This blog was originally written in March 2020 over on my old account as Welfare officer for LUU.
My identical twin sister and I, both from the glorious Great Grimsby, now have different accents, despite both going to Leeds Uni. We get a lot of variations of “oh my god, why do your voices sound so different?”. Hers has changed less if not become even more Northern, while mine has tiptoed its way towards sounding more posh (not going to bring myself to say Southern) without me really noticing.
It’s mainly down to us living and socialising with very different people. Becky has had way more Northern housemates and friends from places like Scunthorpe and Chorley, I’ve ended up around more people from places I’d never really heard of but are basically “sort of near London”. However, I’ve also ended up in different jobs to my sister.
My year in industry was an internship at the University of Leeds, working primarily in the Faculty of Engineering. I felt a little self-conscious of my background and think I felt that to be taken seriously by management in a renowned Russell Group University, I would have to fit the part a little more, so I did semi-subconsciously alter the way I dressed, held myself, and spoke. I went into my final year and then graduated, starting a new job as an SU Officer where the stakes were even higher — a Trustee and Director (technically) of two charities, sitting on a weekly basis in meetings with the most senior of University management, coming into contact with senior leaders of other stakeholders of the Uni and Union. I haven’t actively tried to make my accent sound posher, but here we are, with dozens of people having told my twin and I that we sound very noticeably different now, and I don’t get teased half as much by Southern colleagues about the way I say things like “mushroom”.
I think it’s a shame that I’ve lost the regional touches to my accent, despite how much I bitch about being from such a deprived and gloomy hometown. I can’t seem to get it back and I keep noticing times when I’ll say graRss and paRth, for instance, instead of my usual graHss and paHth. Horrifying stuff.
In all seriousness, I don’t really want to shed a marker of my lower-class background — I’m proud of it. I was a strong believer in the “fake it til ya make it” philosophy — it’s how I stopped being painfully introverted/shy and built up the little bit of confidence I have now, but I almost feel ashamed I allowed that to seep into something so inherently a part of my identity. I don’t blame anyone or anything in particular for applying the pressure to be “more posh” , not even the good-spirited joking about my Northernness I encountered in first year — I think it was more internal — but even that is still not a promising indication of the kind of environment we live in with regards to societal attitudes to class.
At the end of the day, even if I have lost the audible marker of my background, it doesn’t actually change or take away from any of the experiences that have led me to where I am now. I still want to represent people from lower-class roots, and it still motivates me to care about injustice (like the fact that self-isolation and the social impact of a pandemic right now means very different things for different people depending on your class and level of financial comfort, or the fact that when advocating for drug harm reduction approaches for young people, I’m doing so with the knowledge that poorer kids are way less likely to be able to get out of charges relating to substance use). But here’s just a reminder to any other young person who had a far-from-fancy upbringing: you are worth the exact same amount, however thick your accent. Your experience, skills, insight — it all counts for the same. Always try to remember this, always try to hold onto your pride, and don’t cave to any pressure from yourself or from society that to be valid and credible you need to change any part of yourself.
