When Mrs Kennedy gave a nationally televised tour of the White House, her breathy voice was absurd to my ears.
But she was the epitome of the pretty, well dressed, wonderful hostess wife, who demurred to her husband’s desires and aspirations. An idealized 50’s (into early 60’s) housewife.
To modern sensibilities, it’s disturbing.
Clearly, Britt reflects that a significant voting block doesn’t have those modern sensibilities. When they want to make America great again, they are harking back to that earlier age.
What I imagined when I wrote that was a woman who would sound strong in how she talked, but would give little dogwhistles to being a good housewife and doing things in the kitchen. She wouldn’t use the weird voice or the exaggerated mannerisms, and would be in a homey looking location in her house, rather than directly in the kitchen.
Though, when I started writing this, I started thinking of other politicians, and I think it would probably be akin to Sarah Palin, just without seeming like an idiot. Palin has both the “take charge” attitude while playing the homey housewife personality as well.
Basically, the goal is to seem both submissive housewife AND strong woman. Someone who would go on the strong attack, but would also acquiesce to Trump as his VP.
Because I do very much think she is shooting for that spot.
She does the forced smile, too; and even a sideways, eyelash batting coquettish look.
I don’t think I saw that at the time; and I don’t know whether I would have noticed her mannerisms if I did. Though I do remember, even as a child, thinking it was weird when women singers held a forced smile no matter what they were singing – and thinking that it might also mess up their singing to have to hold their mouths that way.
Thank you for responding. I was struggling to imagine what that would look like. Something akin to Sarah Palin, but badly missing the mark, makes a lot of sense.
I was going to say something similar. She’s 4’11” at best and probably around 90 lbs. And she’s from Oklahoma. Her voice is the high pitched twang of a tiny southern woman.
That’s a very real possibility, we haven’t seen or heard anything about what’s her name in quite a while. Last I heard of her, she was selling her hat.
I believe “fundie baby voice” got coined by Jess Piper in a Tiktok video reposted by her on Twitter. IMO it’s the best description of that phenomenon.
In that interpretation, FBV is mainly for men. It signals “I am submissive, I will not challenge you.” I think Katie Britt was doing something different than FBV, I think she was signaling more to women than men. “I’m like you, I hear you, get on board with me.”
Of course her presentation was very much tradwife, but I would call her delivery more in the vein of evangelical melodrama. The pseudo-whisper also adds a whiff of cult-hypnotic vibe, much like when Tulsi Gabbard stares directly into the camera and nods her head while she’s speaking. There’s a non-verbal persuasion element to it.
So while Britt was definitely catering to some trad aesthetic and a bit of cult signaling, I think it’s different from what Piper calls the fundamentalist baby voice. It sounds loosely similar, but it’s got a different intent, different obvious, subtly different delivery.
This does go against how she campaigned to become Senator. She touted herself as being tough and a fighter. In ads they used her man-mountain of a husband to tell people how tough she is.
That might make Trump hesitant to make her the VP nominee. He would be scared to be creepy towards her,
After listening to the Jackie Kennedy example posted by moriarty, it’s obvious that the two sound nothing alike. Jackie is speaking very calmly and evenly. Serenely, even. A highly polished and elegant manner. Katie is speaking very unevenly, her voice going all over the place, sounding strained and scarcely under control.
