Is it just me? Or is there a trend for women to speak in ugly voices? When I was a girl, back in the early Cenozoic, women paid attention to how they sounded. Now on radio and television and in movies there seems to be a vogue for flat, nasal, even duck-like sounds.

On CSI, that otherwise beautiful woman (can't remember her name) speaks with an almost comically nasal voice. I imitate it for my friends and it really cracks them up.

And I have to mute the sound on the weather channel. To flat and irritatingly nasal add rapid-fire endless chatter, most comments not necessary anyway, the screen says it all.

Question:
Has the standard for the ideal woman's voice changed? Instead of viola-like, is the ideal, the attractive tone for which all young girls shoud strive, now flat, nasal and unmodulated? And speech ideally rapid-fire like what you hear at the park when you throw breadcrumbs into the pond?

Choices:
Yes, it's awful. Send them all to announcer's school
No, you're imagining things. Again.
Other

 

Well, I think you need to just stick with the CBC babs, or even the BBC world service.

All this is obviously too upsetting for you! But no, you are not imagining it.

I'd like to sound like Promo Girl on the CBC..I really like that accent.
I suspect it's not going to happen for me though!

I agree that there are alot more unpleasant-sounding voices out there. On the news station we watch there's an adorable meteorologist that looks and sounds like a darned pixie or something...high voice.

Maybe they think that a strange voice will be more memorable. Just makes me want to tune into something else

Hmmm. Just had a thought. Next time some teenager is going through self-esteem angst, mum or dad should say, "Well, sweetie, quit sobbing and crying for a second, I do believe I can help you. I know you think your acne will never disappear, and your ass is too fat and you need boob enhancement surgery and you need a whole new wardrobe, and I can't reason you out of the first two, and you can forget the others, but did you know there is a whole entire area in which, if you will take a little trouble, you will have no competition at all?

Then send her to a voice coach, or even get her a book on enunciation and tone and breathing and projection and all that stuff. Introduce her to her diaphragm (no, not that one, the one that's between her chest and her abdomen). Remind her that there are more senses than just the visual one to please.

I think that Diane Sawyer or Christiaane Amanpour would be hard to beat in the speaking voice department. Am I the only member old enough to remember Denise Darcel (sp.)? But most of the news and weather types seem to be pressed to get everything said in the thirty seconds or so alloted them, between commercials. Makes them all sound like Alvin the chipmunk.

quote:

Has the standard for the ideal woman's voice changed?

It seems to me that the standard for the ideal woman, as a whole, has changed (voice included).

You can say that again, Honi. Just looking at some of the old movies and the sex-symbol types of yesteryear compared to today's is enough to prove that. It's hard to quarrel with France's ideal of feminine beauty for decades though: Catherine Deneuve! Maybe I'm just a sucker for French accents.

quote:

Originally posted by frankvan:
It's hard to quarrel with France's ideal of feminine beauty for decades though: Catherine Deneuve! Maybe I'm just a sucker for French accents.

No, Frank: she's sexy in any language and with any accent

The film poster which regularly fetches top prices in auction here is of her, looking back over her shoulder, in Belle du Jour. (It may be that the market for such images is dictated by men who are of a certain age. Only they can afford that sort of money and wish to recall pictures from their youth. The same factor dictates enormously high auction prices for certain boys' toys of that era )