Every single USian woman I have ever known finds English accents unbelievably sexy. No matter that there are gazillions of different English accents, they think they’re all sexy: Yorkshire, Chav, Geordie, Sloane Ranger, cockney—they don’t care. If an English person speaks they are ipso facto sexy. There is not a USian woman on the planet who does not hold this view.
As an Australian it is difficult for me to express my extreme horror so I will not bother. My true compatriots understand. Enough said.
But how is it possible for every woman of one nation to hold such an insane belief?
I have a theory.
The British tourist authorities have been secretly brainwashing USian women. And I suspect they’ve done it by implanting a tiny chip that emits brainwashing English-accents-are-sexy rays in every copy of Pride and Prejudice and every Hugh Grant movie.
I believe the folks responsible for attempting to convince the rest of the world of the existence of “Cool Britannia” (as if!) are capable of anything.1
So USian women quit reading, watching or thinking about Pride and Prejudice and Hugh Grant. Let your ears hear unhindered. The way Tony Blair talks? Not sexy. David Beckham? Not even close. The Prince of Wales? Aarrghh!!!
In the meantime we unbrainwashed folk have to learn compassion for those so afflicted. Especially for those whose brain damage has led them into unfortunate relationships. They know not what they do.
- Or it could be bunnies. You know, cause they’re not cute like everybody supposes. [↩]
You may have a point here. See, I hated Pride and Prejudice, and I have never seen a Hugh Grant movie, and I, although a USAian woman, do not actually find British accents sex-ay.
Also, I can distinguish between them (roughly speaking).
Then again, I am genderbent, too. Maybe that helps.
Or maybe midgets . . .
I feel I’ve upset you deeply with the whole Mason thing. What can I do to help you recover?
I don’t think that *all* british accents are sexy, but we usian women also think that men with Australian accents are sexy. 😀
Lori: Ah hah! The evidence mounts!
Maureen: It’s your recovery I’m worried about!
Or maybe midgets . . .
I was waiting for that!
Mary: but we usian women also think that men with Australian accents are sexy.
That’s almost as bad!
Scottish accents are the best.
I blame Mr. Connery.
Its true. even when he’s supporting bush, for heaven’s sake, blair reduces me to a puddle of goo. angry goo, but goo. and it’s not just posh accents, i will actually listen to a humbly born gent talk about sports–i have zero interest in sports–if he’s english, scottish, irish or from wales. the goo-reducing emanations radiate from all the islands, not just england.
i love australian accents, (and french and german, heck, any accent) but to me australian speech patterns signify brotherhood with yankdom, they dont have that spine-melting caress that the english have when speaking english words. even the absurdity of some snob talking about grewin’ his flahs can charm me with all the rest of the words in the sentence.
help me, obi wan, you’re my only hope. no, wait, he has it too. i’m lost, lost!
hehehehehehehehe. whenever i watch a movie or hear someone speak with a certain accent, i automatically find myself thinking in that accent. i’m too embarrassed to try it aloud in front of people, so i think it. i lovvvvvve accents. irish, scottish, english (yes, all varieties), australian, spanish, and certain indian (as in india) varieties. they fascinate me. it makes me wonder why us usians have such boring speech. although i’m grateful i didn’t get stuck with a texas twang. 😛
so, junior year of high school. at an all girls school. our soccer coach wants us to get pre-season experience, but tapps rules says the coach can’t coach us till the season starts. so he dreams up these “optional” soccer workshop things and hires a guy to run them…. a young, hot, athletic, soccer-playing english guy.
strangely enough, the workshops were quite popular. 😀 😀
It might have to do with the domestic alternatives – from Larry the Cable Guy redneckian to Upper East Side snobese to California Keanu Reeves airheadish, British accents are a novelty to most USians.
Not that I’m an authority on why women do anything…
i agree with rebecca. why does our usian speech sound so boring? really by the way we sound it’s no wonder that we think english accents are sexy. who can blame us? we crave the diffent sounding words.
I personally found that a lot of women in the US loved my accent (bland southern English trying hard to suppress a lifetime of Black Country-isms). However the funniest thing is that at first they all though I was Australian.
Not sure what that actually means…
I don’t. I like British slang, though, regardless of the speaker.
Clive Owen forgives you, Justine. And so do I. But when he forgives you, it sounds sexier. xo
I’ve always believed the sexiness hierarchy went as follows:
1. South African
2. Irish
3. Australian
4. Scottish
5. British spoken by Hugh Grant post-1999
6. British
Well, it’s probably the Beatles who are really to blame, and by implication the Dave Clark Five, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, the Rolling Stones, etc. Not only for the Anglomania, but for the blurring in much of the US public’s mind of any difference between clipped Oxbridge sophistication and the most knuckle-dragging lager lout–a difference that is apparent within seconds to pretty much anyone from Britain or the former Empire–and even to some of us here in NYC.
Then again, for us Yanks, what’s the alternative? Brooklynese? Surfer? Midwestern twang? Nothing against any of these, but you might begin to see how other ways of speaking could be appealing
I can certainly think of a few women with Australian accents who are unbelievably sexy.
i think y’all are missing the point. to usians, ALL accents are sexy to a certain extent. it’s because we’re hysterically afraid of difference, so difference is sexy. brit accents are the closest we can get to us without actually BEING us (Blair, for example), so we drool all over it. the more challenging the accent is, the less, and more, sexy it is.
i’ve always like australian accents more, though, and i’m not just saying that ’cause it’s your blog. 😉 … say, know any single australian guys in the bay area?
so what accents do you like? lol!
In theory, i’m sure there are men with ugly british accents. In practice, though, I have yet to hear a guy with one I don’t like (I have heard women with accents I don’t like, though, so I’m fairly sure this is just luck this far.)
