Tuesday 25 October 2016

How many Essex girls does it take to saturate the media?

Something of an Essex Girl overload today. The Times has a full page feature ("The only way is out for Essex girl label") interviewing former Bloomberg workers Natasha Sawkins and Juliet Thomas, who started the petition on the Mother Hub website to have the words 'Essex girl' removed from the Oxford English Dictionary. They also have a hash tag campaign where successful women reclaim the phrase with #iamanessexgirl.

The Sun also covers the furore while the Evening Standard has a feature proclaiming "Essex girl campaigners win meeting with bosses of dictionary." The Victoria Derbyshire Show on BBC interviewed several Essex women talking about the petition while tomorrow's Guardian has a Pass Notes on Essex Girls. Meanwhile the publishers of the Oxford Dictionary thank the campaigners for their interest but say they can't exclude offensive terms. And rather ironically, the well-intentoned petition seems to have bought the phrase Essex girl right back into the public consciousness…

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