Femininity
What Kind of Person Fakes Their Voice?
This article investigates the voice of Elizabeth Holmes, the ousted founder of Therannos. It turns out, she speaks in a deep baritone, that turns out to be fake. Former co-workers of Holmes told The Dropout, a new podcast about Theranos’s downfall, that Holmes occasionally “fell out of character” and exposed her real, higher voice — particularly after drinking. You can sometimes find YouTube videos in which Holmes can be heard using that real voice before catching herself and deepening it. The question here is, why would someone fake their own voice? Research shows that when men and women deliberately lower their voices, it's actually successful in sounding more dominant or in a position of power.
#I'mNoAngel
Lane Bryant challenges gender stereotypes about what it means to be sexy using #I'mNoAngel, indexing and contrasting with the stereotypical representation of sexy: the Victoria's Secret Angel.
Things Not to Say to Women at Work
Play videoThis video challenges language used in ways that specifically applies to women. This video produced by the BBC discusses common phrases, words and topics that specifically target and apply to women in the workplace that portray sexist ideologies. The women in the video confront these, explain why they are inappropriate, and in some cases offer alternate ways to frame these discussions.
Welcome to Hell SNL Skit
The SNL skit in this article goes into the topic of how dangerous the world is for women and how men have not been aware of it until now in line with the sexual harassment cases. The title of the song is called "Welcome to Hell." It tries to break language/gender ideologies by describing the how females see the world as "Hell", but in the light cheerful way that women are "supposed" to speak due to current social linguistic ideology now. [Published on 12-03-2017]
Lake Bell Calls Girls Out On "Sexy Baby Vocal Virus"
Play videoThis video clip shows Lake Bell on Conan O’Brien’s talk show. While discussing her upcoming movie, Bell goes into discussion about her annoyance with what she calls “sexy baby vocal virus” and vocal fry. Lake demonstrates what she means by each of these, as well as explains what they are. Both pitch and vocal fry are the main features of these vocal habits. Bell also makes a gender specific claim, that it is women who fall into this habit of speech. Also, during the clip, while talking about her new movie about voice overs, both Bell and O’Brien style-shift between voices and different ways of speaking, representing performativity.
Vocal Fry: The Rules
Play videoA somewhat comedic look at what vocal fry is and a plea from the video's author to stop it. The narrator talks about vocal fry's spread across various mediums and how it may be a reaction to rising vocal intonation that went way too far.
"Pink or Blue" Video
A video essay set to a poem on gender. It was commissioned to open the Saatchi showcase in Cannes the film uses 3D technology to allow the viewer to switch between two different versions of the film depending which set of glasses they view it through. Much of the video and poem deals with how language and performance affect one's social interactions. [Published on 07-01-2017]
Martin Impersonates Daphne (Frasier)
Play videoA scene from the show Frasier which showcases Martin Crane teasing Daphne Moon's English Accent. I see a two linguistic-anthropology elements in the scene. First, by code-switching dialect during the interaction he is drawing attention to the fact that Daphne is not American. What this accomplishes is up for debate given that the two are friends and that the interaction was not hostile in nature. I'm guessing that the impression may mildly suggest that the two are not on equal footing; one is a "native" while the other isn't. This may work in elevating Martin's position in the argument. Second, Martin mentions how Daphne is always complaining about what to do with her hair. Here he is indexing a gender identity that might conflict with his own. In the reading I came across portions that relate language use as a form of identity expression and so while Daphne was being expressive of her female identity Martin, annoyed by her, replied with an antagonistic male critique of her speech.
Vanderbilt's Football Team does Srat Better than a Real Sorority
This is a video made by the Vanderbilt football team mocking how sororities use videos that follow the same format for recruitment purposes. They run and frolic in matching shirts and talk about how their “sisterhood” brings them together. This is stereotypical sorority behavior, in almost every recruitment on the internet girls do the same actions in a different order during the videos. The football team on the other hand is thought of as hyper masculine, the men who play are buff and tough and would NEVER be caught acting feminine. In the video when the football players talk they have a pronounced “female” way of talking by using filler words, like when the “president” is talking about how the anchor is their symbol he says, “how…how like great friends we are, we’re just anchored together”.
This video was posted to a website Total Sorority Move, a satirical site about Greek life. The video demonstrates different ideologies about Greek life such as everyone partying all the time and students involved in Greek life having zero non-greek friends. This video stays true to these stereotypical ideologies only showing the football team (as sorority girls) and zero people outside of the team. They all wear matching outfits and talk in the same mocking accent. Overall this video is used as a satire of sorority recruitment videos through the gendered “sorority girl” stereotype and language.
[Published on 04-20-2017]
Faith Salie Vocal fry
Play videoFaith Salie in this video reflects on her experiences as a Rhodes scholar and comedian. Salie talks about societal perceptions of a dichotomy between intelligence and comedic ability. The misconception of vocal fry being an indication of lower intelligence falls apart amidst her clear academic success.
