Why Kelly Johnson Sounds Like Michelle Duggar
Understanding the childlike voice of fundamentalist women
Why do so many Christian women think it’s a good thing to sound like a little girl? The breathy gasps, whisper voices, and baby-high pitch are on purpose. But what would make a grown woman think it’s attractive to modulate her voice that way?
While the long answer might include cultural norms, southern manners, Baby Doll nighties, Marilyn Monroe to Paris Hilton, and social media, the short answer is quick and to the point: we’re taught.
No, not necessarily in a class with a text and whiteboard (although that was part of my upbringing.) Taught through influence. Through an invisible reward system of acceptance and attention. Through the older generations speaking in a soft baby whisper to the younger. And, through a book that you might not have ever heard of but that’s certainly made the rounds in churches and coffee circles since 1963: Fascinating Womanhood.
If fundamentalist voices sound like southern voices….yes.
Not to say Christian fundamentalism isn’t alive and well in the North—it is. But there’s a stronger vocalality when it’s mixed with a sweet tea accent.
Kelly Johnson is from Louisiana; Michelle Duggar is from Arkansas. Both are part of Christian Fundamentalism. You can read more about the ties here and here. Behaviorally, the Johnsons exhibit several casual fundie hallmarks, like the adoring gaze, weird sexual monitoring, and the voice. And while that voice modulation into a sweet, syrupy, baby voice may sound off the set of Steel Magnolias, in reality, the purpose is much darker.
If you already follow the trends in fundie families, the Johnsons’ origin story won’t surprise you.
ON THEIR FIRST DATE, they discovered they wanted to name their future kids the same names. (It’s not unusual to talk about your unborn children on fundie dates! We all did it! It showed how much we valued parenthood.)
EXACTLY ONE YEAR LATER, they were married. (Quick engagements are how folks in purity culture make it to the altar as virgins.)
TO MAKE DIVORCE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, Mike and Kelly got a Covenant Marriage. (This positioned them as model Christians espousing this deeply conservative view, which aided MJ’s career.)
TO THE WORLD outside of fundamentalism, the Johnsons’ views on same-sex marriage, bestiality, divorce, abortion, and gender roles in marriage sound extreme. MJ says weird shit like, “My wife spent the last couple weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord, and she’s a little worn out.” Ew, right? But he says this weird shit almost innocently, and he’s been inside of his bubble for so long, he doesn’t hear how weird he sounds to the outside world.
But to anyone who’s been on the inside, we recognize the signs. The fundamentalist world is all about knowing how right you are, how wrong everyone else is, and how if they’d only listen to you, you could lead them to the light. We’re astonished when someone disagrees with us. That soft voice sounds so patronizing because it is.
Soft and sweet manipulation is a tenet of Fascinating Womanhood.
Fascinating Womanhood is the kind of little paperback handed by one woman to another over coffee while she cries about her ailing marriage. It was handed over the desk by pastors who didn’t know what to say to troubled women unable to change their abusive husbands. Used in Bible studies and Sunday school classes and kept on nightstand tables. For decades and across denominational lines, it was quietly ubiquitous. As a result, Helen B. Andelin and the men behind her influenced culture without direct attribution.
Published in 1963 with millions of copies sold, the book is currently in its sixth print run. There are active FW support groups online today, where women lament their abusive husbands and the advice they’re given is true to the book.
“The man is to be the guide, protector, and provider of his wife and children.”
“Serious consequences occur when the wife refuses to obey her husband.”
“The woman who fails to keep the house clean reveals a weakness of character.”
“Never shake a man’s hand with strength and vigor.”
“Feminine dependency is a woman’s need for masculine care and dependency.”
“A girl should not center her education around a career lest she become independent.”
“We do well to copy the manner in which children express their emotions.”
“Men love childlike women. It amuses and fascinates them because it’s a contrast to their superior strength.”
“We can suppress our anger by subduing our hostile feelings.”
“The next time you’re angry with your husband, try some childlike qualities. Stomp your foot. Beat your fists on your husband’s chest. Call him a big hairy brute!”
Sometimes I’ll hear from someone who takes issue with FW as such a powerful influence. Then I ask them about their grandmother’s manners or dress code. Or her reading pile. The hallmarks are in style too—see the first season of Mad Men. The Mormons used it extensively in the West, as did the Southerners, as did Elizabeth Elliot’s crowd.
The vocal training is explicit in the book, and subtle when taught relationally.
“The ideal feminine voice is gentle and variable, with a clear ringing tone and an air of self assurance. You must not let your voice suggest mannish efficiency, or coarse boldness..
If you have any difficulty with your voice, a few weeks’ practice ought to help you greatly. Speaking aloud to yourself or reading aloud to yourself in the privacy of your room, endeavoring all the time to eliminate the objectional features in your voice, should be effective. A half-hour devoted to this each day ought to be sufficient, if it is kept up for three or four weeks. When reading, read with expression….
Typical in a feminine woman is a cooing quality in the voice when talking to babies, little children or animals. This is known as baby talk.
Fascinating Womanhood and related materials did eventually fade in most circles, as books do and as religion changed. But there were reprintings and spinoffs, and generations of influenced women who taught the women beneath them. Bill Gothard’s mother and sister are from the same era and shaped his views of what a woman should sound like, dress like, and be like. The IBLP conferences are full of women who sound just like Kelly and Michelle. There are congregations full of fundie women who sound like babies (most often when around men or have attention on them.) Chances are, if you have religious trauma, you’re only a few degrees separated from someone who read or was taught FW.
Christian women know adult men find children sexually attractive because that training is deeply steeped in our culture as influenced through stealth teaching like what’s in Fascinating Womanhood. Desperate young women set their resistance aside and open their minds to this “tried and true” way to get their husband’s attention. And very often, it works.
Like The Excellent Wife (and Martha Peace had to be influenced by FW too) Fascinating Womanhood promises to solve hurting and abusive marriages and help women who feel unloved by training them to subjugate, submit, and become sweet, childlike servant angels their husbands will adore.
Sounds abhorrent, right? But the market for this book is codependent people pleasers desperate to remain married. So even smart women learned to soften their voices, stifle their laughter, coo, purr, and ask Big Daddy for permission for everything.
I know because I was one: a smart girl in way over her head, desperate to please my new husband. When my then-mother-in-law gave it to me, I wanted to throw up. I wasn’t a girly girl who liked dressing up and finishing school-style manners. I didn’t want to be a baby-voice mannequin. But after a few more “fights,” under the high pressure that comes from being an exemplary new marriage at church, and knowing divorce was impossible, I eventually broke and gave it a try.
It was the first of many small deaths that bred more abuse, disrespect, and dysfunction. The advice in that book warped the power dynamic even more. My husband didn’t respect me more—he treated me like a child in a woman’s body who he had sex with.
I believe there’s a correlation to sexual abuse in religious environments where women behave like children, and children are prematurely told they’re women.
Being free has required me to learn to first respect myself. I needed to retrain my voice to sound like an adult, behave like an adult, and assert myself as the autonomous person I am. It’s taken years of work but also personal confrontation. Because women are complicit in patriarchal systems and we can be complicit in the change too.
Michelle Duggar had years of influence, and Kelly Johnson is third in line for First Lady. It matters that their men like women who sound like children.