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25th October 2009

Was Hillary Clinton’s Voice Her Consequential Liability?

 

“Hillary Tops Obama in Pop­u­lar­ity Poll Nine Months After the Election.”
Lis­ten­ing to news pro­gram after news pro­gram quote the lat­est pop­u­lar­ity poll statistics—Clinton 62, Obama 56— last week, I couldn’t help but think back to last year’s pres­i­den­tial race between the man and the woman. Dur­ing that cam­paign I was in the process of writ­ing my lat­est book; The Voice of Suc­cess; A Woman’s Guide to a Pow­er­ful and Per­sua­sive Voice. (AMACOM Books). At the time, I had numer­ous calls from radio sta­tions ask­ing me to give my opin­ion, as a voice expert/coach, of the candidate’s voices. Most of the talk show hosts hap­pily agreed that both can­di­dates offered sim­i­lar solu­tions to cur­rent prob­lems, and that Hillary def­i­nitely had more expe­ri­ence than Barack, but they con­stantly com­plained about how annoy­ing Hillary’s voice was. Descrip­tive words like shrill, screech­ing, nag­ging, and annoy­ing, were among the many voice superla­tives that fol­lowed Hillary around the coun­try like a pan­demic. For example;
 
§ ‘It may not be Hillary’s fault that her voice sounds like it was fash­ioned from metal, but it is her fault that she sounds like a car alarm when she’s handed a micro­phone.”    Wash­ing­ton Post Writ­ers Group
 
§ By detrac­tors in the blog­ging com­mu­nity she was referred to as; Shril­lary; “She sounds like a shout­ing drone. Who wants to hear Mommy nag­ging them all day? I’m not vot­ing for a pres­i­dent with split-personality dis­or­der — yelling one minute and cry­ing the next.”
 
§ Talk show host Glenn Beck devoted an entire show belly­ach­ing about how much he hates Sen. Hillary Clinton’s voice. He called her “stereo­typ­i­cal” voice “nag­ging,” adding that it “just sticks in your ear like an ice pick,” makes you “envy the deaf,” and “makes angels cry.” Then to add insult to injury, he said “She could be say­ing, ‘All right, Glenn, I want to give Glenn Beck $1 mil­lion,’ and all I’d hear is, ‘Take out the garbage.”
 
Who’s Voices Are They Really Insulting?
Was Hillary’s “stereo­typ­i­cal” voice her main prob­lem or was it the female voice in gen­eral? In describ­ing her voice, the male media hosts kept com­par­ing her to their moth­ers, ask­ing them to clean their rooms, or their wive’s, ask­ing them to take out the garbage. Could it be the men are say­ing that their moth­ers and their wives voices are also shrill, nag­ging and annoy­ing? Regard­less of their pol­i­tics and choices, dur­ing the whole elec­tion ordeal, I never heard one per­son in the media com­plain about Barack Obama’s voice.
 
A Quick Female Voice Real­ity Check
When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, the sim­ple truth is; a woman’s voice, like most parts of her body, is not as strong as a man’s. Men have longer vocal cords and big­ger bod­ies than women, so, if it’s a bat­tle of com­par­ing voices, size does mat­ter and men def­i­nitely do have the edge.
 
And speak­ing of voice tone, have you ever won­dered why, when a woman is “los­ing” her voice to laryn­gi­tis, and has that deep and throaty sound like Kath­leen Turner, men find it pleas­ing, attrac­tive, and very sexy? “Love that voice!” they tell a woman when she can barely croak out her words. Well, believe it or not, there actu­ally is a phys­i­o­log­i­cal rea­son for their reac­tion. Just as cer­tain parts of the male/female vocal anatomy are dif­fer­ent, the vibra­tions of a man’s hear­ing mech­a­nism are not the same as a woman’s. A high-pitched female voice may sim­ply annoy women, but for the men she works with, dates, and those in her audi­ence, it can actu­ally be phys­i­cally painful to their ears. For that rea­son, men can not tol­er­ate high-pitched female voices. They auto­mat­i­cally block them out no mat­ter how impor­tant the infor­ma­tion or the mes­sen­ger may be.
 
Noth­ing Personal
The truth is, a man’s insults of the “stereo­typ­i­cal female voice”, could just as eas­ily be pointed at his mother: “Clean your room!”, his wife; “Take out the Trash!”, a female co-worker, or a female polit­i­cal can­di­date. It’s noth­ing per­sonal; it’s just a phys­i­cal, gen­der real­ity. You may think a man is block­ing out your ideas, but it could very well be your voice he can’t accept. When it comes to men under­stand­ing and tol­er­at­ing any woman’s voice, this may well be the most impor­tant para­graph every written!
 
It’s The Female Voice—GET OVER IT!
Because of their phys­i­cal dif­fer­ences, where men and women are run­ning neck and neck for the same office, it is vital, that women learn how to voice their opin­ions with author­ity, assur­ance and self-confidence, vocal traits many women are still not com­fort­able with.
 
