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In Python2, this works:
 >>> from email.mime.text import MIMEText
 >>> m = MIMEText('abc')
 >>> str(m)
 'From nobody Tue Mar 13 15:44:59 2012\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\nabc'
 >>> m['Subject'] = u'É test'
 >>> str(m)
 'From nobody Tue Mar 13 15:48:11 2012\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\nSubject: =?utf-8?q?=C3=89_test?=\n\nabc'
That is, unicode string automatically get turned into encoded words.
In Python3 this no longer works:
 >>> from email.mime.text import MIMEText
 >>> m = MIMEText('abc')
 >>> str(m)
 'Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\nabc'
 >>> m['Subject'] = u'É test'
 >>> str(m)
 Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/message.py", line 154, in __str__
 return self.as_string()
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/message.py", line 168, in as_string
 g.flatten(self, unixfrom=unixfrom)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/generator.py", line 99, in flatten
 self._write(msg)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/generator.py", line 152, in _write
 self._write_headers(msg)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/generator.py", line 186, in _write_headers
 header_name=h)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/header.py", line 205, in __init__
 self.append(s, charset, errors)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p33/Lib/email/header.py", line 286, in append
 s.encode(output_charset, errors)
 UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xc9' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
Presumably the problem is that the Python2 code tests for 'string' and if
it isn't string handles it by CTE encoding it. In Python3 everything
is a string. Probably what should happen is the encoding error should
be caught, and the CTE encoding done at that point, based on the model of how Python2 handled unicode strings.