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'Bachelor' Contestant Lace Isn't Crazy & It's Not Cool To Call Her That

by Alana Romain

It can be way too easy to watch The Bachelor and feel like the ladies vying for roses are deserving of criticism. After all, they signed up for the show — and after 20 seasons, they know what they're agreeing to — so why not call them out when they say or do something dumb or mean, or totally backstabby? While she's definitely not the only bachelorette getting skewered on social media this season (what up, Olivia!), Lace has been called crazy by Bachelor viewers pretty much since the moment she stepped out of the limo. But as orchestrated and deliberate as the show's drama can seem sometimes, the truth is that the women of The Bachelor — including Lace are real people with feelings, and who are going through a totally odd, emotional experience on television for everyone to see. Lace might not ever transcend her title at "the crazy girl" in Ben Higgins' season, but no matter how out there she seems on TV, calling her crazy is totally not okay.

There are plenty of reasons to not like Lace so far, from the way she kissed Ben as soon as she met him, to her catty comments about other girls and interrupting their time with Ben to talk to him herself. She also appeared to drink a little bit too much on the first night, which naturally didn't exactly leave the best first impression, and she made a big deal about things like whether or not Ben was making enough eye contact with her during the rose ceremony. There's no doubt that Lace is a strong personality — but does that make her crazy?

In the second episode Monday night, Lace spoke about how she wanted to rectify the not-so-great first impression she'd left on Ben, and that she wanted to show him who she really was. Throughout the episode, Lace seemed to be trying hard to get Ben's attention in order to start fresh, but each time she did so, it seemed like she just dug herself an even deeper hole.

Sure, she doesn't exactly seem like the friendliest of the bunch, and she sure knows how to speak her mind, but more than anything she just seemed like a girl who isn't necessarily coming across authentically due to nerves or self-esteem, or whatever other totally normal reason that could keep someone from feeling comfortable in a house filled with a bunch of gorgeous, super-competitive women.

Does Lace have some kind of behind-the-scenes issue that we don't know about? Possibly. But even if she did — even if she had some kind of mental disorder that makes her act the way she appears to have been acting on the show (who knows what kind of stuff landed on the cutting room floor) — that still wouldn't make her crazy. Crazy is such a loaded, pejorative term — you're essentially dismissing someone as totally abnormal and weird and writing them off completely, when the reality is that there is always more to the story than that.

Maybe there was something going on that was causing Lace to act out of character or maybe she just felt really uncomfortable. Maybe she's just a bitch. But she's not "crazy" or "psycho", she's a person. And she deserves to be treated like it.

Images: ABC/Rick Rowell