It is a well-known fact that most women are more emo­tional than men by nature, that is a part of who we are, and that’s not a bad thing! It’s when we try to cover up those emo­tions that our voices always, yes always, give us away despite our best efforts to hide our feel­ings. No mat­ter what your words say, you can­not fool your voice. Those, who crit­i­cize even the most accom­plished women, often mis­con­strue the woman’s feelings—or the expres­sion of them— as a char­ac­ter weak­ness and use the emo­tions to belit­tle her abil­i­ties. Please hear this well:
 
Hillary’s voice will never sound like Obama’s and your wife will never sound like your best buddy!
 
A woman’s voice will never be as strong and res­o­nant as a man because her vocal cords are shorter, and her nat­ural body res­onators are smaller. To com­pen­sate for this lack of body and vocal girth, most women resort to rais­ing their vol­ume, which leads to, a scream­ing voice fol­lowed by scream­ing crit­i­cisms, as noted above. It’s not vol­ume that women need in their voices, because when it comes right down to it, because of their nat­ural acoustics, men will always have the loud­est voices. Women sim­ply need to learn how to use their voices in a range tol­er­a­ble to the male (and female) lis­ten­ers ears, and both gen­ders need to under­stand, appre­ci­ate and STOP crit­i­ciz­ing the female Voice.
                                                                       
Joni Wil­son is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized voice expert, best sell­ing author and cre­ator the amaz­ing 3-Dimensional Voice® Tech­nique. For more infor­ma­tion about Joni, her lat­est book; The Voice of Suc­cess. A Woman’s Guide to a Pow­er­ful and Per­sua­sive Voice, and the best on-line voice lessons visit:www.virtualvoicecoach.com

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18th October 2009

& Faster Healing">Oprah’s Dr. Oz Suggests Singing Your Way to Better Health & Faster Healing

by: Voice and Per­for­mance Coach/Best Sell­ing Author,Joni Wil­son

singing-therapy-health

“We are only begin­ning to under­stand what con­tributes to our healing.

Accord­ing to ABC news, Dr. Oz, the world famous heart sur­geon, and medial expert believes; ”That we are only begin­ning to under­stand what con­tributes to our heal­ing.” As an advo­cate of “com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine” Dr. Oz is chal­leng­ing the “sta­tus quo” to expand their def­i­n­i­tion of con­ven­tional health care and include such uncon­ven­tional meth­ods as singing.

On Good Morn­ing Amer­ica recently, Dr. Oz was shown singing; “Dream A Lit­tle Dream of Me.” with a group of recov­er­ing patients. He explained how singing prompts deeper breath­ing and energy heal­ing. “We used to spend hours ask­ing folks to take deep breaths, and singing accom­plishes that goal.” He explained to the group.

From headaches to asthma, aller­gies to MS and Parkinson’s disease

As a voice coach for 20 years, I have loudly declared the health ben­e­fits of singing to any­one who would lis­ten. Over the years, I have watched as my stu­dents of all ages walked into my stu­dio tired, stressed, and men­tally pushed to the lim­its by school, work, relationship-malfunctions, and major phys­i­cal ail­ments of var­i­ous vari­eties. After an hour of the vocal aer­o­bics, I put them through, and using the vibrat­ing energy that comes from, deep-breathing and singing the songs they love, my stu­dents always walk out quicker–of-step and grin­ning ear-to-ear. From headaches to asthma, aller­gies to MS and Parkinson’s dis­ease learn­ing how to sing cor­rectly, strength­ens the mus­cles your body needs to com­bat the dis-ease that accom­pa­nies most major health problems.

Are you stuck with the voice you were born with?

The longer I teach voice, the more respect I have for this amaz­ing vocal instru­ment, that resides inside every human body. I have enough sto­ries and exam­ples of how singing and speak­ing cor­rectly has lit­er­ally changed lives, healed bod­ies and launched new careers (not just singing), to fill an entire book.

The key word here is “cor­rectly.” When you learn how to play this most amaz­ing “God cre­ated instru­ment” cor­rectly, your voice and your body form a syn­ergy that not only delights the ears of those who hear it, your voice will actu­ally please your harsh­est critic …namely YOU! Are you stuck with the voice you came in with …NO! Can any­one learn to use his or her voice cor­rectly … YES!

Every note you sing has a pro­found effect on your body

There is a good rea­son why singing has been a large part of our reli­gious cer­e­monies for as long as human beings have walked this planet. Every note you sing con­tains a vibrat­ing energy and res­o­nance that has a pro­found effect on your body. For thou­sands of years peo­ple have used chant­ing and singing to bring them closer to the God expe­ri­ence no mat­ter what their reli­gious pref­er­ence maybe.

Voice health effects are still shrouded in mystery

Sadly, the human voice and its effects on the mind, body, and spirit is still shrouded in mys­tery. We all have a voice but very few of us actu­ally know how to access it’s ulti­mate poten­tial. Thank you Dr. Oz for open­ing a door that can ulti­mately take energy med­i­cine and singing to a com­pletely new level. Oh, and by the way Dr. Oz…if you would like a bit of help with that singing voice…call me!

Joni Wil­son is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized voice expert, best sell­ing author and cre­ator the amaz­ing 3-Dimensional Voice® Tech­nique. For more infor­ma­tion about Joni, her lat­est book; The Voice of Suc­cess: A Woman’s Guide to a Pow­er­ful and Per­sua­sive Voice, (AMACOM books) and the best on-line voice lessons visit: virtualvoicecoach.com

 

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