On the first day of summer camp, the counselors invited us to introduce ourselves to a nearby camper. I smiled at the 9-year-old girl next to me, and told her my name and that I was glad to meet her. Through irrepressible giggles, she asked if I wouldn’t mind speaking in my “real” voice. I am, I thought, my cheeks burning.
In high school, the drama teacher thought it would be hilarious to imitate my voice in front of the whole class. I’m still mortified by the memory. I wish being made to feel embarrassed about my voice had stopped in childhood. But even now, as a TV news reporter, I hear from viewers — and even employers — that a voice like mine doesn’t belong on air.
Courtesy Emma Goss
A close friend once told me my voice was my “signature,” even if others don’t like it. I call my signature sound my “cilantro voice” because for some people, it seems to incite strong, divisive reactions — like the flavor of cilantro does. When I open my mouth to speak, I never know if the person I’m speaking to will be one of those people who wants to spit it out immediately, or if they’ll have no aversion.
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I call my signature sound my 'cilantro voice' because for some people, it seems to incite strong, divisive reactions.
Emma Goss
In my mid-20s, I interviewed with a television news station manager who made no effort to hide how incredulous he was that I could sound so shockingly nasally in person, while he couldn’t detect how pronounced it sounded on the phone, or in the broadcast news clips he’d seen of my on-air reporting.
“Maybe you sound like that from going to college in New York,” he tried to reason, incorrectly.
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People tell me that my voice reminds them of Fran Drescher’s voice on “The Nanny,” and like the brutally honest news director in the interview, those who make the comparison don’t mean it as a compliment.
People hear my voice nearly every day on their televisions, laptops and smartphones, and just as frequently, viewers share their unsolicited feedback with me. Many are kind, and write how much they enjoy and appreciate my reporting. They appear not to be bothered by or even aware of anything unusual about my voice. But I often receive hateful messages from the “anti-cilantro” crowd. The cruelest commenters, most of whom hide behind online anonymity, say they want to jump out of their living room windows when I come on the news. They write that their dogs bark at the TV when they hear my voice. Some viewers claim they instantly change the channel upon hearing me speak. “Who let this girl on television with that voice?” is the question often asked, rhetorically, on social media.
I know, after years of reporting on television, working my way from a small news market in Bakersfield, California, to the Bay Area big leagues (the place I was born and raised) that I’m talented. Mean Tweets and disparaging social media comments are par for the course in the broadcast news industry, and having thick skin is rule No. 1 for reporters, particularly women, who are often targeted by trolls who comment about our bodies and our wardrobe choices.
I learned while freelancing at one station that it would take more than thick skin for me to move forward in this field. I’d been filling a vacancy for several months, doing the same work as a reporter under contract, but with a fraction of the pay, waiting for a decision to come down from management as to whom they’d select to fill the role permanently. Colleagues had put in a good word for me, and producers consistently praised my pitches and assigned me the story that would lead the newscast. But when the day came, upper management told me that despite my excellent reporting and unique investigative talents, my voice was a problem, matter-of-factly saying it was just too nasally for “this size market,” and seeming to suggest that I was in over my head if I thought I could land a full-time job in a top ten market with a cilantro voice. They added that the station hoped I’d stay on as a freelancer, and offered to pay for a voice coach to work with me.
The rejection stung, and the offer to pay for a coach didn’t strike me as supportive, but more of an ultimatum: Change your voice, or get out.
Within days, I found an online course offering vocal training sessions, and immediately enrolled. I’d worked with vocal coaches in the past, but this round of coaching was even more impactful. I learned various breathing and tongue exercises to help project my voice more through my diaphragm and less through my nose. Each day as I drove to work, I’d complete the exercises until I was out of breath and my tongue was sore. An email from a viewer who often wrote kind messages about my reporting popped into my inbox one night. “Your voice sounds softer and more calm,” he said. “Keep up the great work.”
Yet even if I was making progress, the changes went unnoticed by management, and I was beginning to realize two heartbreaking truths: I was never getting a full-time job at this news station, and I needed to go somewhere else, despite how much I loved the work I was doing there. Second, if hours of coaching and exercises were barely going to make a dent toward changing my voice, I needed to consider what options there were, if any, to surgically change my voice.
