I from the US, just learned about these today, and had a chuckle.
an essex girl was driving down the A13 when her car phone rang. it was her boyfriend, urgently warning her “treacle, i just heard on the news that theres a car going the wrong way on the A13. please be careful!” “its not just one car!” said the essex girl “theres hundreds of them!”
It seems like these are just “blond jokes” from the 80’s or recycled jokes about 2nd-gen feminists in america. I have no doubt they have their roots in misogyny.
The fact that it’s usually women doing the dumb thing is problematic, but these jokes are easily mapped onto whoever you want to denigrate. As a Montana, these were often jokes about North Dakota, and as the scion of a large Norwegian clan, I also often heard these as Sven and Ole jokes.
To me the latter is actually a funnier way to approach them, because it’s two characters who everyone knows are dumb (and who are stand-ins for those people in your life who act this way) and you’re not just blanket insulting a whole group of people.
You’re right. But add rich and disconnected too. I’ve never been, but I think Essex is Beverly Hills with bad weather.
Edit: I love being corrected here. I can’t believe how wrong I was. If anyone is interested in the post-mortem of this disinformation, I love British panel shows and hate reality TV. So jokes about The Only Way is Essex completely blend together with Made in Chelsea. I think I thought they were the same because my brain turns off when reality TV comes up.
I wouldn’t go that far, there’s not a snobbishness associated with Essex people that I imagine there is with Beverly Hills (though I’ve never been to Beverly Hills). There is classism in the stereotype but people from Essex are generally looked down upon, not (so much) the other way round.
Thanks for the insight. I’ve never been to the UK. I was basing it on how I contextualize jokes on 8 out of 10 Cats about The Only Way is Essex.
Holy shit it’s a joke. You take the fun out of everything, if you don’t like it that’s ok, just shut up
Oh no not the misogyny. eyeroll
As a feminist and a leftist, it’s ok to make jokes about people, or even specific groups of people, but it needs to be clever. If you can substitute the target of a joke with any non-specific group of people, it’s not really clever, nor funny.
I know some very funny jokes, where the main target needs to be “dumb”, but it isn’t about the target or target group. In my country the jokes would be about Belgians.
Last week, a Cessna crashed into a Belgian cemetery. So far they’ve found 500 dead, and they’re still searching.