Alice Walker: Fear of Being Feminine
Play videoAlice Walker is an American novelist, poet, and civil and women’s rights activist. She is best known for her critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple. In this video, she talks about the negative repercussions of referring to women as ‘guys’. The type of situation she is referencing are when someone, say a server at a restaurant, walks up to a group of women and addresses them by saying “Hi guys, how are you doing today?” Men and women both do this in America and it only perpetuates the fear of being feminine, or a female in general. With so many women still fighting for equal rights, it is crucial to be proud of being a woman and for women to not label themselves or other women as ‘guys’. This way of speaking stems from the fact that the English language is a “masculine default” language. This means that masculinity, along with masculine terms, are the default in English and other feminine terms have been unnecessarily created in order to differentiate between a male and female performing the same role. A good example of this sociolinguistic model is actor vs. actress and waiter vs. waitress. The original words are changed when talking about a woman when really, the word itself is just supposed to describe the job someone is doing. Although feminine words are added, many people still use the masculine terms by default, creating an alienation and feeling of unimportance or lack of superiority for women. Unfortunately, the aforementioned linguistic features, along with calling a group of women “guys”, are innate in most people’s vocabulary and using them can be a very difficult habit to break. Walker suggests women coming together to change the way that they label themselves and other women in order to first separate women from men and then empower those women. Although it may seem like a small step on the way to equality, it is an extremely vital one.
Howard Stern on vocal fry
Play videoThis video is a voice recording of Howard Stern discussing vocal fry used by a contestant on the show the Bachelor. Stern discusses the use of vocal fry and refers to it as "an epidemic" that women are using where they begin to switch back in forth between a croaking voice and their "feminine voice"
Rise of the 'vocal fry': Young women are changing how low they talk to sound more like Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry
Women in the UK are changing their voices to match American celebrities. [Published on 04-26-2016]
Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism by FCKH8.com
Play videoThis video uses young girl cussing to show that there are more problems in society than little girls cussing. The fact that they are talking the way they are is shocking, which is done to make people actually listen to the bigger point.
Sapir-Worf
This video displays an example of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis by giving the example of a male nurse versus a female nurse. The video is only a sample.
Helping Trans People Find Their Voices
Play videoSpeech-language pathologist, Christie Block, helps transgender people find their voice.
What Is Vocal Fry?
Stigmatizing a linguistic style prevalent among young females in our society.
"Pick-Up Artist"
Play videoThis artifact is showing how different people communicate on a daily basis, and how each person has a different way of showing how the communicate. With this skit, most of it exaggerated for comical effect. But this is showing the diversity of people and there language through a simple conversation in group settings. In this skit there is gender rolls being played of femininity and masculinity, while showing the differences within the women's language. And how this "Art of the Pick-Up" class is teaching women how to properly express themselves.
My Sexuality
Play videoThis video entails a character on a TV show, who insists that a women's "sexuality" can get them in or out of any situation. Some may feel that this is demoralizing for women in todays society, because women have worked so hard over the past century to ear the same rights as men. And this is showing that all women have to do is flaunt there sexuality and everything will come to them on a silver platter. Which in fact is not true for all women.
Freshwoman
This article has an interesting perspective on Language and sexism. How our language is still objectifying woman. It's speaks to the power of the words we use. [Published on 03-20-2012]
We Can Do IT
This sign was an empowerment for women to join the workforce and was widely re-popularized in the 80's Women's Movement promoting equality in the workplace. [Published on 09-22-2014]
Emmanual and Philip Hudson- Asking all of them questions
Play videoDo men and women engage in conversation differently? This video by Emmanual and Phillp Hudson discredit the thought that men are straight forward with information rather that emotion or gossip. He is displaying the ability to understand gender language in the community that he is mocking, exploring ultra feminism and masculinity.
Muxes
An interesting article about "Muxes, Mexico's third gender".
LGBTQ girls and the heterosexual marketplace
This article isn't specifically linguistic, but relates to Eckert's notion of the heterosexual marketplace, where adolescents learn how to speak/act/dress/present in the best way possible to attract people of the 'opposite' sex and thus gain popularity. This article deals with how lesbian and queer girls fair in this social structure as people who essentially do not participate in the heterosexual marketplace.
Interestingly, the article posits that a good way to combat the isolation of non-conforming young people would be for schools/institutions to reward non-physical and non-sexual achievements. I find this a strange concept because I think of popularity/success in the heterosexual marketplace as being determined almost entirely separately from school-sanctioned recognition of achievement; in fact, I think institutional recognition often detracts from a person's success in the marketplace, and I wonder how/whether institutions are capable of causing a shift in the dynamics of young people's social structure. [Published on 12-31-1969]
Transgender voice lesson
Play videoAn example of the many voice tutorials on YouTube made by transgendered individuals for other transgendered individuals interested in sounding more like their gender role - more like men or women.