Transvestia

few moments after you have established your normal voice keep on the reading but gradually lift your voice little by little as you read. Keep on going higher and higher until you crack into a falsetto. This indicates you have gone too far. Go back down to your ordinary level and start over again and try to find some "landing" lower than the point of break- ing that feels relatively comfortable. Read along on this level for a bit until you get the "feel" of where it is on the scale. Then momentarily drop down to regular pitch and jump up to your new femme level until you can find it unerringly. Get well acquainted with the location of this "landing" so you can start from silence and begin at that level. Once you know where it is just keep on practicing at all convenient times by reading or talking out loud until "her" voice becomes real to you. This whole procedure is like climbing a stairs until you get into the attic which you realize is too far; return- ing to the ground floor and trying again until you know where the second floor level is so that you could "find it" as it were, in the dark.

Secondly, the matter of power that Susanna men- tions. If you will just talk or read out loud in your femme voice and experiment a little with your throat muscles while doing so you will probably dis- cover, as I did, that there is a kind of "damper" in your throat like the one in the fire place that cuts down intensity a bit while not changing the pitch. To do this experiment you have to talk on only one note so that you can experiment with the feeling of throwing your voice "out" or holding it "in". It is hard to explain this in words but you'll find out how to do it if you play with the idea a bit.

Susanna is right that if the voice "fits" the appearance then you can "pass" very easily. Even a low contralto is permissible if it isn't forceful and aggressive. The voice I use on radio and tele- vision and which I used continuously on my recent 5 week trip (see Virgin Views article) was learned this way. You can do it too.

64