The Boston Accent is Ranked the 3rd Sexiest After Texas and New York. New Jersey is Dead Last.

Daily Mail - New Jersey's accent has been voted the 'least sexy' in the United States in a new survey. 

The accent made famous by shows such as Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey came last in a ranking of 50 US dialects, just below the local twangs of Long Island, Florida and Minnesota.  

The Texan drawl came out on top in the Big 7 Travel survey for the second year running. ...

New York accents were second on the list with Boston third. ...

[T]he New York accent more generally came second - moving ahead of Boston which was runner-up in the 2019 rankings. 

'Fast and hypernasal, yet quite charming at times' was the verdict on the New York accent which has long been a staple of Hollywood movies. 

Boston came third for an accent which has stymied generations of actors and produced such catchphrases as 'pahk yuh cahr in Hahvuhd yahd'. 

First of all, how can New York and New Jersey be 48 slots apart on a ranking of 50 accents? Aren't they indistinguishable? I mean, maybe to the trained ear you can tell a difference. If you're living in Jersey and taking the train into Manhattan for work every day you can pick up on subtle nuances of each. But to the rest of us in the outside world, they sound the same. I guess it must be like "March of the Penguins," where you can't tell one of the smelly buggers from another, but mates find each other in a flock of thousands.

That aside, I don't get how Boston slipped in the rankings behind New York from last year. But I won't quibble. Admittedly the Texas accent is pretty alluring, with a soft, buttery sound to it that conjures up so many American icons. Country musicians, astronauts, cheerleaders, quarterbacks, beauty pageant winners and the like. I could see where sound of that one would make a lot of blood rush to your bathing suit areas. 

But New York? That's a lot harder to process. I can only imagine the appeal comes from generations of movie gangsters, TV cops, tough chicks, street hoods, hookers with hearts of gold who have information for private eyes who slip them a 20, and whatever kind of sexual appeal that invokes. It might not register that way with me. But if say, Natalie Portman started talking to me like she was from Queens I wouldn't refuse to give her my number. 

Boston though? That's easy to explain. I've been living here by whole life and I'll be the first to tell how unpleasant it is. I don't even hear it any more in regular conversation. But when it comes up on TV or some caller into a sports talk show or something, it's jarring. To me it's the vocal equivalent of two pieces of styrofoam being rubbed together. Which is my Kryptonite. And believe me, I'm including my own accent in this. Hearing this Weymouth dialect on the radio or podcasts is unnerving because I don't hear it in my head voice. And it automatically makes whatever I'm saying sound 90% less intelligent than I think it was coming out of my brain. 

So the sexiness of the Masshole accident has nothing to do with its pleasantness. It has everything to do with what it represents. 

Winning. 

Winning at pro sports. Winning at life. Dominating the pop culture. Racking up all the award nominations in movies. Enduring all the bullshit that is part of our everyday lives here. The weather and the crooked politicians and the traffic and the cost and the way Covid has kicked our asses medically and economically as bad as anyone. And yet we don't just survive. We thrive. Show me a reality TV show that can get off the ground without a Boston character in the mix bringing chaos to the group dynamic. Don't bother. You can't. That's what's sexy about it. It's the sound of success that everyone wants to be associated with. 

Ana de Armas is one of the most desirable women on the planet and her career is going into the stratosphere. And who does she choose to be with? Ben Affleck. 

And why? Do you think it's because he was so good in "Triple Frontier"? Wrong. It's because she'd drawn to the sound of Duckboat parades and seats under the baskets at Celtics games and banners dropping at Gillette. I bet he even turns  that neutral non-regional Cambridge dialect of his he's perfected over the years in Hollywood down to about a 2 and turns up the Dorchester up to about 8, just to get her more excited. 

As a matter of fact, it's only a matter of time before PornHub makes a category of just Masshole accents. Townie Porn. Chicks from Quincy and guys from Swampscott just doing it while talking non-stop. It'll be their most popular content, because this is the sound of arousal:

So surrender, America. Resistance is futile.