Video report by ITV News Reporter Sally Lockwood

A campaign to ban the term 'Essex Girl' from the Oxford and Collins dictionaries has gained momentum with thousands signing a petition to have it removed.

Both dictionaries list the term as a noun describing an Essex Girl as "unintelligent, materialistic, devoid of taste, and sexually promiscuous".

The campaign, launched by Essex residents Natasha Sawkins and Juliet Thomas from online forum The Mother Hub, argues that having it listed officially in a dictionary could validate the stereotype of the derogatory term.

It has led to hundreds of women from the county to "reclaim" the term by listing their achievements under the hashtag #IAmAnEssexGirl.

We want the definitions removed. Or, at the very least, made obsolete. And we know that, in order to do this, Essex needs to reclaim "Essex girl". To let the world know that it doesn't signify anything other than a girl who lives in Essex. Who she chooses to be beyond that, is entirely up to her. The Mother Hub

The petition has so far attracted over 3,700 signatures but a spokesperson for the Oxford English Dictionary said that it cannot remove Essex Girl due to the petition.

The spokesperson added that the Oxford English Dictionary would not remove a word as its dictionaries are "historical" and reflect "language over time".

Oxford Dictionaries set out to describe the language as it’s used rather than specify how words should be used. Spokesperson for Oxford English Dictionary