On being the Girl with the Popped Collar

" I refuse to live my life locked in the china cupboard, and I am forever on a search to find the glamour in everything."

Song: "Doses and Mimosas" - Cherub

Welcome to this little corner of the internet that belongs to the Girl with the Popped Collar. Allow me to share a little bit about myself and this blog. 

I have always been a dichotomy of the classy and the trashy. My wardrobe consists of J. Crew and Forever 21, I recently traded my Tory Burch sunglasses for plastic heart-shaped ones from Target, and as I sit on my bed typing this, I can see both an Audrey Hepburn and an Eminem poster on my wall. This is more than just a lifestyle, it's how my mind works too. One day I will be speaking purely from Mean Girls quotes, and the next day my words are more eloquent and elegant than the image of a swan on an English lake. I have thus decided to create this blog, "The Girl with the Popped Collar" as a creative outlet to express both sides of who I am in my personality and lifestyle. 

I was raised on the West Coast, in a tight-knit traditional family very rooted in our heritage. My childhood was the very model of the "preppy" American dream- spending mornings breathing in the smell of my mother's lipstick and perfumes as I read a musty copy of Black Beauty during breakfast, wearing plaid skirts and ballet flats throughout the day at private school, going to ballet and chorus practice the moment I finished my homework. But when I went to high school, transferring to the local public school as my parents wanted me to see the "real world," my dusty pink bubble burst and my rose colored glasses shattered. I learned about rap music and loved it. I shed the uniforms, ditched Girl Scouts, and got a job, and I am thrilled for all of it. 

Fast forward to now: I am going to enter my junior year in university, at a private college in the middle of a ghetto - as I said, forever a dichotomy. I am pursuing a double major in Sociology and English, and minoring in Pre Law. The more I see of the world, the more I love every part of it, even the contrasts that should be difficult to reconcile. I used to think that because I couldn't decide between pearls or kandii, I was going to be a fish out of water in either situation. Most everyone I know clearly understands who they are. They are the alternative, the nerd, the partier, the bitch, the quiet leader. Because I couldn't fit myself to any character in an 80s movie, I spent years wondering who I even was. My childhood of starched dresses and the forbidden shorts was a lingering presence whenever I tried to cross into any other world. But I don't need to leave any one part of me behind as I work my way through the world, and through all of the different places and people I encounter. I refuse to live my life locked in the china cupboard, and I am forever on a search to find the glamour in everything. I love being a chameleon of life, able to fit wherever I need.

Stay dichotomous, my pearls and buttons,