Fellas! Sorry to have to issue another warning about the devious females of our species, but I have learned of yet another way that these wily lady creatures secretly control our minds.
On the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, a fella named cactiscat explains how the ladies manipulate us by “contorting [their] face[s] and voice[s].” And it’s all the fault of Starbucks and the Kardashians and possibly Rachel Zoe.
Women, cactiscat informs us, “are programmed for manipulation.” As little girls, they learn to charm their fathers by “act[ing] sweet and cute in order to get what they want at home.”
But they become true mistresses of manipulation as young adults, when they all, inevitably, get jobs at Starbucks or McDonald’s or somewhere else where they have to deal with idiots all day without punching any of them.
Modern women in the US have almost all worked customer service jobs, either as baristas, waitresses, cashiers, receptionists, ect. In these jobs they naturally hone and perfect their social manipulation skills. They have to put on a smile and make their voice sweet, hour after hour, day after day, regardless of how they feel inside. After doing that for long enough, they essentially become like sociopaths.
Damn you, Starbucks!
Of course, the problem has been around a lot longer than Starbucks. Back in prehistoric days, you see, wily cavewomen learned how to charm hard-working cavemen into giving them some of the mammoth they had so bravely hunted and killed.
Women have always been better at social manipulation than men. This is how they ensured their survival during the caveman days. They couldn’t hunt, or make tools, so they carved out the niche of being social manipulators instead.
Here is an authentic cave painting showing how these evil caveladies conned their men into giving them free stuff.
But there’s one sneaky new trick the ladies are using to control men: talking like a creaky-voiced Kardashian.
Have you heard of “vocal fry”? That’s one of the most blatant tricks in the modern woman’s arsenal. Its a tone style of speaking that sounds like after sex bedroom whispering, and a lot of modern women have shamelessly adopted it into their everyday speaking, because it gives them power.
Here’s Kourtney Kardashian showing us how it’s done:
And here’s dress-picker-outer to the stars Rachel Zoe with her low croak.
As you can see, Rachel Zoe’s vocal fry is so powerful that she’s given vocal fry to pretty much everyone around her except her loser husband.
So be careful, fellas. The next time you hire Rachel Zoe to pick out your outfit for the Oscars, stuff earplugs or bananas or something else in your ears to block out her beguiling croak.
Mockingbird
OMG! Me too!! Preferably a year in each; retail AND food service.
Plus, once you get to middle/high school, you still have to have parents in tow unless you have proof of said retail/food service experience. That was in response to assigned class projects where kids would tear the store apart where I worked (U.S. fabric and craft chain.) I swear, they would come in packs! A troop of angry baboons would have done less damage.
First of all: My voice sounds like that approximately always.
Second: Back in the valley-girl era when a perky, high-pitched voice was the common vocal affectation for young women, I don’t remember that getting much respect either.
I sound like a six-year-old girl (seriously, that’s the description everyone gives the first time they hear me talk). It works wonders against telemarketers. =P
I’ve been a cashier for ages, over a decade. (Currently not working due to back problems, not surprisingly.) Dealing with hundreds of people a day doesn’t make sociopaths, but it does make social avoidants. I used up all my social energy, none left.
Preach. I worked in retail, and even part-time, that shit’s exhausting when (a) you’re an introvert by nature, and (b) you’ve never been hugely energetic in the first place. I got so physically/mentally exhausted from it, in fact, that it left me clinically depressed after about a year. I found myself actually envying sociopaths for at least not being a total doormat like I was (or rather, as I saw myself).
@ Buttercup Q. Skullpants
TRUTH.
Sorry, haven’t been around much because I’ve been incredibly busy. But Buttercup Q Skullpants speaks the truth.
As for Vocal Fry and the voice of the Contrapangloss…
I fry mostly when:
a) I’ve just sung my poor throat into exhaustion
b) I’m trying to hide the fact I have a stupid cold, and am failing
c) I’ve just woken up because some goofball decided calling me before a ‘reasonable’ hour is a good idea and I’m not actually awake enough for my vocal chords to be cooperative, much less my brain.
In situation c, vocal fry is the least of the person listening’s problems. They have more urgent issues, like me inverting words.
