Just because I’m from Essex doesn’t automatically mean I’m a party girl

It’s not all fake tans and constant boozing


Anyone from Essex will know that since meeting new people at university, it is only now that we realise why we are so embarrassed to admit that we come from Essex. When I say I’m from Colchester, it’s no surprise people have no idea where that is, so we have to say Essex and the conversation slowly begins to deteriorate.

You’ve received the classic grimacing eye roll with a ‘subtle’ look up and down before being told “Ohhhh, an Essex girl, yeah you can tell now”. Brilliant.

2010, the year TOWIE emerged onto our screens, led to Essex being indefensibly renowned for becoming the home to many promiscuous, unintelligent and materialistic girls. But here are a few things you should consider before slandering our home town.

No I am not best mates or related to *insert name from TOWIE*

We are continuously having to reinforce the fact that no, I am not related to Joey Essex. No, I did not party in the Sugar Hut with Megan McKenna last weekend and no, I do not live next door to Arg. Yes, I may have walked past them in the street or met them in Atik, but we aren’t all in a group chat discussing what we are gonna wear on Saturday night.

You’re in the centre of the countryside

I’m not sure why Essex is known as the party capital when the majority is rural countryside; you step out of your door to look at fields, not people drinking a Cosmopolitan in Faces. What you see on TV is the one stretch of town that we have from different angles. Come to Essex and guaranteed you’ll be stuck behind a tractor for half an hour whilst driving along a country lane.

Anoushka Hobday, studying Media and Communications said: “Girls should not be defined by TOWIE, or even one bad person they’ve met from Essex. We are all different in our own way!”

So much green

It’s not all about the partying

This may strike you as surprising. We don’t go out every weekend and we do not spend every day drunk. A lot of the time, we actually have a lot more fun being wrapped in a duvet binge-watching TV shows on Netflix.

We’re not all stupid

The slightest delinquency in our knowledge is blamed on where we come from. I apologise that I did not know that inertia keeps me in my seat whilst on a rollercoaster, but I am sure a girl from Derby would also not know this either.

Megan Moran, who studies Psychology, commented: “I think it’s quite ironic and funny because Essex girls have gained such a name for themselves and we are known nearly everywhere over the country, yet living in Essex, I’ve never met anyone like it.”

FYI we can read

I haven’t got a vagazzle and we’re not all blonde

It’s hard not to mention that we are constantly being categorised as ‘fake’ when realistically, we don’t all wear fake tan and have fake hair. We don’t all wake up and put on  fake eyelashes, or get our boobs done. Just because a small fraction of girls like to make themselves up, we do not all earn the right to be called ‘cake face’.

Shut uppppppppp

Did you ever think that maybe we can’t help our accent and we do not purposely sound like this in order to get mocked? We understand that it may not be the nicest thing to listen to in your 9am lecture, but why not take the piss out of the northern girl who is mistaking a ‘cob’ for a bread roll – we’re all the same.