Fried Voices

Until recently I did not know what they called the artificial gravelly voice that people have been using.  I did a little research and I found out it is called “vocal fry”.  The most famous practitioners are Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry.

It seems to becoming epidemic and primarily amongst women of a certain age, although men have been known to practice this vocal aberration as well.  This speech pattern has come under a great deal of criticism from several directions, quite often making fun of it.

I personally fall into the category of people who think it is silly.  As far as I can ascertain from my research it is not a natural speech pattern but an acquired pattern.  This does not differ to me from the “valley speak” of yesteryear.  Young people want to be different.  They have a right to be different but do not expect not be to treated different if you throw yourself out there as different.  You asked for it.

Imagine if you will, if the younger generation decided to speak with, say, an artificial French accent or an Irish brogue or an Scottish burr.  Wouldn’t most people think it weird.  I sure as hell would.

But to each their own.  I do personally have a negative attitude about adults using the vocal fry as I think that like “valley speak” it is time to grow up when you go out into the world.  Therefore, I must say I have a less than lovely attitude about their overall intelligence in not being mature enough to be aware of reality.

As to be expected, people have jumped to the defense of the fry babies, particularly because most of them are female.  I have news for you, it doesn’t matter to me whether it is a male of female – it sounds equally stupid to hear it coming from an adult’s lips to me.  But just a thought:  if, as a woman, you want to be taken seriously why in the hell would you purposely build a barrier to that goal?

I would think that you would want to choose another battle to fight and not the right to sound gravelly.  But that is just me.