Veneers

My project is on my home county of Essex and how throughout history it has been a driving force of the UK in industry, landscape, utopian and radical ideals. Yet alongside its complex and vast past has followed a dark shadow cast by outsiders and us.

Essex man was coined by Simon Heffer as, “young, industrious, mildly brutish and culturally barren” this was the voter that pushed labour out of parliament all in the interest of themselves. After growing tired of sucking up and sacrificing for the whole In the slums of the East-end where community boomed. The magazine, Harters and Queen, said ‘Essex man’ embodied a vulgar capitalism that had eaten into the confidence of the old ruling class and invaded its most sacred enclaves’. I hate how it sort of inadvertently accepts that the upper classes exploit in a more polite and sly way rather than the loud bragging and showing off of an Essex man who was capitalising on the supposed social mobility conservative Britain offered. 

To oppose this political commentary, Essex girl was coined as a social commentary. Predominantly used in jokes, being defined in the Oxford dictionary as a type of ‘young woman who is not intelligent, dresses badly, talks in a loud and ugly way and is very willing to have sex.’

If Essex man is a monstrous figure of entrepreneurial money making and boom economics, Essex girl is a monstrous figure of consumption. 

I don’t want my project to negate these stereotypes. I want to embrace them, see their roots in the truth but also criticise their 2 dimensional view on an incredibly large and significant county in England. To do this I have to consider many factors but I’ve found the best way to talk about themes around my home is to look at my personal experience. This is because I feel I belong to this county yet I don’t fit into the outside perceptions of the place. I still conform to some Essex norms and stereotypes however that is just the surface of mine and Essex’s identity, I want to explore the depth of people and place in a much maligned county.