My desire to stick with broadcast journalism, despite the number of people in the industry who discouraged me, might seem bizarre or even vain. But I love reporting on TV, not for the spotlight or supposed glamour, but for the process of weaving the voices of others into a concise, visual narrative that’s powerful and meaningful. I’ve been a print reporter, online journalist and network news producer. It took me years to find the confidence to even try reporting on air, and once I did, I felt that it was what I was always meant to do.
That desire spurred me to meet with an ear, nose and throat specialist who, after putting a tiny camera down my nose and into my voice box, referred me to a laryngologist.
Last November I was diagnosed with velopharyngeal insufficiency, or VPI. It’s a condition where my vocal folds never fully close as they’re supposed to when I speak. The small gap between the contracted folds allows air to escape through my larynx, resulting in a more pronounced nasality to my voice.
The solution, my laryngologist offered, was simple. He could inject filler material into the wall of my larynx, enough to inflate part of it and cause it to fully shut. The filler would only last about six months, enough time to see if the procedure had altered my voice to my liking, and if it had, we could explore permanent surgical options.
I felt tears of joy welling, and a sense of hope that this surgery would open doors in my career that had previously been slammed in my face.
At the same time, I wrestled with the decision. A vocal coach once taught me that everyone has a unique set of vocal folds, similar to how our fingerprints are all one of a kind. They’re the reason why our voices are all so different and unique. Thinking of that, I worried that by altering the movement of my vocal folds, I was sacrificing a part of my identity.
A vocal coach once taught me that everyone has a unique set of vocal folds, similar to how our fingerprints are all one of a kind. I worried that I was sacrificing a part of my identity.
Emma Goss
Leading up to the procedure, I questioned whether going through with it was giving into industry pressure, or acquiescing to bullies. I reasoned that what I was doing was an act of self-preservation and determination. Rather than letting the trolls bully me into quitting broadcast journalism altogether, I would fight for the career I’d always dreamed of.
When I told my relatives around the Thanksgiving table that I was having vocal surgery, one cousin likened it to cosmetic surgery. Fixing one feature that a viewer or employer doesn’t like, she cautioned, doesn’t mean they won’t find something else to pick on.
At that moment, I finally understood why I was doing this in the first place. I didn’t care about changing my voice for anyone’s benefit but my own. I didn’t want to be the little girl at summer camp made to feel like an alien anymore. I was going through with this procedure with no promise that altering my voice was going to land me a better job on television, but at least I’d know my career trajectory didn’t hinge solely on the sound of my voice.
On a rainy January morning before the sun came up, I went in for my initial procedure. I was put under anesthesia, and after an hour I was in the recovery room. The outcome of the surgery was subtle, but sounded to me as if I’d finally gotten over a 30-year cold. The change was barely noticeable to the people who care about me, who didn’t think my voice needed changing at all.
I now work at a different news station in the Bay Area, still freelancing. I feel valued where I work, and I’m proud of my reporting. My voice has never been a topic of discussion between my colleagues and me. When I speak, it feels like my breath is coming out of my chest, instead of my nose, without me having to do hours of vocal and breath exercises to achieve that delivery. I’m not taking painstaking effort to mask something anymore, and that feels liberating.
I went ahead with a second surgery in May, which entailed stitching a synthetic “flap” to my larynx to permanently shut the air gap. This time, recovery will take several months, and during this time, my voice sounds more nasally than it ever has before — the exact opposite of what I was trying to achieve. But even while I’m still recovering, and some of my voice muscles are temporarily paralyzed, I know the outcome will be worth it. Already the voice of doubt in my head, telling me to brace myself every time I speak to someone new, anticipating a mean joke or remark about how strange my voice sounds to them, is gone. That, more than resolving my VPI, was the closure I really needed.
This spring, after the success of my first procedure, I grabbed a to-go coffee at a Peet’s, and as I thanked the barista, she asked, “Aren’t you on the news?” My hair was pulled into a messy ponytail. My face, sans makeup, was wet with sweat from a long run. I should have been unrecognizable. “I recognize your voice,” the barista said. I knew then that I hadn’t lost my signature sound. It just has a different flavor to it now, one that allows me to focus on the message I want to communicate through journalism, and not worry about being judged for how it sounds.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
