CRANFORD, N.J. — Bernie Wagenblast is old enough to remember when a phone call to a business (on a landline, no less) would warrant, at some point in the conversation, a “sir” or a “ma’am.” It wasn’t that she longed for that genteel past. After coming out as trans late last year, she wanted its specific kind of validation: evidence that she sounded, unquestionably, like a woman.
Which is why, this past spring, Wagenblast tried calling some restaurants in the South, figuring people there still fold honorifics into casual conversation, the way a grandparent might press a caramel into a child’s palm.
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But after inquiring how late they remained open, the conversation would end without that telltale “sir,” “miss” or “ma’am.” So Wagenblast would hang up, still shadowed by doubt.
“I’ve always been defined, in part, by my voice,” said Wagenblast, 67, in an interview at her home. “So I want the voice to match this new definition of who people see.”
For years, Wagenblast’s old voice — her “guy voice,” as she calls it — has been an indelible part of the soundscape of New York City. If you’ve ever waited for a numbered subway, you’ve heard Wagenblast’s voice cautioning you, “Please stand away from the platform edge,” or telling you that the next train is “Approaching. The. Station.” Her voice has shepherded passengers through the PATH trains that travel from the New Jersey suburbs, and the AirTrains at JFK and Newark airports, where she regularly embarrassed friends she was picking up — and shocked surrounding passengers — by imitating herself. (An artificial intelligence voice has since replaced her at JFK.) She also spent 15 years on the radio stations in the tri-state area, guiding listeners through rush-hour backups in the Holland Tunnel and car accidents on the FDR.
Her old voice surrounds her, quite literally — it plays at landmarks in Cranford to give visitors an oral history of the place. Wagenblast doesn’t resent this. She has paid for groceries, bought a house and raised a family with it. And Wagenblast continues to record in that voice for work, hoping listeners can hear her smile.
But since coming out as trans late last year, Wagenblast has been living with — and trying to perfect — a different voice, one that reflects who she’s really been, all this time.
Our voices don’t just announce who we are — we use them to project who we want to be. Because when we listen to a voice, we can’t help but make assumptions about the person wielding it. Are they old or young? Knowledgeable, or likely an idiot? A local or a tourist? A friend or a foe? A man or a woman?
As with anyone who talks, sings or emotes orally for a living, Bernie, now short for Bernadette, considers her voice an instrument. It has certain immutable traits, but with skill and practice, it can be manipulated.
As a child, Wagenblast was especially thrilled by the news broadcasts that poured out of a small transistor radio. At night, when the AM signals were strongest, Wagenblast would sit at home in Cranford and tune in to stations from St. Louis to Moscow. Throughout school, Wagenblast would write letters to various radio reporters.
During the warm New Jersey summers, Wagenblast would retreat to the cool of the basement and read the Star-Ledger out loud. Wagenblast would record these readings and compare them with the voices on the radio. Did the words sound crisp and clear? Did the voice sound friendly? How did a sentence sound when a different word was stressed?
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Step by step, in high school morning announcements and college radio station news segments, Wagenblast continued to craft a voice. Resonant but not intimidating. Authoritative but approachable. Age-appropriate but not old. A voice that could eventually cover traffic in the tri-state area in 30 to 45 seconds; that wouldn’t sound too chipper about that 15-minute wait at the Lincoln Tunnel; that you could trust when it suggested you try Route 1-9 instead of the turnpike.
Throughout it all, Wagenblast wished to be seen a girl. Then a woman.
“There was not a waking hour of my life, from when I was a kid, that I did not think of it,” Wagenblast said. “It was always there — didn’t matter if I was in a bad situation, something painful, something fun. Just doing work. Whatever I was doing, I would constantly think of that.”
There were brief, “secret” moments of euphoria that felt affirming. When that house-caller told a prepubescent Wagenblast she sounded just like Marlo Thomas. That time she got so sunburned that her legs swelled to twice their normal size — an excruciating experience that gave way to joy once she realized hair could no longer grow below her knees. That 1980 “Remarkable Mouth” TV commercial for WABC radio, in which a young woman with Farrah Fawcett bangs perfectly synced her lips to Wagenblast’s traffic report.
“The first time I was ever on TV was in the body of a beautiful woman,” Wagenblast said. “I could take great pleasure in that, but I couldn’t share that with anybody else.”
Even after recognizing she was a trans woman, Wagenblast never expected to transition. She was even advised by other trans women not to, “unless you absolutely have to.” For years, Wagenblast lived by that mantra.
