Neither of the Corffs was willing to say there was a palpable upsurge in baby-voiced women, just a never-ending supply of them. And although Claire Corff mentioned that some of her students developed high-pitched voices in reaction to the more aggressive cadence of their feminist mothers, I wonder if what's really going on here is more Pavlovian than political. In contemporary American culture, women seem to be rewarded not for being grown-ups but for assuming the qualities of little girls. Whether it's erasing the lines off our faces or wearing the same size jeans we wore in high school, what we want most is to hear how little we've changed. [More]

The 20 males that heard Derryberry's two recordings reacted much more aggressively to the new tunes, ready to defend their territory against the crooning interloper. And the chicks? They responded by becoming more open to sexual advances when the new music was played. The oldies didn't turn them on at all. [More]