Old heads how did y'all react to MICHAEL JACKSON TURNING WHITE?

[Silver Surfer]

Born in 82......Mike was such a superstar...no one cared....if anything it added to his his celebrity as wacko jacko

 

[CashmereThoughts]

I vaguely remember sitting in front my grandma's TV. Either an interview or performance. The camera closed in on MJ's face and my uncle yelled out "Him ah bleach to rahtid!".

The other adults in the house erupted.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

Over here, old heads told us he slept in a machine and turned white....some of them still believe that

i never heard that. the story was he lightened his skin due to viteligo and I never beleived that. he was wearing wigs and make up andall that other shyt too. seems like this is who he wanted to be

 

[Azul]

i never heard that. the story was he lightened his skin due to viteligo and I never beleived that. he was wearing wigs and make up andall that other shyt too. seems like this is who he wanted to be

So you don't believe he had vitiligo even though it is listed on his autopsy?

Or that it was the "perfect excuse."

 

[DreadBrown]

I was born in 87 but i grew up just knowing he went from black to white because my aunts/uncles would have all his videos on VHS. I dont remember being shocked i just always knew

Honestly never gave a fukk, his appearance changed but his music/performances never suffered because of it. The man is a legend, icon and the greatest performer of all time

When you think about it, hes the first child to grow up with cameras in his face his entire life. He was a star at 9 years old and was never able to live a normal life because of his talent, he lived the majority of his life in the spotlight

at anyone that throws dirt on his name

born in 88 this my story too. It wasnt shocking, he started dark skin and turned light skin thats all we knew. My Mom told us he had Viteligo and I believed it because my best friend had it too

 

[CashmereThoughts]

So you don't believe he had vitiligo even though it is listed on his autopsy?

Or that it was the "perfect excuse."

I didnt question the fact that he had vitiligo. Im saying turning yourself white is a choice just like deleting your nikka nose and other dominant black features in adition to adopting white children and lying about them being your biologically. I think he conciously decided to be a part of white society.

 

[Antwon Mitchell]

I wasn't born yet but my mom and dad knew a woman who had the same issue as MJ but she didn't bleach herself to avoid looking spotty in appearance instead just delt with it.

Growing up I have seen a few ppl walking around with the illness (very big spots on their faces, arms, etc) but they seemed fine and just delt with their appearance and I've never heard this illness bringing painful symptoms to the point bleaching was a way to ease the pains.

I personally don't see why Michael felt it was necessary to do that tho unless it was a career move to save his sex image due to the spotting.

 

[lurker emeritus]

seems that people debate whether mike bleached his skin or if he had vitiligo
why can't it be both?

Chemical-induced Vitiligo
https://www.umassmed.edu/vitiligo/blog/blog-posts1/2014/11/chemicals-can-cause-vitiligo-and-also-make-it-worse/#:~:text=The answer is yes, as,in rubber and other products).

mike was already doing things to achieve a fairer look way before the skin thing
maybe he was trying to look like the debarges (who were dating his sisters)
and things just got out of hand due to misuse of the products

reminds me of a quote from rolling stone back in the day (1992)

Teddy Riley says that during the Dangerous recording sessions, Jackson talked a lot about what he’d done to his face and skin. “I’m quite sure if Michael could have done it all over again, he would not have done that,” says Riley. “But there’s no turning back. Once you change your description, you can’t turn back. You can’t get your own face or your own skin back again. But he is still Michael Jackson; he is still the talented man that everybody grew up on.”
Michael Jackson: The Making of 'The King of Pop'

this was notably, before the oprah interview...

 

[newworldafro]

I remember quite clearly staying w/ my grandparents, because my folks went on a vacay and seeing they had left me a pictorial book as a gift. I was hella young maybe just before or after kindergarten.

All those photos were a brown skin dude, probably already had nose work though.

So seeing him supposedly "transracially" transform was surreal in a lot of ways, because even before he mentioned his vitiligo, I knew one or two adults that had it, even though I didn't know the word for it. Until that point, you just assumed he was purposefully turning himself "white". Music didn't suffer, so minus, allegations beginning to pop up, most folks just remained fans..... from a tween Newworldafro POV.

 

[Pegasus Jackson]

It was so gradual that by the time it got an "obvious" stage (around 1987) people didn't really give a shyt.


Those UK tabloids did though.

 

[Wear My Dawg's Hat]

I was in elementary school during Off The Wall and there actually was a rumor then that Michael was
pregnant.

Older generations appreciated his talent and weirdness simultaneously.

And thankfully, we didn't have social media encouraging us to obsess over his changes.

 

[Darts]

The tragic and ironic thing is that two of the three things that made him "look white" were coincidental and out of his control. First the vitiligo and then the Pepsi accident that left him permanently bald/scarred forcing him to wear those wigs. The third thing is the plastic surgery but without the other two he would basically look like the rest of his family with their work done.

 

[Pseudonym]

I thought it was 2 different people
My mom noticed it because I would refer to him as black Michael and white Michael and then she told me

My mom was a huge MJ fan at the time, so I saw alllll the videos kinda mixed up on TV

 

[Neo. The Only. The One.]

I was shytting in diapers in 85. I don’t think there’s enough people that were old enough to have an intelligent conversation about their feelings on the matter here. Most of us found out Michael was darker after the fact because he was white by the time we first saw him.

This


I remember being like 3 yrs old and seeing the Jackson 5 either in a book or magazine and being like "THAT'S MJ???"


Blew my mind

 

[SunZoo]

I mean people were like wtf...but Mike had already set precedent for weird shyt. Them nikkas becoming the black Addams family wasn't really all that surprising lol