Do women really talk like 12-year-old girls? Actress Lake Bell insists there is vocal 'pandemic' of adults talking in 'baby' voices

Lake Bell: The 34-year-old actress believes that young women everywhere have caught chronic 'sexy baby vocal virus'

From Valley Girls to the Kardashians, young women are often mocked for the way they talk.

And Lake Bell, best known for her role in the 2009 movie, It's Complicated, believes that young women everywhere have caught chronic 'sexy baby vocal virus'.



'It's like a speech pattern that includes uptalking and fry, so it's this amalgamation of really unsavory sounds that many young women have adopted. It's a pandemic, in my opinion,' the 34-year-old told NPR .

The actress, who wrote, directed and stars in the upcoming film, In A World, says she is worried that women are hurting their careers by talking like 'little girls'.

'I grew up thinking a female voice and sound should sound sophisticated and sexy, a la Lauren Bacall or Anne Bancroft or Faye Dunaway, you know.



'Not a 12-year-old little girl that is submissive to the male species.

'I can't have people around me that speak that way,' she admitted.



Whether it is uptalk (pronouncing statements as if they were questions), or the incessant use of 'like' as a conversation filler, vocal trends associated with young women are often seen as markers of immaturity or stupidity.

But some believe women also change their voices, often subconsciously, to sound less threatening or domineering.



'I hear women do it on the street when they are talking to a man they want to quickly placate,' wrote Huffington Post blogger Kate Fridkis.

'I heard one of my college roommates use it every night on the phone with her boyfriend. Girls and women slip into it so naturally, and then out of again, on a daily basis.'

Carmen Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, told the New York Times: 'If women do something like uptalk or vocal fry, it’s immediately interpreted as insecure, emotional or even stupid.

'The truth is this: Young women take linguistic features and use them as power tools for building relationships.'



Miss Bell, in In A World, plays Carol, a woman who wants be the voice behind movie trailers - and must overcome the fact that they are mostly male.



'I was always interested in the idea that the omniscient voice was always considered male,' Miss Bell told NPR.