Talking to me before I’m properly awake is kind of like talking to the sheriff of Rottingham when he’s angry.
http://youtu.be/hywgl816yRQ
(Just slow down the pace, decrease volume, add fry, and you have a sleepy Contrapan)
Don’t forget that in addition to up talking and vocal fry, assorted misigynists also hate it when your voice is “shrill”. So don’t talk too low pitched, or too high pitched, or preferably, at all. Got it.
I have a co-worker who speaks with distinct vocal fry, and I find it intensely aggravating. There’s something about it that bugs me in the same visceral way that audible wet sniffling does, or people who chew with their mouth open. In short, the sound of vocal fry elicits the same reaction from me as nails on a chalkboard would.
But I suck it up and don’t say anything to her, because I understand that it’s just the way she talks and I’m not going to upset her by making my problem her problem. And so the social wheels continue to turn.
My vocal fry kicks in whenever I don’t consciously try to raise my tone into the “normal” range, which leads me to conclude that fry is normal for me. Considering how many male-presenting people I know who fry constantly, too, I further conclude that it is normal for at least a significant percentage of people, but women are socialized to do it less.
Vocal fry is associated to some degree with authority:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/15/get-your-creak-on-is-vocal-fry-a-female-fad/?iid=hl-main-lede
No surprise that some folks want to tell women, especially young women, that it isn’t legit for them to take on the trappings of authority.
Bad grammar aside, does vocal fry sound like that? It’s not really what I think of when I imagine a “sultry” low voice. To me it sounds dry and potentially sarcastic. (One of my aunts has a low, dry-sounding voice, and when I was younger I was a bit afraid of her because I thought she was being sarcastic all the time – but that’s just how she talks and I got used to it.)
As for me, I used to feel insecure about my voice sounding too squeaky. I still find it a bit weird to hear my speaking voice recorded. It always sounds a bit higher than it sounds in my head.
(My singing voice is mezzo-soprano, so it makes sense that my speaking voice would also be in the middle-high range.)
My cat has some serious vocal fry going on today. She also has a weepy eye. Maybe she’s trying to manipulate me by being sultry and pouty. Or maybe it’s her seasonal allergies.
Criticizing how women speak (and what they wear) is a good way to avoid listening to what they have to say. Wouldn’t want to take women’s opinions seriously or anything. Better to just tune out and hear nothing but Charlie Brown teacher.
Hi contrapangloss! Good to see you around!
@Bina
Preach it, part two. I’m a hardcore introvert, and am glad as hell I’ve been able to go to part time in the past couple years in my retail job in a certain home improvement store. It’s not just the pain and physical aches in my feet and knees from standing for hours, it’s the sheer mental fatigue. Even on good days it wore cumulatively on me, and when you have allegedly fifty-year-old men or women throwing three year old temper tantrums for some reason or other, it gets all the worse. My ability to people gets pretty much used up by my job.
Freemage:
I feel bad pointing it out because it’s good imagery, but that should be 25.9 miles. 23.9 would still have 2 miles to go.
On the customer service experience: How would the red pill view that men are inherently more emotionally mature and logical hold up after dealing with scores of grown men having tantrums and whining over piddly issues? I mean, they’re exposed to it everyday on their forums, but then maybe they’d know what they sound like once it’s their problem.
@ Tessa
Just to be nerdy, on a level surface, for a six foot tall person the horizon is about 3 miles away. So our hypothetical rubbish marathon runner could have the finish line in sight, even with two miles to go.
Yikes, retail work. I worked at Macy’s one holiday season, which of course isn’t the same as working there for years.
What I recall is being really buzzed at the end of a shift. And how my legs would ache. On Christmas Eve, we stayed open late. Around 10 p.m. I was hauling stacks of blue jeans out of dressing rooms. I never realized how heavy a bunch of blue jeans are. And the day after Christmas, I was right back at Macy’s for the postholiday sale. Then—nothing.
Damn, it can be hard to make a living in post-9/11 America.
@GenJones
The redpillers can’t deal with anything. Life is an overwhelming challenge for them, and they want no help. They just want to hate others and blame others for their own problems.
Because it is French fries rather than vocal fries ? I never had a chance to eat vocal fries, so i can not tell which is the tastier, sorry.
epitome of incomprehensibility:
That’s true of everyone. When you’re speaking, part of the sound is transmitted by vibrations through your skull, which emphasizes lower tones. That’s why you can still hear your own voice, even if you plug up your ears.
