How to Get Ahead By Sounding Less Feminine


Sometimes it’s not looking like too much like a woman that works against you — it’s sounding too much like one. Such was the case for Monica Hanna, a NYC litigator who is determined to alter her naturally “screechy, high pitched, and quick-talking” vocal style to be taken more seriously after firm partners called it too “high.”
The first time she got the feedback after giving a presentation, she did nothing. But when she heard it again in another evaluation a year later, she realized this was likely becoming detrimental to her career. In a fascinating piece over at NPR, Hanna tells reporter Laura Starecheski what she did next, which, surprisingly, was not get angry or cry:
“I came back to my desk,” Hanna says, “and I Googled ‘problems with a very high voice’ and ‘how to change a high voice.’ ”
One option was surgery, which could potentially help lower her natural pitch. But it wasn’t reliable enough, nor would it correct other aspects of what makes a voice sound “feminine.” Writes Starecheski:
Men often speak in more of monotone, with a percussive, staccato rhythm, explains Annette Masson, a voice coach at the University of Michigan who works with actors, singers and sometimes other professionals, like Hanna. Feminine speech patterns — more musical, with more pitch variation — reflect the different way women connect with other people, she says.
And then, of course, there is our famous tendency toward uptalk, where we must pose every declarative in the form of a question lest we come off as sounding too sure of ourselves? (Masson says it’s a collaborative way of communicating that continues to make sure the listener is engaged, but try telling that to men.)
So Hanna did something a bit controversial to some people — something that had her friends remarking that she was taking anti-feminist moves. She decided to work with a vocal coach to change her voice. She found Christie Block, a speech language pathologist who works with transgender men and women, helping retrain decades of hardwired vocal styles that can be an impediment to passing in their new identities. Block taught Hanna the same techniques she used with transgender men:
Hanna learned to open her throat, creating more oral resonance, to adopt what she now calls her “big voice.” Block says she also taught Monica to use fewer words and be more direct.
Instead of asking, “Got a minute?” when she wants to talk to a colleague, she now declares, “One minute.” She carefully enunciates, “Hello,” instead of chirping, “Hi!” like she used to.
Hanna also mentions in the piece that, when someone tells her news of some kind, she no longer says “Awww,” or “That’s cute,” but now comments, “Oh that’s too bad,” or “That’s really nice to hear.”
Block also teaches transgender women the same techniques she’s helping Hanna unlearn.
First, the women learn to hit a target pitch — G, third octave. They hum at that pitch, then count at that pitch, and then try saying actual sentences, with rising and falling intonation, all hovering around that pitch.
Then they learn to stretch out their vowels, to slow down — discarding the quicker, more monotone, staccato speech many men use. The mechanics alone can take months to learn. The whole process usually takes years.
Of course, for transgender men and women, particularly women, this is a more serious issue than simply succeeding at work. Tina White, who worked with Christie Block years ago, tells Starecheski:
“It is a very intensive, introspective process to go through,” says White. “On TV we like to talk about transwomen dressing up, changing their bodies, and everyone’s all titillated by all those sexual parts. I think if you talk to transwomen, voice is psychologically far more important to their sense of acceptance than everything else that everyone else obsesses with.”
That’s because no matter how feminine you look physically, if a male-sounding voice comes out of your mouth, people will probably raise their eyebrows — or worse.
Here is where I recommend you listen to the full segment: