Michael jackson and vitiligo, give him a break!

[crazy grady]

I am the first one to make fun of Michael Jackson. I think that maybe he may have young kids at his ranch for weird reasons. Maybe. If you want to flame the man for this, that's cool by me. Flame me if you think the charges are bullshit. The guy is funny and weird, but not on one count.

I and Michael Jackson have one thing in common, the skin disorder called vitiligo. Vitiligo is a skin condition (not disease!) where skin cells lose its color (melenin) and the remaining skin has a sickly milky white color. It looks like shit to anyone who has this. I have it on my hands (first contact), arms, penis and feet. It just spreads and spreads. My skin cells are dying. It is like someone is born normal is who developing albanism (albino). The difference between I and Michael is that I am blond haired, blue eyed light skinned white and this shit really only looks bad on me in the summer where my pigmented skin is tanned and makes me look like I have a disease. Now, that it is November in the Northern Hemisphere, my vitiligo affected skin has kind of merged with the non affected skin. Come summer 2004, I get to see how much the vitiligo has eaten my skin. I have to use my wife's foundation to look normal. Nothing looks more dumb than a man in the cosmetics aisle.

Jackson is black. I have seen regular black people with this shit and it is not pleasant. It looks like they have leaprosy, white skin on black. Ugly. Miserable. What Michael Jackson did is that he consulted a doctor that gave him medication that killed all of his melenin, rendering him pure white. This is why in his special you always saw him under an umbrella went he went outside. He is not insane, he is trying to protect skin that has little natural defense.

What pissed me off about him was when I read an article that read (paraphrasing) "that it difficult for a poor black boy from Gay to return a rich WHITE man, but Michael did it". I read this. What horseshit. I assure you that if it was up to MJ, he would be as black as the Ace of Spades. He did not "whiten his skin" or any other bullshit, he is somebody that has tried to keep his looks in the world of entertainment and on that, who the hell can blame him? Not me. I know where he is coming from. I would surrender my skin to have it all look the same, but agin, this would make me an albino who is allergic to the sun. For me, no biggie, I am an indoor computer type (computer potato?) what about people who love the pool and the sun? Just think about it.

He fucked up his nose. Period.

Give Mikey a break on this.

GRADY

[Dogface]

And vitiligo also makes the nose get veeeeery teeeeeeny, then fall off, while it causes the jaw to get all clefted and swollen, right?

[Metacom]

Originally posted by crazy grady
Give Mikey a break on this.
Can we still laugh at his bad music and homosexual pedophillia?

[Airman Doors, USAF]

I've never hammered MJ on his vitiligo. If he has it, he has it.

I hammer on him because he acts like an irresponsible 12-year-old, he spends money so wastefully that it appears he's now out of it, and he made what was once a handsome adult into something vaguely resembling Skeletor from Masters of the Universe in order to satisfy some seriously sick urge that he apparently could never overcome.

Vitiligo aside, the man is genuinely deranged. And people love him for it!

I swear, I'll never understand as long as I live why people love freakshows. I turn away in disgust every time I see the man. It literally hurts to look at him compared to what he once was.

[ElvisL1ves]

There's no such thing as brown makeup? He couldn't afford it if there were?

The thing that grates about Jackson (well, the thing we're discussing here) isn't his disease and use of cosmetics, but that he chooses as part of the process to try to pass for something he is not. The nose and hair are further evidence of that. He isn't being blasted for using makeup, but for implicitly rejecting his blackness.

[Jpeg Jones]

I am the first one to make fun of Michael Jackson.Well, there's an interesting misprint.

What Michael Jackson did is that he consulted a doctor that gave him medication that killed all of his melenin, rendering him pure white. [...] I assure you that if it was up to MJ, he would be as black as the Ace of Spades.And you know all of this how?

Look, I totally hear you that vitiligo sucks. But you haven't proved he has it. You do realize that to the rest of us it just looks like really bad lying, right?

[monstro]

He has pictures of white, blonde-haired angels on his walls.

His children are phenotypically white.

He has fucked up his hair, nose, cheeks, eyes, and chin.

He looks like a white person.

He is known to have body dysmorphic issues and has shown himself to be crazy enough to be self-hating.

It is not much of a stretch to conclude that the guy is trying to make himself look white.

Ultimately, however, acceptance of whether or not he has vitiligo is based on faith. There is no real evidence one way or the other. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence against it.

[blowero]

I have to agree with the others: Forget the vitiligo, just look what he did to his nose. He had a perfectly fine nose; it looked like a black man's nose. In fact, it was quite a handsome nose. And he destroyed it. That's pretty nutty.

I wouldn't go so far as to say he's lying about the vitiligo, though. I see no reason to assume he's not telling the truth about that.