Girls talking in baby voices.

My cousin’s girlfriend has this really annoying habit of talking in this fake baby sounding voice nearly all the time. I know it isn’t her normal voice because I’ve heard her speak completely normally in certain conversations. But usually when she is talking to my cousin she does this annoying high-pitched voice and talks in this almost unintelligible baby speak. It drives me fucking nuts, anyone else known anyone who does this?

I once worked with a woman who did that and I hated her with a passion that words cannot describe. I think she was the one and only human being I’ve been that intensely revolted by, and I’m not entirely sure why. It must have had to do with more than the annoying fake voice, but it would probably take a psychologist to tease it out. All I know is that voice made my blood boil and inspired violent fantasies that disturbed even me.

I know what you’re talking about. My old roommate’s girlfriend spoke like that.

My bizarre cousin has a bizarre theory that girls who talk like this were molested as children. I don’t remember the whole thing, just the conclusion, and I’d better say that it’s not a theory I subscribe to. I think it’s more because they really do naturally talk like that, or that they think it’s cute.

Well, I think there is a group of people who find the ‘baby voiced’ women appealing/attractive. I’ve heard it in person and it’s something I find cringe-worthy. For that matter, it’s also something that’s in the culture. I have great difficulty viewing Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday” song for JFK as having been anything other than an attempt to sound baby voiced specifically for the purpose of arousing, if not seducing, her audience.

My Mother-in-law does it. Like I needed any action by her to be cringe inducing as it is.

As a woman, when I hear other women doing this it’s all I can do not to bitch-slap them. It’s annoying and disturbing and icky on so many levels.

I call it the Melanie Griffith effect. That woman’s voice grates on me like sandpaper.

Ran into a secretary like that, back in the 80’s.
Only one I ever met, & I hated her.

I needed to speak to an officer at a bank recently. When she started talking I almost started laughing because she had the most amazing baby voice! We conducted our business and I left, but I still shake my head when I think how unprofessional, how ungrown-up* she sounded, even though she knew her business. It was hard to take her seriously.

*I’m pretty sure I just made this word up.

If it’s your natural voice, my sympathies. If you’re doing it on purpose, just knock that shit off rfn. I don’t know if guys dig it, but I’m pretty sure other women hate it.

A former co-worker was married to a woman who talked like this. The first time she called and I answered the phone, I almost laughed out loud. My thoughts were, “You can’t possibly be for real.”

Eventually, she took a job there with us and I got comfortable enough to ask her about it. She said that, no, the rest of her family didn’t talk like that and that, yes, it was her natural speaking voice and it wasn’t contrived at all. I gotta admit, though, I never completely believed her.

Long ago, I worked in a restaurant that was frequented by a couple (Buxom Baby-Voiced Bleach-Blonde and Skinny, Slicked-Back Hair Man) and their sullen, kinda creepy teenaged son.

One night, Sullen Son was a little more sullen than usual, and I guess went outside to wait in the car while Mom and Dad finished dinner. At some point, Baby Voice came up front to check on Sullen Son, and discovered him conversing (or something) with a middle-aged man outside.

That’s when her voice completely changed.

Think Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

It was really kind of freaky to watch.

I know guys who like it. It was kind of a thing back home (Korea) where girls were expected to be cutesy and girly and talk to their boyfriends in a half-whine, half-sounds-like-they-just-sucked-helium voice. Needless to say, I did not end up dating a lot of Korean guys.

I do think it’s an affectation, whether they’ll admit up to it or not. Of all the ones I have seen do it, none of them have been 6’ tall butch lesbians, ya know?

We have a woman at work that uses this grating falsetto voice (it doesn’t help that she also has a grating personality and appearance). Or at least she partially does - she apparently can only manage to do it for about thirty seconds or so and then her voice will suddenly drop into her natural voice which is actually very low pitched. It’s bizarre to hear her suddenly switch from Sailor Moon to Kathleen Turner.

“Corporate accounts payable. Nina speaking. JUST a moment.”

What’s with that irritating woman on Will & Grace too?

That’s a kind of voice I simply don’t hear in the UK, but it crops up in the US media a lot. And Melanie fucking Giblets.

Mostly they do it because they thinks it’s cute or sweet. And there are enough guys out there who agree with them that the behavior gets perpetuated. I have known one woman though whose natural voice was like that. We were on the same fastpitch softball team as teenagers and she was a pretty aggressive player and the best pitcher in the league so the baby-ish voice really contrasted.

Put me in the boat of people who think it is contrived. Even if contrived at a very young age and then becomes “normal.”

Women who speak like that drive me insane. And I agree with the prior poster who said it is never a woman 6’ tall and butch. It’s always the ones that look like feckin’ Pekinese’s. I worked with a girl who was in an abusive relationship (why no, black eyes really aren’t that common) who flounced around in very short skirts, very girly, girly (and I mean little girly) and talked like she was 3. In her own little world that one was.

OT: but we actually had a player come in yesterday named Trixie. I didn’t think any of those existed any more. I like to think my MIL is the last remaining “Bunny.”

I’ve heard this theory before, but with a different spin.

Like that girls who were molested as children, when they’re under a lot of emotional stress, get an eerie childlike quality to their voice. Particularly at times when they’re upset about something that somehow relates, like their boyfriend is trying to make them do something they don’t want to do or they’re talking about the abuse itself. But more like an actual child’s voice, rather than the high-pitched bimbo Anna Nicole type voice

edit: as others have said, I think the Anna Nicole voice is just sort of part of a “sex kitten” type persona. I don’t really get it, but whatever.

Same in Japan, too. One of my co-workers turns it on and off whenever she wants something. In addition to the baby voice (awong with baby pwonunciation), she also pouts her lips and presses her shoulders inward while walking up to you with a tiny-step shuffle to emphasize her breasts (she’s very top-heavy). Think Madeline Kahn doing a ditzy secretary parody. It’s common knowledge now that you can tell when she’s coming with a job request by the sound of her footsteps. It’s so obvious, especially compared to how she normally acts (think Madeline Kahn the rest of the time), that it’s either an ingrained reflex or she’s doing it as a joke.

The best part? She a 45-year-old Account Executive/Vice President. Um, yeah, I’ll do this job you brought me because it’s part of a project from a client and I’m the writer for this project and the only one who knows how to do the task you’re requesting. Trying to act cute when you bring it to me is only going to make me treat it less seriously.