“I always felt that I had enough willpower to keep it down,” she said.
Share this articleShareWhen Wagenblast began taking voice therapy lessons in 2021, she still had no expectation of publicly transitioning. Rather, by developing a more feminine voice, Wagenblast hoped to privately affirm her gender. It could be a party trick, she thought. It could even be good for work. “How affirming, how trans euphoric would it have been to be able to say to a voice-over client, ‘Oh, would you like this read as a woman or as a man?’”
It was a challenge.
With a voice therapist, Wagenblast did exercises to move her voice along. Heightening her pitch by raising her larynx and then putting her fingers on her throat to gauge where it was. Or humming into a straw, forcing her voice to move forward in her mouth. But these techniques gave her only glimpses of what her feminine voice could be. Wagenblast’s voice would quickly drop down after the exercises.
So Wagenblast turned to YouTube, where she found a trove of videos from trans women sharing advice on feminizing one’s voice. But the tip she found most helpful actually came from a cisgender male gamer: Raise your voice until you reach an impossibly high, Mickey Mouse-like falsetto; then, as if walking down a ladder, start taking your voice down, bit by bit, rung by rung, until you land on a sound that feels right. Natural. You, but different.
Once Wagenblast found the right sound, she worked to be able to produce it consistently. Alone in her car, Wagenblast would narrate her drive, launch into an impromptu traffic report or recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
She would even take notes from the “unmistakably female” default voices of Alexa and Siri. Wagenblast would prompt Alexa to tell her the weather, then repeat Alexa’s answers, over and over again, to try to close the gap between the AI assistant’s voice and her own.
Since Jan. 1, Wagenblast has lived full-time in her new voice. Her first voice therapist, whom she usually sees once a month, has called out her improvement. On a voice app that demarcates “male” (blue) and “female” (pink) vocal ranges, Wagenblast can now keep her voice in the pink for extended periods. If you were to pick up the phone and call her, you’d encounter a voice as light and powdery as resort sand.
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Wagenblast is aware that, by focusing on these metrics, she’s leaning into gender norms. But as a trans woman coming out late in life, it’s important to Wagenblast to “clearly communicate to others that I’m female.” Even though many of Wagenblast’s trans women friends tell her they would love to have a voice like hers, she remains focused on how much further she’d like that voice to go.
The trans women Wagenblast knows have different relationships to their voices. Some are content to keep their old voices; some never revert to the voice of their past; still others reject the confines of “male” or “female” voices altogether. For Wagenblast, her voice is the work of a lifetime.
“My ‘guy’ voice was a multi-decade process,” Wagenblast said. Just as she doesn’t consider that voice perfected, Wagenblast doesn’t ever expect to be “100 percent satisfied” with the way she sounds as a woman. So she seeks feedback always, noting how her fresh, 9 a.m. voice differs from her tired 7 p.m. voice or how fast-food workers react when she orders at a drive-through.
Overall, it’s been a “magical” year full of new delights for her — feeling the breeze under a skirt for the first time, painting her nails, recording her local news podcast “Cranford Radio” in her new voice — and the people in Wagenblast’s community have been overwhelmingly supportive.
Her longtime friend David Judd credits that to her ability to put people at ease.
“She has been incredibly open,” said Judd, one of the first people Wagenblast came out to. “I have learned so much.”
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The pair meet up once a month for breakfast. Judd, 69, feels like he hasn’t noticed significant changes in his friend’s voice. “It’s definitely softer,” he said, “a little higher-pitched.” But the essence of that voice — the Bernie Wagenblast of it all — is undoubtedly there: “She has the same laugh.”
Voice is about more than sound. Writers and publications have voice. Artists are crowned the voices of their generations. When we say “voice,” we also mean perspective or character.
Wagenblast’s work voice may remind many people of train tracks and tunnels, highways and exits. But in her new voice, Judd still hears the person he met decades ago: Someone positive and upbeat. Someone who smiles through her sentences. Someone who doesn’t back down from challenges.
“Sunny,” Judd said. “‘Sunny’ says it really well.”
Wagenblast likens her “guy voice” to a typewriter key crisply striking a clean page. She hopes her feminine voice will sound more like a blue sky — open and welcoming.
“The girl next door,” Wagenblast mused. The one with her hair coifed into a neat brunette bob, mauve nails and comfortable shoes. The kind of girl whose voice leads you home.
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