Editor's Note: We noticed recently the attention now being paid to letting hair go gray. Examples of women sporting straight or curly examples of their gray tresses are showing up in magazines and occasionally on television. We decided to rerun Julia's article when she made note of this phenomenon a number of years ago. 

by Julia Sneden

The other night, while listening to the voice of yet another high-pitched, nasal, female newscaster, my husband suddenly snapped: "Pauline Frederick, where are you now that we need you?"

Photo: Spotted in Germany 2018 because of long grey hair (most older woman here have it short) and the colour matched poncho; Tobias "ToMar" Maier

For those of you too young to remember her, Pauline Frederick was a pioneer in broadcast journalism, one of a very few female news commentators. Her extraordinary career stretched from 1939-1980. She did a stint as a UN reporter; she worked as an anchorwoman for ABC and for PBS. She was a woman of formidable intelligence, a reporter whose careful, calm delivery bespoke knowledge of her subjects, and integrity in reporting them. She had a beautifully modulated voice and her diction was precise without being fussy. The latter well-remembered attributes were what triggered my husband's snarl. Sometimes it seems as if the people who hire women for television news desks have tin ears. The least they could do is to send those young women out for voice lessons.

When I was about 12, I was made to take speech lessons because I spoke very rapidly and sloppily. I remember my teacher grabbing the sides of my rib cage and saying: "You must breathe to support the voice! Don't let your chest rise; feel your ribs expand out to the side!" She maintained stoutly that it's possible to lower the register of every voice, if only one learns to breathe right and "relax the instrument, child!"

My diction improved as I discovered how to slow down, and I soon learned to escape my teacher's fury by carefully articulating things like the second "t" in "twenty" and by not gulping a quick 'n' at the end of words ending in "ing." As for nasality, she would croon: "Open the throat. Feel the vowel in your vocal chords, not in your nose."

Of course my French teacher kept urging us to do the exact opposite, pinching the bridge of her nose and crying: "Feel the 'inh' vibrating up here, girls!" — but that's another story. In any event, I was lucky to learn early on how to control and project my voice.

There are probably plenty of reasons that TV newswomen tend to have shrill voices. Lack of experience plays a part. Excitement or stage fright can both translate as tension that sends voices even higher. After all, most of our newswomen are very young. The tendency to pair older, male anchormen with pretty young women is almost universal. I will concede that TV has done a good job of hiring women of color or of differing ethnicity. It's much easier to find racial diversity among women newscasters, I think, than among male newscasters.

It seems to me that what's really missing is female newscasters who are over 40. Once they hit that magic mark, they are relegated to interview shows,  or TV news magazines like "60 Minutes" or "Dateline NBC."

I mean no disrespect to those very accomplished women, but I can't help noting that not a one of them has let her hair go honestly gray.

The other day, I watched as one broadcaster interviewed a newswoman who had delivered one newscast bald. She had been treated for cancer, and during her chemotherapy and radiation treatments had been wearing a wig to disguise the fact that her hair was falling out. When she finally finished the treatments, she shaved off what was left of her hair, and announced to her employers her intention to appear bald on screen. To their credit, they were supportive. To her credit, it was a one-time appearance because, she said: "If I continued to appear on screen bald, my baldness itself would become news, and detract from the news I was delivering." Her single appearance was, she said, so that her audience would know what she had been through and that she was now all right. For her interview and for all future newscasts, she wore her wig.

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