Same here. People think I sound younger than I really am. I am NOT affecting a baby voice, that’s just how I talk. Sorry if that offends.
When I was 20, I used to know a woman who talked in an honest-to-God Minnie Mouse voice. Then she came out of the closet and began to use a more Kathleen Turner-like voice. 
I have no idea what you guys are all talking about.
Is there, like, an example in a video or audio clip online or anything?
-FrL-
I knew a woman who spoke like that in college, and she pronounced the word “milk” as “mawlk”…drove me nuts. She was totally faking it as whenever there weren’t any “cute” guys around, the voice disappeared.
However, guys have there own version of the fake voice - talking like their testicles hang to the floor with that obnoxious, phony World Wrestling Foundation deep roar and grunt. Think the guy on the radio announcing the car races on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday…
A search of Victoria Jackson from SNL on youtube might turn something up.
Oh.
Oh!
:eek: Oooooh…
You mean, there are people who actually talk like that in normal conversations. Eeyikes.
I hereby consider myself lucky.
-FrL-
…or the dude in the dugout in bar league softball games. The one with the cueball, goatee, and gut.
Wait, that’s all of 'em…
And a 4-wheel-drive truck. Don’t forget the 4X4.
I’d also suggest doing a YouTube search for Marilyn Monroe and “Happy Birthday.”
In college I had a couple of classmates who did something like that; not the baby-talk (I just have never met a Hispanic woman who did that, women with high voices yes, but not goo-goo voices and babytalk), but the flitty eyes and ohI’msoneedy when trying to coax the male TAs into doing something for them. In general it didn’t work, among other things because if it started to work the rest of the class got up in arms and stopped it. At home we refer to that kind as being “snake-charmers, rather than charming.”
In Philly I had a coworker who talked like that when she was about to ream you. Anybody with half a brain knew that “when Doris starts talking cute and making awwww-noises, you should run for the hills.” But for some reason it still caught a lot of folks by surprise, at least the first time…
They’d come with a completely stupid request (or worse, demand). She’d go all cutie-pie-goo, making butterfly eyes and all, rephrasing the request to confirm it. They’d say “uh, oh, yes yes, that’s what I want,” often while checking their flys/combing their hair. She’d go back to her normal voice and give them the verbal equivalent of a kick beyond lunar orbit; sort of like having Sailor Moon turn into Your Mom And She’s Pissed, Boy.
The intelligent ones would hear the cute voice and say “oh my… let me guess, I’m asking something completely stupid?” “Yeah. Let me explain why.” They still got the explanation on Why We Are Not Going To Change All Your Data In Five Minutes, but with lube and without references to their mental age and parenthood.
I loved it 
I don’t mind natural “baby” voices, though it can take a while to get used to them. I dated a girl who sounded like a four year old. She even snored like a little kid. Hearing callers ask her “can you put your mommy or daddy on the phone?” was always good for a laugh. I still wonder how the voice went over at her job-- she did PR for a concert promoter, so she was on the phone with clients or giving presentations constantly.
Now, baby voices used as affectations make me want to punt puppies out of highrises. It’s not just the voices, really, but the concomitant shifts into cutesy wording, bizarre inflections, and coquettish body language. Do guys really find that kind of blatant attempt at manipulating them attractive?
I wish Eve were here to relate a couple of anecdotes about her former hated cow-orker, “Pwincess Pwecious”.
Can I help?
I have a friend of many years who naturally speaks in a high-pitched, breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice. Not a baby-voice, but, than again, I don’t think MM spoke in a baby voice. I KNOW my friend can speak in a lower register, and can yell with the best of them, but in normal conversation or on the phone you get a Marilyn Monroe sound-alike. (I’d love to hear her address her thesis committee – she went to grad school at Harvard.)
Yes.
And it works for them. It works so well, and so often that they have no incentive whatsoever to stop it.
I once had a acting professor call one girl out over it. The statement went something like “You’re a beautiful girl, and like a lot of beautiful girls, you use that sound to get what you want. Don’t do it here. From now on, in my class, use your real voice.” And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the girl magically developed a lower register.
In class.
Outside of class, she still talked like squirrel, and boys/men still fell all over it.
My feelings exactly. Apparently, little girl voices are becoming more common in professional settings.
I have a high-pitch voice, with a Southern accent that returns occasionally. No one has ever told me that I have a baby voice, but The Drawl is taken as an indication that I’m very, very pissed.
When I was a waitress my voice crept up into the higher realms. I hated it, but there’s something about being servile and submissive, when you’re a woman, that makes your voice go there.
My mom also talks in a pretty high voice, yet somehow my older sister grew up using only her natural, deep voice. It’s thanks to my sister’s example that I realized I had a lowish voice.
My sister sounds like a little girl when she talks, to the point where callers (who don’t know her) always ask to speak to her mommy.
It definitely not on purpose. Her voice has been higher than her peers for her whole life, and she absolutely loathes it. I have a video of her when she was four in which she sounds like the tape’s been sped up. She’s not the frilly, girly type either; she’s always been very athletic, and currently she’s a hog farm manager. So, it’s not always contrived.
Melanie Griffith and Victoria Jackson are bad, yes, but the ultimate breathy-little-girl-sex-kitten voice has to be Joey Lauren Adams, who was in Chasing Amy. I don’t know if she’s trying to compensate for having a boy’s name by being a walking cloud of estrogen, but it grates something fierce.
My parents trained my sister and I out of this habit at a young age. If we talked like that (they never called it anything but “whining,” which it is when little girls do it deliberately) they said “I can’t understand you when you talk like that. Talk like a grown-up and then I’ll understand you.”
It worked so well I was moved to try it, years later as a camp councillor, with a brat I was supervising. He came running over whining, and I said “I can’t understand you unless you talk like a grown-up,” and he looked puzzled for a minute and then repeated what he was saying in a very deep grown man voice. Cute.
I’ve seen two instances of this:
One is my aunt (mom’s step-sister). She has always talked in a baby voice. Nobody else in the family does, and it’s not endearing. She’s about…70 years old now and still talks that way.
One is my daughter, age 8. She puts on the baby-voice when she’s trying to be extra polite, or when she’s feeling insecure. At least, that’s what we think - we’ve tried to analyze it. We keep having to remind her to ‘use her big girl voice’. Granted, the difference between the two ranges is not that great at this age, but still noticeable. Drives me nuts. Drives her speech therapist nuts. Ugh.
To toss in a datapoint, she was a preemie with several surgeries before the age of 2, and lots of ongoing physical issues. These certainly qualify as ‘childhood trauma’ even if there was nothing we could do to avoid any of it.