Earlier this week,a video of singer Ariana Grande in a donut shop appeared on several online news sources and news stations across the country. In the video, she is standing behind the counter with a few people--one of which reportedly is her boyfriend, who also participates in the viral donut licking fiasco with her.

In the short, they stand behind the counter, flirt, and clearly lick several donuts on the trays that I am assuming were eventually sold to people. She is laughing, her boyfriend is laughing, and they continue to touch about six or seven donuts with their tongues. Later in the video, another employee from the donut store (that her boyfriend works at) puts a tray of donuts up on the counter, to which Ariana opens her mouth and says, "F*** Americans, I hate Americans. I hate America."

Now, I'm all for having fun, and whatever you and your friends do on your own time is your business, but it becomes other people's business when it gets posted online for the world to see. If you want to exclaim that you "hate America" for the world to hear, go right ahead. But in my opinion, if you are in the spotlight (which she is), let's refrain from contaminating food that is sold to strangers and speak hate about the country in which you live in.

Not to say that Ariana Grande should have been thrown in jail for her actions. In truth, it was more stupidity than anything, and most importantly, extremely strange. What would possess someone to lick donuts and say, "I hate America," in the same moment? I'm not sure.

The issue here is the overall acceptance of Grande's actions. In her initial "apology video", she explained that when she said, "F*** America, I hate Americans. I hate America," she was referring to the inconsideration of health and health consequences in the country due to the rising rates of childhood obesity and worldwide heart disease. If she is that passionate about fighting the world's rising health issues, why couldn't she have recorded a PSA about it? Instead, she licked several donuts and said her glorious statement. She later released a 4-minute long second apology video titled "Sorry Babes", in which she apologized for her actions and explained that even though she had the "best intentions" and that she "loves America and is proud to be an American because of all the advancements we have made (but she couldn't actually name any)," she did not mean to offend anyone in the video. All it took was a simple publicity driven apology video for fans to trend "#WeForgiveYouAriana" all over social media and forgive Ariana Grande for her acts of stupidity.

I am not sure what is worse: the fact that celebrities are going around and doing stupid things like this and then acting like what they did was actually them trying to help the world, or if the acceptance of these idiotic actions by fans. In today's world, if a political figure or TV personality was recorded saying, "F*** Americans, I hate Americans. I hate America," not only would it be made into a huge deal, but people across the globe would talk about how inappropriate, un-patriotic, and "un-American" the whole thing was. Better yet, people could connect it to the anti-American acts that are happening around the world. But here's 22-year-old pop sensation Ariana Grande, who posts a YouTube video (most likely forced upon her by her publicist and marketing team) apologizing for what she did, and suddenly it gets pushed under the rug.

Ariana Grande has recently pulled out from performing and head-lining the MLB All-Star concert due to oral surgery. Or maybe, she just realized she should take a step back from the public eye for a little bit.

Dear Ariana Grande,

Though Twitter fans are forgiving you through #WeForgiveYouAriana", I, most certainly, have not. If you want to be a positive influence on the public eye, start acting like one.

xoxo, hallie