Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 9 March 2008:

Sunday Times 9 March 2008
Finding My Own Voice
by Colin Goh

There’s an article from Salon.com that’s making the rounds, about whether Barack Obama’s baritone voice gives him an edge over Hillary Clinton, who has occasionally been dubbed “Shrillary”, especially when she gets excited.

If that’s true, it’s depressing. Not that I prefer any particular candidate (Al Gore, come back!), but the notion that people can be swayed by delivery over content, and also that gender stereotyping is alive and well in the 21st century should make anyone groan.

It’s also personally depressing for me to know that voice can be a determinant of one’s perception. This goes back to the very first time I received a telemarketing call in the USA, shortly after I’d arrived. Here’s a dramatic reconstruction of how it went:

Me: Hello.
Telemarketer: Hello, ma’am, I’m calling about your credit report.
Me: (stunned, awkward silence)
Telemarketer: Ma’am?
Me: (voice suddenly dropping two octaves) Sorry, wrong number.

My voice had never been mistaken for a woman’s prior to this, and I thought the telemarketer must have had some form of auditory dysfunction. But this embarrassing situation was repeated in virtually every subsequent call, which naturally led to a lot of personal anguish. That can be a lot of anguish, especially in the US, where one is guaranteed to receive at least one telemarketing call every day.

I began to wonder about the correct solution to this recurring annoyance. Should I bother correcting the party on the other line? Or would that just make them apologise and render the conversation even more awkward? Or should I just ignore their mistake and lower my voice with my next line, and just carry on as if nothing happened? Or should I just accept my fate and pretend to be a woman?

The Wife soon twigged on to my private hell.

“Why do you use a different voice when you answer the phone?” she asked. “You sound like a RGS girl at a sports match.”

“Arrrrghh!” I cried. “You mean even when I try to sound manly, I sound like a schoolgirl?”

“No, no,” the Wife replied, explaining how RGS girls adopt a low, masculine growl whenever they have to cheer at sports meets, allegedly to stave off hoarseness. (That it scares the living daylights out of the opposing teams is a plus.)

This case of mistaken gender never used to happen to me back in Singapore or anywhere in Asia, and I was a little relieved to learn that some Asian male friends had had similar experiences in the US too. So perhaps it was just that Americans aren’t familiar with the range of Asian voices.

I did some quick research which suggested that Asians have slightly higher pitched voices due to a range of factors, both cultural and genetic, but that even within Asia, there is variance. I’ll confess that while working in Thailand, I sometimes felt I sounded like Barry White in comparison with many of the guys around me. But it didn’t mean they were any less masculine – I’m sure every one of them could have Muay Thai’d my ass seven ways to Sunday if they wanted. And contrast the voices of Singaporean ladies (not just growly RGS girls) with the cutesy squeals of Japanese women. In other words, voice doesn’t tell you very much, unless you’re ignorant of context, which is a criticism often leveled at Americans.

But over my years in the States, things got progressively better, which puzzled me. Why were telemarketers mistaking me less often for a woman? Had my voice cracked again in some instance of second puberty? It all began to make sense when I learned that the majority of the cold calls I was receiving were now coming from call centres in Asia. Globalization was restoring my mojo.

But every now and then, I still feel like I’d gladly trade my reedy tenor for an authoritative baritone. You know, like the guy who does all the voiceovers for Hollywood blockbuster trailers, who’s always intoning lines like, “In a time of savage battle…” or “in a forgotten land…” or “one man stands up for everything he believes in…” I wonder how my life might be different if I sounded like James Earl Jones rather than Eric Tsang.

Returning to the issue of the US presidency, it struck me that sounding good isn’t such a dispositive factor after all. I mean, being unable to pronounce ‘nuclear’, making constant grammatical mistakes, and having a laugh that’s been compared to Beavis’s pal Butthead didn’t stop someone from winning the White House.

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