Exploring the erotic appeal of foreign accents.
Back when I was in high school, there was this foreign exchange student named Ian who really stuck in my craw. Not just in mine, but all the guys. He was, as you might have guessed, from the United Kingdom and it seemed nearly every girl on campus got super horny whenever that bastard said anything in the Queen’s English. All he’d have to do is utter some rubbish in his native dialect, and they’d swoon like they were watching the Beatles for the first time.
At first, we couldn’t figure out his allure. It sure as hell wasn’t his looks. Truth be told, Ian, as nice as he was, had the teeth of a piranha hooked on methamphetamine. It looked as if he had gnawed on a handful of gravel for a snack in between classes. But did his janky grill dissuade the girls? Nope, they’d all get damp in the panties as soon as this bloke started jabbering about where he planned to attend “university” or when he uttered“cheerio” before leaving the classroom. Ian’s British accent, I’d soon learn, was what made the ladies go arse over tit.
The inflection in someone’s voice is one of the first things we notice about the people we address. In a way, it’s how we size them up. It allows us to make some assumptions about whether they’re a bright conversationalist or a steaming pile of imbecility. So, naturally, the girls I went to high school with were attracted to Harry Piranha. Most of the native lads at my school—many from farming families—sounded like banjo-strumming inbreds, but not Ian. Nope, that timbre from across the pond conveyed a certain intelligence that these small-town girls hadn’t ever experienced, and it got them in a tizzy.
