An American Girl in Chelsea

I came across An American Girl in Chelsea early on in my googling and bonded with the blog right away. First off, its just pretty. Go check out. I mean really, there is a lovely photograph and classy pink writing. Then, I discovered that she and I share the same Alma mater (or we will once I have technically graduated). And not only did we come from the same university, we both studied abroad in London and completely fell in love with the city. So I bonded with AG over our similarities and the cuteness of her blog but there are some traits in her writing voice that have given me food for thought when I sit down to write my own posts. 

From her first post, aside from her “Hello World” equivalent, AG makes it clear to the audience that she is privileged. Nothing wrong about that outright, but I feel like it has the potential to turn off readers by making them feel inferior. In that initial post she mentions

"Back home in LA, my Saturday morning ritual would be to grab a vanilla latte from Coffee Bean and get my weekly mani-pedi with one of my girlfriends.  One of the best parts of this ritual was that we could give ourselves a little pampering and preparation for the weekend without breaking the bank."

Okay so she says she did this without breaking the bank. But really, if you are getting manicures and pedicures on a weekly basis you have to be pretty darn comfortable. Now dont forget, I am from Los Angeles and I go to a university that is well known for having lots of girls who do the mani-pedi thing every week (and wear couture clothing bought with Daddy's credit card, etc, etc...) so for me this is nothing new. However, you have to pretty flush to visit the shops, eat at the restaurants and do most of things that AG talks about.

The hint of superiority aside, AG has a smart and friendly style. Her goal in creating this “labor of love” was to create

"... a resource to help women who were as lost as I was back in ’03 in how to navigate this massive city.  A resource tailored to fabulous and chic ex-pats!"

She is honestly trying to help out those who have questions about London, whether they be about finding good places to eat or how to deal with passport issues. I also really like that AG uses parentheses to add side notes, not just because I do that too, but because I feel that it makes the posts more personable. It seems to me that in those little notes you can truly hear the blogger’s opinionated voice. In a post about a purse designer there is an example of this, as well as something else notable about her voice.

"Something very special happened last week at Cannes. A girlfriend just tipped me off to Atelier Annick, a London-based handbag designer with some killer styles. Truth be told, you have to have some serious glam-attitude to pull of some of the creations- think Gwen Stefani carrying the Waneh design or Sienna Miller clutching the Opeli (which I love!) on the red-carpet! Check out American Girl’s girl-crush, Cheryl Cole carrying the Bebe. She’s so adorable!"

So the parentheses example is pretty obvious, but any idea about the second thing? It’s the use of the exclamation points. 3 !s in 4 sentences. Wow. Some might find it annoying, but I say hey, she is just really excited. And that’s okay by me because again, it makes her personable. AG probably talks like that in real life. Since I was a kid Ive been told that I write like I speak, which used to be an issue when it came to essays, but I think its great for blogging. So keep talking AG, I mean blogging! 

And lastly, AG asks questions. When she talked about a bar she likes to frequent she ended her post with, “AG wants to know- where's your late night spot?” And in her post about the World Cup she finished with

“USA plays England on June 12. American Girl recommends the Cross Keys pub, our favorite. Tell us where you’ll be watching the game!” 

By asking questions and speaking directly to her readers AG creates a dialogue, a friendship. She is confident in her opinions and considers herself well-informed but she still asks for recommendations and suggestions. I like that. It means that in the end, we can be friends.

Thus, while I can only hope that when I am living in London I will have the cash flow to allow me to patronize the posh spots she writes about, I will continue to read her posts and dream of the day.