Michael Jackson (front row, right) started his career as a member of the family musical group "The Jackson 5." He soon emerged as a star in his own right.
Here’s the joke that’s going around. America the Land of Opportunity. Only in America, can a young black man grow up to be a white woman. Michael Jackson.
Now that he’s passed on, we – who witnessed the bizarre morphing of Michael Jackson from the chubby-cheeked, open-faced little cherub into the mysterious boy man whose facial features became a mosaic of Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, and Kirk Douglas – have a few questions.
- Mainly, why did he do it? Why did he surgically alter his adorable face so radically until he looked like one of the ghoulishy-white monsters who danced with him in ”Thriller”? Why did Michael Jackson destroy his natural good looks? Was he trying to rub out himself? Was it a form of self-hatred, self-mutilation? Some say he didn’t want to look anything like his savage father and that was his motivation.
- Michael was black yet look at his 3 kids. They’re white. We now know he’s not the biological father. So Michael was homosexual. He didn’t want to consummate marriages and become the biological father in that way. Couldn’t he have donated sperm? Or, as some suggest, was Michael incapable of that process? Had he taken hormone treatments or prescription drugs to such a degree as to render him incapable of producing enough sperm? If he wanted children, why didn’t he choose surrogate parents who were black? Why didn’t he want black children? Michael Jackson married two white women. He dated only white girls – Tatum O’Neal, Brooke Shields. He rejected black noses and skin. It’s laughable that black celebrities Jamie Foxx and Spike Lee, activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are now, upon Michael’s death, claiming the King of Pop as one of their own, when Michael so long ago and so publicly rejected his Afro-American roots.
Have these very public figures - and alleged men of the cloth - forgotten the stain? Michael Jackson was twice investigated, in 1994 and 2005 for sexually assaulting young boys and was brought to trial. True, he was never found guilty but a settlement of $22 million can buy a lot of silence.
A lot of people who knew Michael Jackson know his secrets, but no one is talking negatively about him now that he’s gone. To hear them go on, he was St. Michael. From his bodybuilder to his best friend, all are mum about what was really going in Michael Jackson’s head and private life. We understand that he was not right, that he was a pedophile with warped ideas about how love is legally and morally expressed between adults and children. What we want to know is what caused this transformation from angel into devil? What changed Michael Jackson from the star we loved to the star many hated? Drug addiction plus mental illness? Childhood sexual trauma? Pressures only a superstar could feel? Perhaps all of the above?
We didn’t want Michael Jackson to become a mess; his music and dancing were so much fun. His energy on stage, in videos, on radio was electric, infectious.
We watched him grow into adulthood. We loved him from the first. Then we looked on in bewilderment as he began carving up his face and whitening his skin. Then he moved to Neverland as Peter Pan, set up an amusement park, and invited children to come and see him. Then we learned that he did unspeakable things with those children at Neverland, some of the little ones sick with cancer. Our beloved King of Pop had become somebody dark and revolting – a monster we couldn’t trust.
We are conflicted: we are sad Michael Jackson died. Is it okay we are mourning the death of a once-great entertainer who degenerated into a stranger who abused children and rejected his own race?
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Us Weekly is running these photos today of Michael Jackson’s changing face. One must wonder if Michael’s father’s cruel remarks about his face caused Michael to want to completely alter his looks. Remember that Joe Jackson, besides beating the young Michael with belts and cords and knocking him and his brothers into walls because he wanted them to perform better, subjected Michael to verbal abuse, told his son repeatedly that he had a big nose and made fun of Michael’s skin condition as a teenager (adolescent acne). Michael said that sometimes, when his father walked into a room, he would be so afraid of him that he would vomit.
No doubt as a result of such belittling of his appearance, Michael Jackson, as he grew older, became obsessed with reducing the size of his nose. He further tinkered with his looks. He began making steady rounds to dermatologists to bleach out the black of his African-American skin until he became white. He annihilated his African skin and nose until no visible traces remained.
We were not allowed to see much of his skin so we don’t know how far he took the skin bleaching. As years went by, Michael took pains to keep us from seeing all of him, wearing long sleeves and pants, covering up almost every part of himself in the end, wearing masks, scarves, sunglasses, wigs, and hats, so that we couldn’t know how much plastic surgery and dermatology he had – or how dependent he had become on needle drugs and how badly his body looked beneath the flashy uniforms and spangled gloves.
While Michael Jackson changed his face, skin, and hair many times, his fixation on his nose was the most obvious – and the most disturbing. He kept having operations on it – operations that made it look worse. We watched in horror as it became smaller and more pinched, at times looking like it wasn’t even real anymore, just made of Silly Putty. He began to be followed by an umbrella man, whose sole job was to keep the sun off Michael’s face. Was Michael’s nose now so delicate as to melt off in the sun? Did he wear face masks to keep away the germs or to prevent us from seeing what late mutilation he’d subjected his poor nose to?
