VoiceOverLand

Once upon a time there was a place called VoiceOverLand.

Many people lived there but for a long, long time the only people

who worked there were men. 

This was, it had been claimed, because only their voices could be heard. 

Men tended to have very loud voices.

Because their voices were loud and the only ones heard, everyone thought that the other people in VoiceOverLand, (the women), didn’t have voices. 

One day a girl child who had been born some 20 years ago,

stepped into the main square, got up on the Speaker’s Soap Box

and spoke very loudly.  Everyone stopped what they were doing

and looked at her with shocked expressions. 

“Why, that’s a woman,” they cried!  “But she sounds like a man!”

They all gathered ‘round to hear what she had to say. 

She was very loud and could be heard all across the square. 

But there was a different quality in her voice. 

It was. . .Warm and friendly.

From then on, other women with male-like voices were sought after,

but there were very few.

Then one day an Audio Engineer wandered into VoiceOverLand

and fell in love with an ordinary-voiced woman, although to him,

her voice was wonderful. 

One day, he was thinking about how great it would be

if others could hear her voice the way he did.

So he tried some experiments with his audio equipment.

First he tried implanting a very small microphone in one of her teeth,

but it was uncomfortable, especially when she picked up

radio signals at inopportune moments.  Then he tried a portable microphone

which she could carry on her person, but that too was inconvenient,

especially when she wanted to go swimming.

So he thought and thought and tried to come up with a solution to the problem. 

Finally he went to see the town’s old wise woman. 

She listened very quietly to the story of his efforts. 

When he stopped talking she said,

“Instead of focusing on forcing her voice out to others,

why not try to change the surrounding situation? 

If you could just get the men not to speak so loudly,

then the women could be heard!”

Why of course!” shouted the young man. 

“That’s it!  But how will I get that to happen?”

The young man experimented with various types of microphones in his studio

until he came up with one that complimented a woman’s voice. 

Soon every studio was using this microphone and more and more women

were hired to work in VoiceOverLand. 

People around the world soon came to realize that

a woman’s voice was often more appealing on the air waves

and lots of advertisers got very rich hiring women and the women got rich too.

Unfortunately when the young man’s ordinary girl friend became one of those rich women, she married a  producer and dumped the engineer.