I'm pretty good at recognizing voices. Answering the phone as a kid I could respond to any of my Mom's friends by name within a few syllables. I can still pick out friends and former associates on radio and TV... And every once in a while I hear a voice I don't know at all, but wish I did.
For example, Kate Hodge, the actress whose smoky barefoot breathiness can be experienced on Citracal commercials.
She reminds me of a similar sounding caller to my radio station in Seattle more than 15 years ago. I never learned her name, but the very sound of her burned into my brain as I asked if she was deliberately trying to melt my shorts. She might have moved north to Bellingham, because I could swear I heard her call the Car Talk guys from there.
Back on Cape Cod, I wasn't home when my Mom answered a call from a woman I'd known briefly as a teenager. Mom said she sounded nice, and I wasn't surprised because that's how I remembered her, and why I wanted to reconnect after living away from home for many years.
But it wasn't until recently that I finally heard her as an adult and realized Mom could very well have thought she sounded nice because, once my friend reached adulthood, they sounded very much alike!
Eargasms are a funny thing... Very personal and not necessarily limited to one particular sound. I don't really have a type, but sometimes I just have a visceral reaction. And every so often I find myself wishing that someone sounding sweet would tell me my car was ready... Or someone sultry would alter my bone density.
sounds complex
ReplyDeleteThe picture of Kate, pulling her hair back like that reminds me of a lady I worked with in NYC, making commercials. She did exactly the same thing while listening to playback. And she had a similarly estrogen charged voice.
ReplyDeleteI've thought Ms. Hodge's voice in those Citracal commercials sounds more like a younger version of the late Mary Helen McPhillips, who was a co-host of New York station WOR-TV's "Straight Talk" in the 1970's and '80's.
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