This can only get me in trouble...

I thought it was just my imagination, but as a choir director, I notice people's voices. And lately the young women I listen to sound younger than ever.

Yeah-yeah - I'm just getting older. That occurred to me as well. But it may not be just my perception.

Neither of the Corffs was willing to say there was a palpable upsurge in baby-voiced women, just a never-ending supply of them. And although Claire Corff mentioned that some of her students developed high-pitched voices in reaction to the more aggressive cadence of their feminist mothers, I wonder if what's really going on here is more Pavlovian than political. In contemporary American culture, women seem to be rewarded not for being grown-ups but for assuming the qualities of little girls. Whether it's erasing the lines off our faces or wearing the same size jeans we wore in high school, what we want most is to hear how little we've changed. [More]

My observation is that as women take up smoking at a rate similar to men, there will always be some low altos around.