Vocal Fry Whining

People complain about the strangest things. Sometimes I think that people complain for the sake of complaining just so they have something to talk about. Wait, is that what I'm doing?

...

Anyway, the other morning, I saw a segment on a news program where the commentator was complaining about young women and vocal fry. What is vocal fry, some of you may have just asked? Well, try to talk with as little air as you can, and your voice will come out somewhat gravel-y, almost like a growl. It's not your normal voice, but almost what you have first thing in the morning before you wake up enough to push enough air to gather your regular voice. That's vocal fry.

The woman on the program went on and on about how it's basically stupid and lazy. She had clip after clip after clip of women dropping their voice into this "vocal fry range" as they spoke on interviews or in movies or whatever. I didn't really hear any valid reasoning behind not wanting to hear this particular vocal tone; she (and quite a few others) simply don't like it. What I heard in her examples was women speaking, and at the end of some statements, they voice inflected down into this "fry" range.

Now, my favorite part of this entire segment, after she has gone on about the hatred and condemnation of vocal fry for a good five minutes, was at the end of one of her own closing arguments (yeah, it was a closing argument), her voice dipped down into fry range, and she vocal fried. It was only for a second, but that was the length of the clips she liked to loop to make sure we were aware of how "annoying" this "practice" is.

Like I said, I have no problem with it, and complaining about it seems like a slow news day. I've seen a lot of slow news days recently. If this was the best thing they had, I feel for their futures.