As the photos that follow will show, Michael Jackson was never satisfied with his nose, having more and more plastic surgery until the nose was whittled down to nothingness. Was it a greedy plastic surgeon who kept pushing Michael for yet one more nose surgery or was it Michael’s body dysmorphia that demanded more, more? After 20 years of surgeries, did Michael still look in the mirror and see a big nose? Was he suffering from a condition akin to anorexia like the 80 pound stick figure girl who looks in the mirror at her figure and still sees herself as a fat pig?
In an odd twist, Michael died with almost no nose left - Joe Jackson couldn’t call him “Big Nose” any longer – and 2 children parented by his skin doctor and nurse.
Michael Jackson 1975
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Michael Jackson face 1995
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Lisa Waller Rogers has written a new teen mystery, THE CANDY RAVERS, which is posted here on this blog in its entirety. Click here to read THE CANDY RAVERS or use the tab at the top of the site.
Amazing article on the King of Pop. I especially love that you included pics of his transformation. I have created some shirts, buttons, & more in Michael’s memory. They can be found here:
http://www.cafepress.com/epiclove/6792479
And here:
http://www.cafepress.com/epiclove/6792430
The first image of the kid–is not Michael Jackson. Don’t know who it is, but it is not Jackson.
“True, he was never found guilty BUT”… you’re going to call him a pedophile anyway, right? Do you know something that the jury didn’t?
Binny, MIchael Jackson saw to it that there was only one jury allowed to convene – in the 2003-2005 MJ sexual abuse trial. In 1993, he was accused by a young boy named Jordan Chandler of sexual abuse. MJ settled with him for $22 million. When the accused pay off their accusers with giant amounts of money, we may draw some conclusions of our own, without the formal verdict of a jury trial. Michael bought his accuser’s silence and the case was never allowed to come to trial. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson.
I know it is unpleasant to think we can love someone who was so maladjusted, but we can. Michael was mixed up and, yes, a pedophile. Pedophiles behave much as MJ did. They lure children to their homes with backyard pools, swings, play equipment (Neverland) and tell the children that they love them. Pedophiles believe there is nothing wrong with their fondling of children as it is all love. It is sick and twisted.
Please keep coming back to LIsa’s HIstory Room, Binny. I respect your opinion.
I don’t know of any parent that would take money for the child going threw that.
Most of us would of done something else.
so one has to wonder.
Exactly. One has to wonder.
MJ did not bleach his skin. He had a skin condition called vitiligo. If you google “MJ VITILIGO” you will find many pictures that show the vitiligo color patches on MJ’s skin.
If you couldn’t get this fact straight, then I must assume that everything else are you said are mere speculations.
Michael Jackson’s doctor documented that Michael bleached his skin.
I agree with you. I don’t believe that Michael was a pedophile nor a homosexual. I was told a long time ago if you don’t have anything good to say about a person, don’t say anything at all. Some people need to learn that basic lesson.
Tonia, I’m glad Winston Churchill didn’t buy into that kind of thinking.
ummm… that fist picture (1971) isn’t Michael… that’s his brother Randy.
It’s Michael.
Michael’s eyes are rounder and bigger than that. That looks exactly like Randy though!! Are you sure it’s Michael….not RANDY.
HI! Yes, I have purchased several magazines that identify that photo as Michael.
-I heard that he altered his face because he though of himself as a piece of art
-How do you know MJ didn’t want black children? Just because he dated white women, that’s not enough proof for me. Blanket, his youngest child, is completely black. And I believe completely that Prince, Paris, and Blanket are Michael’s kids. Prince really does look like him when he was like 24 in his face.
-Michael Jackson had a skin condition, vitiligo. He just bleached his skin to keep from looking blotchy.
-MJ is a legend, and you know it, of course it’s completely natural for people to mourn the death of The King of Pop.
-He was found not guily of both accusations of child molestation, and anyone who is a MJ fan knows he’s innocent.
-Michael just loved kids and thier innocence, is that so hard to believe? He was always playful and once described himself as “this big kid”.
-People should have just left MJ alone. He’s a person too, and what person could actually deal with all of the just flat out MEAN things that was said about him? Ever heard MJ’s song ‘Leave Me Alone’?
-Michael Jackson is The King of Pop. He caused people to instantly fall in love with him after listening to his music, and made people smile every time he did his phenomenal moon walk. He was the greatest entertainer. His music will live on and people will remember him forever as the King of Pop.
The first photo of supposedly “Michael” is not Michael!….that is his younger brother Randy.
Terrance, you are not the first reader to think this photo is of Randy. I assure you it is of Michael; I’ve seen it tagged as such in several respected magazines featuring Michael Jackson’s life story.
he was inocent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ad he had vitiligo he never bleached his skin!!! i love you mj
Been MJ Fan all my life and anyone one who knows the Jackson brothers knows that photo is of RANDY. Just after he joined his brothers coz he wasnt in the band at first… Go check out geniune Jackson brothers photos not something that was tagged by Mags!
Alex, I’ve poked around on the net for some time now and can’t find any Randy as a child photos.
that looks like Michael and not Randy to me…..
I’m sorry but I find your logic to be erroneous.
“Michael was black yet look at his 3 kids. They’re white. We now know he’s not the biological father. So Michael was homosexual.”
