was great. When I spoke slowly in my soothing New Jenn voice, I felt really poised and mature. And it was working. No one was infantilizing me, or interrupting me, or giving me nicknames like Chippy, Zippy, or Skippy. It was amazing.
The New Jenn voice was developed in the late spring when things were slower at the restaurant and it was pretty easy to maintain; however, when the summer came and my shifts got busier, I quickly learned that maintaining the voice on a Friday night when the place was crammed with tourists, drunk Blue Jays fans, and 200 attendees from a belly dancing convention was really tough.
When I breathlessly ran back and forth to my tables as lethal amounts of caffeine coursed through my veins the Old Jenn voice slipped out, a lot. I’d start speaking like a chipmunk on speed then catch myself and quickly switch to my guided meditation voice as I asked them how they wanted their steak cooked. The guests at my table looked at each other with confused expressions on their faces that said, “You’re hearing this, right? It’s not just me?”
Remembering to keep up this ruse was really stressful. The other thing that stressed me out was how much my throat hurt from always speaking in an unnaturally low register, so sometimes I had to slip out of the voice to let it recover for a bit.
Then one busy night towards the end of the summer I’d messed it up a bunch and the nice soccer mom at my table gently whispered, “Are you okay, Sweetie?” I said I was fine and went through the dessert options, but as I described what was essentially diabetes on a plate, I heard how ridiculous I sounded. The New Jenn voice was like bad dub on a foreign film and didn’t suit me at all, so I laid it to rest.
I was so heart-broken and depressed. All summer long I’d dreamt about starting second year with a fresh start and people viewing me with respect and taking me seriously. My yoga teacher pipes were supposed to be my ticket to finally fit in and it was blown to smithereens. I just accepted the fact that I was going to keep getting picked on. Sure enough, soon after I started speaking normally a financial district dumbass at the bar said that my voice was “piercing”. So, I kept messing up his drink order on purpose.
Slowly but surely, I found ways to cope with stupid and nasty criticism. I realized that most of the people who bothered me actually had incredibly boring voices that lacked any form of joy or merriment. At least my voice was expressive and had some pizazz. I tried as hard as I could to focus on the positive comments about my voice, and to remember that quirky voices can work quite well for people. Take Keith Morrison for example. His incredible voice somehow manages to be deep, warm, matter of fact, animated, and delightfully creepy all at the same time. When I hear a guy with an average voice describe 56 stab wounds, it’s just not the same.
Throughout the years I’ve discovered that I’m definitely not the only woman being ridiculed for her voice. On YouTube you’ll find how-to videos for women so they can change their voices to sound more professional, and you’ll also find panel discussions with female radio and podcast hosts discussing cruel comments they’ve received. A simple Google search will give you countless articles about the perils of “up-speaking”, having “vocal fry”, or the perils of just using our voices in general.
Nowadays, I’m much more comfortable with how I sound and the positive recognition my voice gets definitely outweighs the negative. Sometimes when I’m anxious I get a little self-conscious about my voice, but it doesn’t last for long. I’m an associate producer in TV now and if I’m doing a serious interview I make a conscious effort to speak slowly and I’ll deepen it a bit so I don’t accidentally give off the impression I’m taking their story lightly.
Look, some people have really distinctive and/or irritating voices. Doing impressions or making jokes that gently poke fun at them is fine with me. On the other hand, if you are completely grossed out by the way someone sounds just let the voice inside of your head make that insult. Don’t say it out loud.
I still don’t get it. I’m stunned that my very average-sounding voice gets any attention at all. It’s the way I was born and if you don’t like it, deal with it.
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