Vocal Fry and How Not to Treat Oppressed People

“Young women, give up the vocal fry and reclaim your strong female voice” -  Naomi Wolf, feminist writer.

Like yeah, but nah. Let’s jump straight into it:

What is vocal fry?

In very recent decades, young women in Western English speaking countries have developed an idiosyncrasy of speech dubbed “vocal fry”. It refers to the low guttural sound women typically make at the end of a sentence, caused by vibration of the vocal chords. The Kardashians are the most prominent example, and here’s a good clip explaining the technicalities (and a bit of the social impacts!): What Is Vocal Fry & Is It Bad For You?

Vocal fry is often used when mocking women, and is a significant part of derisive speech labels such as “Valley-girl talk” and “bitch tones”. Vocal fry is extremely unpopular in all spheres: speech pathologists call it a form of vocal abuse, employers discriminate against it because it sounds unprofessional, and society as a whole associates vocal fry with “dumb”, “incompetent” and “uneducated”.

The Kardashians

But what’s so bad about this attitude? I mean, vocal fry does sound pretty bad.

The thing is, which sounds appeal to us and which don’t is mostly arbitrary, subject to social conditioning. Hear me out: of course some sounds are wired within us to be universally unpleasant – such as a baby crying, or a scream of pain – due to evolutionary survival instincts.

…This doesn’t extend to subtle vocal affects and tones.

Exempli gratia: many English speakers consider Cantonese to be a distasteful, nasal sound, yet Cantonese speakers do not find their own tongue to be unpleasant. This opinion has been conditioned by centuries of racism, rather than a natural reaction to sound. As far as we are concerned with accents and speech ticks, there really isn’t such thing as “objectively good/bad” sounds, and proof lies in a diversity of opinions between cultures. So since vocal fry does not inherently represent a lack of education or “listenable” speech habits, we can only infer that is has such a bad reputation because, well, sexism. Surprise surprise.

Women are discriminated against because they use vocal fry, and vocal fry is discriminated against because it implies incompetence, and it implies incompetence because women use vocal fry, and the patriarchy subtly-not-so-subtly links “women” with “dumb bitches”. *breathe*

Furthermore, using vocal fry isn’t exactly an autonomous choice for most women. And why would anyone choose to adopt a verbal tick that will literally lower your chances of getting a job? Young women use vocal fry because they are most susceptible to new vocal trends. Whatever the initial origins of the trend are, it spread firstly (and only) to young women as they are the main demographic of social media, and are the predominant fan-bases who copy celebrities – including the way they talk. It’s less of a conscious choice and more a result of gender roles and social expectations/norms that put women at the forefront of social trends.

Which leads straight to a critique of Naomi Wolf’s comment. As an educated feminist, Wolf recognised the harmful effects of vocal fry on women’s position in society. However her reaction was to call for women to “lose” the habit, and take back the power lost through their speech mannerisms.

Not cool, Wolfey, not cool.

Why? Because you should never dump the responsibility of fighting oppression on the shoulders of the oppressed. Women shouldn’t have to slave away at changing their perfectly ok speech habits, especially when they really didn’t have a choice in the first place. Instead, society should stop discriminating against typically feminine speech patterns for no other reason than that they are used by “the weaker sex”. Women should not have to feel ashamed of their voices and bear the guilt of failing a job interview, employers should fix their act. Women should not have to aim to end the vilification of their voices; everyone who criticises vocal fry should stop.

This is a pretty important lesson that applies in most areas of anti-oppression activism. Asian people should not “stop getting plastic surgery to look white”; white people should stop imposing western beauty standards instead. Trans people shouldn’t have to explain their gender; cis people should stop commenting. Women should not have to be extra careful at night; men should not rape. By burdening the oppressed group with the responsibility of fixing the situation, you detract from the real problem of underlying social conditioning, and prevent constructive, educational discourse.

Maybe there will be an uncomfortable epiphany at the end of that thought train. Maybe you will realise that you have aided the oppression of a minority. Its ok, we’ve all been in that position at some point, and it doesn’t make us evil people. Instead, it puts us in a place of empowerment and resolve to (for want of better cliché,) right the wrong.

So like yah, hope you liked the article, and like, comment yeah?

Hannah