You can’t say he’s a homosexual just because he did not father his children. That does not make sense; it has nothing to do with him liking other men. He had been plagued by sex change and homosexuality rumors his whole life and he consistently denied them.
Also, we’re not sure that the kids aren’t his. I know that may seem quite naive of me, but we can’t just look at someone based on appearances and make statements on their genetics. They may be, we don’t know. I’ve known a couple of Caucasian-looking children with black biological fathers or mothers. There’s a very small chance of them not “looking” black but it can happen. And just because a black man wants to have white children does not mean he hates his own race. Nobody said anything when Angelina Jolie adopted a Cambodian and an African child before she had her own children.
One more thing… in the legal system, a settlement is not equal to an admission of guilt. Any lawyer knows that. Those $22 million must have been petty money to him anyway, and he had claimed he just wanted to make it go away instead of fight it out. However, I will say shame on the parents for accepting the money if they knew he did do something wrong, and shame on those other parents afterwards who let their kids sleep over his house knowing his history and alleged crimes. I’m not saying Michael did anything wrong, and I’m trying hard not to make excuses for him, but come on… as much as I adore MJ, I wouldn’t let my kid sleep over his house, not even before that whole mess blew up. You’ve got to question the parents’ roles too.
By the by, I like your blog entries and your opinions. Thanks for sharing them with us!
And yes that is definitely a picture of Michael I’ve seen it in many tribute magazines!
Hi, Naomi, I respect your tactful way of discussing a difference of opinon. I don’t always get such cool heads here at Lisa’s History Room. I won’t go about rebutting or defending the issues presented in your comment, because this is a friendly place. I just want to say that Michael was homosexual and I didn’t base that comment on paternity issues. Secondly, on the child molestation suspicions, I have lived long enough to know many children who are victims of molestation. I have come to know how pedophiles operate. I have run schools and trained volunteers and employees in Safeguarding God’s Children, a pedophile prevention program. We had a pedophile in our neighborhood five years ago. One lived behind me when I was a little girl and he molested several of my friends and one family member. Male adults wanting to spend time with little boys in such an intimate way is a big red flag – it is not natural. It is a dangerous thing for anyone out there to think that it was okay for Michael Jackson to do this. If you will look at the comments on this post and others, you will see the pedestal MJ is being put on by his adoring fans, who have made him a sacred cow. They will not accept that his music and dance was fabulous but the person severely maladjusted and ill. It’s always best to confront the truth and look it square in the eye. People are composed of good and bad and Michael Jackson was no different than the rest of us – except for one thing: if he was using little children for his sexual gratification, he has a lot of explaining to do to the Lord, our God.
Hi Lisa, thanks for your replies. I really appreciate your discussion, and thanks for hearing me out. I have to admit my emotions are very married to Michael Jackson’s music and memory, and that may color my opinions and force me to always give him the benefit of the doubt, but I do agree with you that he absolutely had no business persistently hanging out with other peoples’ children, and of course that’s not okay, and nobody should say it is… I wasn’t trying to. I see where you’re coming from, and I take your opinion to heart. There’s no pedestal here, just a lot of sadness and purging a tainted memory from his music. But I will say that the fact that both sides are shady leaves a lot of room for doubt both ways, but that’s as far as I will go before labeling him anything else. We will agree to disagree to this point. And yes, only God knows what happened and he will be judged, and I take a lot of comfort in that.
Thanks and more power to your blog!
he did not bleach his skin at all
he had vitiligo and he used dark make up at first to cover it up, but then the blotches were too noticable even with dark make up on so he had to wear a lot of light make up.
its in an interview with his make up artist.
he wore a lot of clothes and face masks because people with vitiligo are allergic to the sun, hence why he always had an umbrella.
he had the first nose job because he broke his nose in a rehersal, and then had another one because the first nose job left him with breathing problems because it was not done correctly.
thats all i know on what he’s had done to his face.
he was not gay. he clearly stated that in a recorded interview with the police on his first trial in 1993
you say he’s a peodophile, yet there was never any evidence that he was. the police searched his whole house, more than once, and found nothing. and he was found not guilty twice.
he loved kids because he could never really be one. he never had a childhood because he was in the music business from the age of 5. he never had friends as a child. so he was just a big kid as he got older. if you listen to his song childhood, he explains it in the lyrics.
his doctor had said that he had prescribed michael drugs to calm him down because he always wanted to be with children. his doctor said he’d worked with peodophiles before, and michael was in no way one, he just had a huge love for children in a non-sexual way.
i don’t know whether his children are his but his first doctor had said he got kicked so hard in the groin by his father, it left him infertile. and why does it matter if they aren’t his kids?
and if another black person only went out with white people or a white person only went out with black people, no one would say anything about it. but because its michael jackson, its something else to pick on about him. and he did go out with black people because when he was in his teens he had his first girlfriend who was black, and he before he died he was in love with the nanny to his kids who was black.
i appreciate you’re trying to look from another point of view, but your not basing any of the things you’ve written on facts. i’m a huge mj fan, and i’m sure a lot of other fans will find whats been written about him here offensive.
God gave us judgment He expects us to exercise while we’re here on earth. I base my opinion of others on their actions, not their words.