ladybusiness | (Reply)

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The Barbie article has a very interesting quote:

"In the past," says Michael Shore, "Ken was really viewed as more of an accessory in Barbie's world, to support the narrative of whatever was happening with the girls."

Hey, isn't that how women are treated in the rest of the world? Accessories to support the narrative of what's happening with the men? Perhaps that was part of the real value of Barbie to little girls, despite the unrealistic physical proportions -- that just this once, they had a play-form that centered women rather than men. So now, of course, the men want to horn in on it...

The linguistics article talks about the difference between chest voice and head voice as if it's really difficult to understand. If you sing at all, you're going to know exactly where that break-point is and how it works. When I took voice lessons, one of the things we worked on was how to transition smoothly across that break when singing a melodic line that crosses it. They want a definition? Here's a quick and easy one: chest voice is where you can belt; in head voice, you can't. (This is why I have trouble singing "White Rabbit" in karaoke; it starts out well down into my chest voice, but I just don't have the range to hit "feed your head" without breaking over into head voice, which means I can't go for the big finish.)