If course, if you already feel like your voice is high, the effect will be more noticeable.
Alan:
Not if he’s sitting in a ditch!
I realized today that I speak with distinct vocal fry. I had no idea what it was until Jo sent that link to the this american life podcast. Shame I’m not a dude or I’d be able to do it without anybody noticing or saying it’s annoying.
Off topic! The “amazing” Atheist has found a way to use charity to attack Anita Sarkeesian. He set up a campaign to donate to an actual charity in response to Feminist Frequency’s fundraising campaign of a second video series. Scary when the comments of a donation campaign call an unrelated person a fraud, or assorted slurs, or wish her dead, etc. And they get to say they’re helping women who really need it (LOTS of comments about “first world problems” in there too). Sure they could donate directly to the charity, but then they couldn’t use the screenname “anitaisac***” when they did it!
You ever been posting fast and think to yourself, “I should check this data point real quick” and then realized you didn’t have the time, so you post what you think it is even though you have doubts? Yeah. Still, I’m glad so many folks found the base image useful.
Kupo: My wife has fractional hearing in one ear. As a result, if it’s a moderately noisy environment, if her good ear isn’t facing the speaker, they may as well resort to miming, because that’s about the only way to get their meaning across. When doing tabletop RPGs, we always make sure she sits on the proper side of the GM just to make sure she’ll be able to hear descriptions and such.
I’ve worked as a hostess (the person who takes people to their table and hands them a menu before telling them “Your server will be right with you”) in a restaurant on the grounds of an amusement park but not *in* it – famous for boysenberries, open on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years eve/day – which anyone with 2 years or less on the job was guaranteed to be working *all* of those holidays; at a large fairly upscale department store during their twice a year sales events – just because the shoppers there can afford it doesn’t mean they’re going to be polite or just not order you around like you’re “the help” who would have to walk a block to pee because no way would you get to use the bathroom in their house; at a national chain of fabric and craft stores with a manager who refused to run the air conditioner, not sure if he was trying to save money in hopes that his frugality would convince corporate to not close that location or if he just didn’t want to make a few employees (my co-workers) who were experiencing hot flashes a lot and weren’t shy about saying so, more comfortable therefore we all baked and sweated…
I’ve done my time in the trenches, and every miserable hour and each terrible customer who was rude and/or extremely demanding is why I endeavor to: leave a huge tip even when I don’t have a complicated special order, say please and thank you, once I’m finished eating I get myself and whoever is with me up and out from the table so it can be cleared and re-sat because I’m not going to be the one to mess up a server’s money making for the day/night. Anyone at my table who tries some nonsense behavior won’t actually be permitted to go through with it even if I have to drag their butt outside and read them the riot act. And leave an even bigger tip. 😛
My first job didn’t last long after the work experience advisor at my HS found out that the optometrist whose office I was working in had skirts/dresses as the mandatory dress code and had assigned me the task of cleaning spots on the hallway carpet with a toothbrush. Yeah…if it were my kid or a student I was responsible for? No.
msexceptiontotherule – YES!! To all of that. Also, I have been to the restaurant you worked at, even though it was over an hour drive to get there because dad and his buddy liked it so much. Always a treat!
I worked at the fabric and craft chain for over ten years (off and on, mostly on) and EVERY employee was expected to work black Friday, or have a very good reason not to. Also, since about 2006, the stores don’t even have control over the thermostat or the music; that’s controlled by corporate. It’s been getting warmer incrementally year by year. Even the customers complain!
I also have hearing issues. At work, we had to wear radios so I had to have the radio in the same ear all the time (my bad ear, so I could turn the volume up in order to hear that plus have my good ear open for customers) and I got eczema in that ear canal. Don’t know if that had anything to do with it.
I used to get a bit of misery-loves-company comfort reading the Retail Hell Underground blog.
@Policy of Madness
Exactly; the lower someone’s speaking, the more creaky/gravelly their voice is, as a general thing. Women are socialised to force their pitch higher than their natural register, which means less creak, excuse me ‘vocal fry’. I’ve listened, I still can’t tell ‘vocal fry’ from ‘relatively low vocal register’, and I’m not convinced there’s a difference. My own voice usually sounds like I’m gargling gravel, and that’s just a function of it being quite deep.