She Wants Your Attention, She’s the Voice of the City
22nd April 2021
Disembodied female-sounding voices echo out across cities and transitory spaces as an integral means of controlling movement. Often found in stations, shopping centres, supermarket checkouts, elevators, automated phone lines, GPS systems and the more interactive virtual assistants such as Siri, Cortana, or Alexa—an almost ubiquitous voice appears. It is a seemingly familiar, comfortable accent that speaks softly, guiding in the right direction, calling for attention and reminding us to be careful. The pitches fluctuate with some more human-sounding and others more robotic. Phonemes pieced together to sound out the right words but most commonly retaining a ‘she’ pronoun and clichéd ‘feminine’ qualities.
She is there to take care of us, to direct and gently usher us in the right direction. Her ‘well-spoken’, reassuring tone is embedded with a history of service workers and disembodied voices used in public and private spheres. It is intended to take on a specific gendered role; to politely and submissively assist.