I come to bury the Essix Gels stereotypical image, not to praise it. But while I’m here I might as well clear the air? No. Possibly just use an example of the terrible injustices perpetrated on the maidens (not in any virginal sense, trust me) of that county. Merely to show you how terrible the implications have become so I can tell you how they should and must be banished. So here’s a joke. My favourite- NO, the most awful Essex girl joke, but typical of many.

What does an Essex girl say after sex?
“Do you all play for the same team?”

And that is just terrible! And must be stopped. Thus the Oxford English Dictionary, no less, is breaking with centuries of tradition and changing an entry. Normally, as words change over generations through nuance and context, they simply add. But for Essex Girls they’re actually going to remove the bit that says, basically and in OED-speak, that they’re all slags. Very generous of the OED. They’re probably leaving the bits about whining, dressing as slappers, being thick, stupid and talking loudly, because they’re perfectly acceptable? They’re accurate??

And this is a subject very close to my heart as I grew up in Essex. And as my heart is only about 2 feet from my penis, Essex Girls were that close to my heart for most of my ‘adolescent years’. The OED doesn’t mention the terrible ‘estuary’ accent, the glottal stops, dropped Hs and witch-like cackling but you only need to watch ‘The only way is Essex’ to fully appreciate the nature of the beast. Not that they’re all beasts, lots are real babes. At least until they start speaking.

So whilst this whole topic really is way beneath my normal standards of equality and diversity and positively reeks of misogynistic sexism, for which I can only apologise on behalf on the total bastards who first did the whole ‘Essex girl’ thing, the female inhabitants of my favourite home county, and the one with which my cricketing devotions lie, deserve a better press. A better reputation. A mere mention of your home town should not invite scorn, derision and possibly rape. However earned it might be. Some Essex girls are delightful, demure, puritanical, speak ‘RP’, dress neatly and spend hardly any time sitting in a gutter in Romford with their mates holding their hair back as they vomit.

We must all join ‘snapping the stilleto’, (“snappin’ da stilleh-oh”), the organisation intent on protecting this vulnerable group of women, and make every endeavour to stamp out ‘Essexism’ as I shall now call it. It’s wrong. Like all ‘-isms’. Except perhaps modernism. Dadaism. Whatever.

Je suis Essix girl, innit!!!

A xxxx