Really though, with me, I think it comes down to just liking accents. A few of my friends are southerners, and I love the way they sound. (of course, I also just in general have a thing for some voices–I used to chat with a coworker just to hear him talk. Didn’t matter what he talked about, I just loved the sound of his voice.)
I think women are wired in general to link voices to other male characteristics, so we pay attention to them more than guys do. 🙂
i’m a sucker for a welsh accent. they just sound so friendly!
(claire: there are no single australian guys AT ALL. ANYWHERE. they are all gay or are in long term relationships with leggy blondes. i have a theory about alien abduction.)
I am english, so obviously I don’t find most english accents especially sexy. I mean, there are some seriously unattractive regional accents out there. And I couldn’t agree more with Justine’s ‘aarrgh’ re the way Prince Charles speaks. Ick.
To be honest, I don’t much go for Australian either. Yet I’m a sucker for certain usian accents. So maybe it goes both ways?
As American accents being boring – I think everyone thinks that the way they speak is incredibly dull. I’ve had long arguments trying to explain to people who are convinced that they ‘don’t have an accent’ that really, they do. You just have to go somewhere else, and suddenly, you’re the sexy foreigner. Even if you’re from Lancashire. Or Tennessee.
Can I just say that I can’t imagine anyone finding Tony Blair sexy? I mean, he’s an okay PM and all, but… no. 🙂
I suppose I’m just another brainwashed usian! I love men with british accents! And Austrailian accents? I would just melt. Keith Urban is the most uber-sexy man I’ve ever seen. He has almost the whole package. ALMOST. So I guess now that I know that I’ve been brainwashed, how do I erase the effects of the chip? I mean, I don’t want to fall for men that I believe are sexy if they’re really…not. Maybe Scott has some insight and he can create something for us USian women like he thought up in Uglies. 😉
I find accents in general sexy, but the British-Isles-and-Former-Colonies accents especially so. (With some exceptions; the chav thing doesn’t do it for me, for example.)
However, I’m also aware of the flip side. When I went to London as a student, people realized I was from the South and begged me to use a Southern accent. I’m not fond of the Southern US accents, as I’m surrounded by them, but it was exotic to the Londoners.
Vive la difference!
bella: I’ve found that to be true when visiting my British relatives – I would go to the pub with my cousins and have lots of women talking to me. It certainly does wonders for the ego.
darice: My sister took full advantage of that. While we were in England she had the most southern accent you could imagine – butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, as the saying goes. Yet as soon as we returned back to the States it morphed into the most convincing British accent you’ve ever heard. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the attention she received on each side of the pond.
When I was travelling America a week or so ago, all the yanks kept on thinking I was Irish. Maybe I should have turned this to my benefit:
“Oh my GOD, are you Irish?”
“Only if you want me to be…”
As an alternative to the Cool Britannia brainwashing, might a suggest a prescription of Stool Britannia via such prestigous publications as Viz Comics?
justine, bear in mind that most americans can’t tell an aussie accent from a british one (I know: horrors!). really it’s australian accents that they find so attractive, they just don’t know it yet.
David,are you trying to say that Australians and Brits are, like, different nationalities or something?
My whole world has just imploded.
😛
please justine don’t hurt him.
as a usian woman who has lived in the uk, i can say that i DO NOT find all british accents attractive. queen’s english is ok, if a little stilted.
now, give me a nice accadian french accent and i’m butter.
by the way, you could use this to your advantage in your dodgy lodger story…he speaks a million languages, is able to morph his accent at will, usian women are defenseless, and only one lone girl can withstand his honey tongue…
David Moles: justine, bear in mind that most americans can’t tell an aussie accent from a british one
Like you have to tell me that! I get asked if I’m English way more often than Australian.
The funniest aspect of the whole accent fetish is that most of the folks with it (and obviously I don’t mean the fine and erudite and well-travelled readers of this blog—Barzak excepted) can’t tell a South African accent from an Aussie accent from an English one, let alone all the regional variations within.
It is to laugh.
LOL! indeed it is to laugh – the lure of the exotic!
as an ausssie abroad, i couldn’t believe how well i was treated in the USA and how lovely everyone was to me… all ‘cos of my accent (it certainly aint the voice itself which is kinda nasally!).
I must say I found myself broadening it all outrageously and tending to slang i’d certainly never use at home… shameless!
as for me. i think the southern usian is the best. i melt.
and the worst? Kiwis and sarth efricans! to me they’re like running your fingernails down a chalkboard! (well, most of ’em) and cannot believe that anyone could possibly mistake ’em for a dinkum oz accent! Wot are they thinking? LOL!
What’s wierd is when I’m in Paris and doing my level best to grate my “r”s and pinch my “eu”s and someone compliments me on my cute American accent. I mean, I’ve heard people speak French with an American accent, and cute isn’t the word that springs to mind.
I guess it’s the “exotic other” thing at work.
I like sarth efricans. I had a gyn once who was SA, and she made the ickiest procedures sound faintly comic.
A sexy woman with a sexy accent is sexier than a sexy woman with no accent. An unsexy woman with a sexy accent is not sexier than a sexy woman with no accent. Dunno if this is transitive to men. Personally, I find Emma Thompson’s accent quite delightful.
Australian accents are sexier than UK accents. But it’s hard to beat a good Russian accent, if it’s subtle. Fortunately, though, I really don’t think accents are what draws us together, anymore than nose shapes are.
BTW, “no accent” isn’t a meaningless word – it’s just relative. Saying it doesn’t exist is like saying that the state of motionlessness doesn’t exist, because even if you feel like you’re at rest, you are always in motion relative to some other body.
Well, that’s funny because this “USian” man thinks an Australian accent makes a woman automatically sexy.
That includes you, Dame Edna.