Vocal Fry, technically a guttural fluttering of the vocal cords at the lowest pitch, is fast becoming an epidemic with American females.  We hear the fry in some of our favorite celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Ke$ha, and almost every female on The Bachelor.  It started in the 80’s as vocal trend among corporate females- lowering the voice was meant to sound authoritative and intelligent but now it’s trending into a general way of speaking.  To others, it can come across as sounding unintelligent and disinterested.  If you’re a young female speaking among your friends, you probably think you sound cute and friendly. Conversely, an older adult hearing the vocal fry will likely want to rip their ears off and send you to a speech pathologist.

Verbal trends come and go, and they are learned habits. I’m sure we all remember the valley girl “up talk” popular in the 90’s characterized by an upward inflection at end of your sentence? So even statements sound like a question? Yea? Another trend was like, adding ‘like’ to like, all of your, like, sentences as a conversational ‘filler’ to sound non-threatening and cute. These vocal trends are a learned, international and stylistic way of speaking. It can be subconscious or intentional, intelligent to some and annoying to others but, there will probably be a new verbal trend in 5-10 years.

So girls, do we deserve credit for pioneering another vocal trend or do we just sound annoyiiiiiiiing?