Before You Judge Bai Ling, Take a Look in the Mirror

The news has been filled with the report about Bai Ling who has her fame from the hit show Lost, being caught shoplifting at Los Angeles International Airport. Ling also was in the hit movie "The Crow". The reports of the shoplifting incident indicate it was not high value items she was shoplifting. It appears the items that she was accused of shoplifting include items valued at just $16. It has been widely reported that she used the excuse of breaking up with her boyfriend recently.

That just goes to show that even celebrities can have a bad day. Bai Ling probably had the same reaction that many of the rest of us have had after breakups. We were emotionally distraught and did something we would not have been proud of. This is not to defend Bai Ling, but instead to point out that sometimes celebrities are a lot more human than we think. Sometimes the pedestal we put them up on, in one that crashes when they do something that many of us would do if we were in their same situation.

I know in my early twenties when I broke up with a girlfriend that I was "in love with" and felt devastated there was one solution my friends and I could come up with. That was getting drunk as can be. When you are drunk you lose your sense of reality. If I was an actor or actress the media probably would have had a field day with the antics my friends and I did while partying at the beach.

Of course us average people also go to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. After breaking up with a loved on many people escape into their cave and don't want to be seen out in public for days or weeks. If a celebrity like Bai Ling would do that same exact thing as you or I would do, there would be headlines all over the place. There would be rumors that she had checked herself into rehab, or that she was drinking herself into a stupor.

All of us have reacted badly after a breakup of a serious relationship. The only difference between our reactions and Bai Ling's reaction is that ours wasn't covered in the media. Of course then again, we aren't movie and television stars. Will Bai Ling live this down at some point? Probably, but being a celebrity she will have to make it through the negative publicity first.