Learning to Breathe. — Touched with Fire Media

It’s hot. There are six of us in a funky little apartment, six of us and a dog that barks unpredicatably. There’s no air conditioning — there usualy isn’t, in Portland — and the windows don’t have screens on them, so they’re shut. We’re talking about how to talk on the radio.

“Talking low in your register,” says the woman, the one who has taken voice lessons and is trying to impart their wisdom to us, “that thing they call vocal fry, listen. You can hear me doing it.”

I can. Her vocal cords subtly grind out a stacatto series of notes as she speaks. It’s so common these days that I don’t usually notice it, though I know a lot of older people do. They notice it, and they complain about it a lot.

“It’s a lazy way of speaking. No good for your voice. Also — also. It’s hard to breathe when you’re talking like this.”

It’s so fucking hot in here. It’s not even that hot outside. What’s going to happen when it gets really hot? It’s supposed to be in the high 90s and low 100s every day for the foreseeable future. This is impacting my ability to pay attention, no doubt.

Vocal fry is a big deal in certain circles these days, a front in a cultural battle about negotiating the place of women in media and, more broadly, the world. All of my female friends in radio, at least the ones under 40, have caught some kind of flak for it. One told me she got an email saying she sounded like “a stoned thirteen-year-old”. Another gets people writing in claiming to be worried she’s hurting herself with the way she talks. Another, one who is on the radio here in Portland, might not even know the flak she’s caught — because it was from my mom, and otherwise lovely person who she’s never met:

“She sounds like she needs to clear her throat.”

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time trying to explain the why or how of vocal fry. The going theory as to why people do it is that we take people with deep voices more seriously. I know a couple of people who “hate that idea”, but then, hating an idea doesn’t actually mean it isn’t true. It just means it’s unpleasant. Anyhoozy.

Just so you can get a sense of what vocal fry sounds like, here’s an example: This American Life’s Zoe Chace . I picked her because I’ve noticed that she comes in for a huge amount of criticism for the way she talks. And let’s not pretend that her way of speaking isn’t distinctive, because it obviously is, with her thick Noo Yawk accent and burnt alto voice. There’s no one else on the radio that sounds like Zoe Chace. I’ve always admired that about her, since she first showed up on Planet Money years ago. But there are a lot of people who find her mode of speech some kind of affront to . . . I don’t know, something.

And here is an example of a guy vocal frying: Robert Redford doing the narration for A River Runs Through It. I chose this advisedly, not least because I have spent most of my life as a storyteller / radio guy trying to sound as much like Robert Redford in A River Runs Through It as I can. But also: do you imagine anyone has ever come up to Robert Redford to tell him he sounds like he needs to clear his throat? That he sounds like a stoned teenager? That they’re worried he’s hurting himself when he talks like this? He’s talked like this his whole life. Go back to the role that made him a huge star, in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Part of what helps him radiate that stoical cool, what makes him so magnetic, is the low, rough way he talks. Much like Zoe Chace, there’s nobody else who sounds quite like Robert Redford.

I think you see what I’m driving at here. It has always seemed to me that people who complained about vocal fry were mostly, if subconsciously, just finding another way to bitch about how young women talk without actually listening to what they’re saying. I don’t think there’s anything malicious or purposefully hurtful about this. But I do think that American society has a real problem with reflexively trying to hit the mute button on young women. (*cough* gamergate *cough*)

And so it isn’t entirely the heat that has me tuning out this talk on vocal lessons, because — whether she’s done it on purpose or not — it seems to me like this woman has internalized a lot of politicized messages about how young people, especially women, talk, and then allowed someone to tell her it’s wrong for professional and “health” reasons.

But then she has us do the breathing exercises. Breathe deep, through the mouth. Blow your stomach out, no matter how unattractive that might feel. (I’m wearing a shirt that you might call optimistically sized — viz, it works as long as I suck in the ol’ gut, and will probably be fine in about a month if I keep losing weight.) Speak as you exhale. And try, as best you can, to speak out of the top of your throat, so that your voice almost vibrates in your sinuses, and you don’t vocal fry at all.

I mean. I’m inhibited about it at first. And it feels funny. Then, for a few seconds, as I try to talk like this, I have difficulty controlling the impulse to sing. But after a while — somewhat to my dismay — I discover that my voice is coming out brighter, stronger, and I’m enunciating better. I’m an inveterate mumbler, and a fast-talker, so this is a positive result for me. Then she has us say the Pledge of Allegiance. We all get through it in one breath. A couple of guys have enough breath left to carry on a droll conversation for a few sentences afterward. That’s another problem I have. As a runner, and no longer a regular smoker, I have pretty powerful lungs. But I feel like I’m always gasping for air when I’m doing vox on a radio piece. This seems to cure me of that.

Now I’m in a conundrum.

Here’s the thing: all of that political stuff about vocal fry and the way people try to hit the mute button on women? Still true. Still believe it, and will still throw down with people who complain about the way young female reporters talk on Planet Money and This American Life and Radiolab and Invisibilia and every other show on earth.

But trying to sound like Robert Redford? I dunno, man. I still find that voice really compelling. And here’s another little secret — talking like that is more than just an aesthetic choice for me. It’s adaptive. Because when I sit up straight, breathe deep, and enunciate, I have what we in the biz call AN INCREDIBLY LOUD VOICE. It’s the voice of a cop, a drill sergeant, a dock foreman. It’s intimidating and off-putting. I talk the way I do in an attempt to get people to, you know, like me.

I guess what it comes down to is that I can talk however I want — if I find that drill sergeant voice useful sometimes, maybe I’ll use it — but it’s not up to me to tell other people how to talk. Even if it is true that people who vocal fry are impacting their ability to breathe while voicing, or keep their throat intact for an entire day, that’s not really my business. Or anybody’s but the person doing the talking.