MICHAEL JACKSON AGE PROGRESSION SKIN

MICHAEL JACKSON AGE PROGRESSION SKIN

Looking back, Jackson's mistake was not to show his skin condition to the world when it began to manifest in the late 1980s. He seemed determined to de-Africanise himself. Accusations of him not wanting to be black emerged, not simply from his pale skin tone, but also from the fact that he had traded in his Afro curls for long straight hair, and had undergone cosmetic surgery to create a European-style nose. In the years leading up to his death, despite testimony from the singer’s friends and family, dermatologist Arnold Klein, Karen Faye, and from Jackson himself during the famous televised interview with Oprah on February 10 1993, many refused to believe that he suffered from the vitiligo skin disease, and questioned why it had taken him a decade to reveal it, when he could have put paid to the rumours much earlier. Detectives who searched his home after his death found 19 tubes of hydroquinone and 18 tubes of Benoquin, both commonly used for whitening skin. Jackson used skin bleaching creams to achieve this. In a bizarre Kafka-esque twist, Jackson was forced, aesthetically, to become a “white man”. “Instead of having it spotted like a cow or something like that he just decided to just do the whole thing,” said his mother Katherine. He was forced to take a drastic decision that would have deep racial overtones - to even out his skin tone to white - an easier task than wearing brown make-up all over his body, which would have been harder to apply in an even tone. “Michael is now almost completely devoid of colour,” confirmed Faye at the time. But over time the vitiligo became more aggressive, increasingly covering larger areas of his body, particularly his chest, abdomen, face and arms. At the same time he began to cover up his skin for public appearances, wearing long sleeves and adopting his trademark gloves to hide white patches on his hands and wrists. At this point, with the disorder in its infancy, Jackson's make-up artist Karen Faye used brown powder to conceal what were then only small bleached patches.

Jackson, whose album, “Thriller”, has sold over 70 million copies, first learned he had the vitiligo skin disease back in 1986, barely four years after the release of the album. My aunt had the same thing.” JACKSON'S SKIN FADES “We saw it coming on him at an early age,” Joe Jackson recalled. Michael Jackson inherited his vitiligo skin condition from his father’s side of the family. The condition is not specific to those of African descent, but is simply more visible as a result of their darker pigment. It occurs when melanocytes - the cells responsible for skin pigment - die or cease functioning. This de-pigmentation is not uniform, but manifests itself in blotches and patches on the body, particularly around the face and hands. Vitiligo is an autoimmune disorder that causes a loss of pigment on sections of the skin. The total number of queries about Jackson's skin adds up to over 150,000 per year.

For example, currently, approximately 3,600 people Google the term, “Michael Jackson skin disease” each month, while a further 10,000 search, “Michael Jackson vitiligo”. This is well illustrated by Google, who record and publish monthly Internet search figures on all subjects. Since Jackson's death, fans interest in the singer's vitiligo skin condition has remained intense. The autopsy conducted after the singer's death confirmed what Jackson and his family had maintained from the very beginning - that he indeed suffered from vitiligo, and had not, as many claimed, deliberately bleached his skin because he was unhappy being black. Was the singer bleaching his face and body, or did he suffer from the skin condition, vitiligo? The answer is, in fact, both. THE SUDDEN AND TRAGIC DEATH of recording artist Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009, finally answered the question that many had been asking for over two decades of his illustrious career.

Michael jackson age progression