CINDY, INCIDENTALLY:

Years back when I got a job that moved me from Los Angeles to Orange County, I adamantly refused to cross over into the Orange Curtain.

I vowed to work in the area, but to never, ever adopt the culture that I had envisioned in my mind as rampant Botox parties and beachside workouts.

For months I battled rush hour on weekends to head back home, but eventually my new Orange County friends wore me down.

I begrudgingly found myself attending an Angel’s baseball game and waving a Rally Monkey. I bought shoes at the Block in Orange, rode bikes in Seal Beach, was taken to Little Saigon and introduced to real pho and I watched the Huntington Harbour Holiday boat parade.

The first time I drove down the 133 Freeway (Laguna Canyon Road) I actually gasped when I entered Laguna Beach and noticed that the ocean sparkled like a Swarovski Crystal.

It was then and only then that I admitted to myself, maybe I had misjudged Orange County.

I’m not the first person, and I know I won’t be the last, either.

Millie Kim, a New York transplant who works in the area, but lives in Long Beach, said she arrived with preconceived ideas that the area was nothing more than “hot bods, tanning, beachgoers and fake boobs.” And while she has discovered there is more to the area, she also said there is an element of truth to the Orange County cliches.

I don’t think this can be denied about Orange County. I mean, let’s be realistic, the beach promotes less clothing. Less clothing promotes a desire to be health conscious. And if that doesn’t work, well, plastic surgery is not a shocking alternative.

“It just seems as if girls in their 20s used to save up for a used car, now it’s Botox,” said Jee Shin from Cerritos.

While eating tacos in Main Street in Huntington Beach, I met three local girls wearing bikinis and flip-flops who were the poster children for quintessential Orange County beach girls.

We talked about Orange County’s reputation and how its beach culture is often given a bad rap.

“I think the haters need to back off,” Bailee Epperson, 16, said.

“Yeah,” quipped Kaley Davis. “We love living here with the beach and all the fly honeys.”

The girls laughed and I had to laugh with them, mainly because there was truth to their adolescent joie de vivre that you can see just when out walking around Huntington Beach. It really is just a little bit of paradise with its pretty beaches, casual culture and throngs of barefoot beachgoers running around Pacific Coast Highway on foot or by bike. This was actually one of the reasons why the girls I met loved where they were from.

“Where else can you run around barefoot and half-naked?” Epperson explained.

Who can argue with that?

CINDY ARORA is a freelance writer for the Huntington Beach Independent.