Transvestia

to VOICE).

There she stands, a gorgeous vision of loveli- ness, but her lips are sealed. This applies to 99% of all TV's. (How do you like my statistics? I just make them up as I go along). She is so dumb (meaning voiceless) that she can't even say "thanks" when a gallant male (probably short-sighted) does hasten to open a door for her. And there she goes shrouded in a world of silence. God help us if she should try to say "good morning", or "is this seat taken?". The rafters would shake. Aha! (someone may say)...there are women with deep voices. And here we go again. Why, oh why, should we always try to excuse our weak points by bringing up the fact that there are women with deep voices so my voice should be okay...or that there are women who walk like men so my walk is okay...and there are women with skinny thighs, so I look okay in my bathing suit. and there are women who don't smell so nice, so if I smell of beer I'm okay...etc...etc...etc... I really get mad when I run into this type of defense.

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But, let's go back to VOICE. What I'm trying to say is that while we spend (or should spend) so much effort in creating this gorgeous creature we see in the mirror, what is wrong with trying to give her a voice as feminine as possible? I don't claim to have the final answer to this problem, but it has bothered me enough to stir me into trying to find out what can be done about it. A voice teacher tells me that it can be done. It is not easy, but it should take less time and effort and pain than going through electro- lysis. There are methods to train not only the qual- ity of the voice, but to learn the peculiar lilt and intonation (or emphasis) which makes a woman's speech. so peculiarly feminine. The odd thing is that when TV's get together they all agree in principle that it would be nice to be able to speak without the "chest-boom" and without provoking suspicious react- ions from strangers. But when it comes to actually making the first efforts at feminizing their speech,

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