Going on the Market, Con Accent

Today I had a good talk with one of my dissertation advisors about my diss and about my job prospects. She and I mostly converse via email, so it was nice to connect via phone again. And the first thing she says to me--"I love the accent." It's been at least 10 years since I've been told I have an accent and apparently, "it's cute." I knew that being home was rubbing off on me, my rate of speech is faster and the tone of my voice is higher at times--but I hadn't thought about the accent part. I'm cool with it now and in many ways it was a nice compliment. When I was younger, I took pride in the fact that everyone told me I didn't sound like a Southerner--I hated being from the South as a kid. But the longer I was away from home for my degrees, the more I missed the South and the more I identified with being a Southerner. Now the Southeast feels like home, and for the first time, I'm ready to embrace an important marker of being home--the good ol' Southern accent.

BUT

I had not thought about being on the market with an accent--especially a "cute" one. As if I didn't have enough markers of difference already. As I mentioned previously in Becoming a Professor, there are quite a few issues that prospective faculty of color must consider. Now consider the various perceptions, misconceptions, and potential exoticism of a (cute) Southern accent. Granted, this issue could never be as severe as the challenges faced by non-native English speakers. But the compliment I received today is a good conversation starter for thinking about social roles and stereotypes. I wonder if this is still an issue in today's society. The issues of accent/voice relates to my post from yesterday on women in leadership. Studies of women politicians and women in corporate leadership have shown that women with high, "cute" voices are not taken as seriously as women with more low tones in their voice. Do you notice that sports networks rarely hire women with higher voices as anchors--if you're a woman with a high voice you are (literally) on the sidelines. But anyways, it strikes me that theremight still be some residual stereotype that someone who sounds too "cute" is therefore not intellectual. Have we, as contemporary forward-thinking academics, transcended that?? I wonder.