My daughter has vitiligo on her upper arm, next to her armpit. It is very uneven and looks like how your skin looks when you peel off sunburned sections of skin. I don’t doubt MJ suffers from it, but I doubt that’s what’s going on with his face.
I thought he was wondering about how your dermatologist knew what bleaching cream Michael Jackson was using.
Thank you–I gnashed my teeth and then got teary about this. (I have a head cold and am a bit emotional right now).
Put it this way: if I could have a choice between an operable, curable cancer and vitiligo, I’d take the cancer. YMMV.
If Michael had not gone out of his way to create a very NON-BLACK image of himself, I’d buy the vitiligo excuse. In a second, I would. But it just seems too convenient an excuse for someone who’s obviously got some major mental issues, especially regarding his race. Look at the man and tell me he’s NOT trying to rid himself of blackness.
Michael has some major daddy issues from his OG pimping old school steel-collar poppa Joe, who’s strictly NWA* and very likely (at least at one time) embarassed as hell by his big ol’ sissy youngest son. If Michael’s trying to eliminate blackness, he’s also trying to completely de-emphasize and reject any black masculine sexual identity he has, too. He’s clearly trying very hard to not to look or act anything like Joe Jackson, who was supposedly a “tough disciplinarian” (or some claim, abusive as hell) who, let’s remember, kept his family of ten children in Gary Indiana in line. But yet, Mike loves to pretend he’s “Bad,” “Dangerous,” “Invincible,” etc. Is he doing that, it part, for his father’s approval? It’s weird and sad.
Michael has some racial issues, too, no doubt about it – at least in regard to his physical appearance – but he has always surrounded himself with his family and he definitely embraces a wider black ethnic musical heritage that repeatedly shows up in his music and video imagery. I think his sexual and gender issues are way to the forefront of his racial and ethnic identity issues: he hasn’t run afoul of the law during his racial confusion. So, again, armchair psychology: I don’t think he’s rejecting blackness so much as he’s rejecting his father within him.
I said this last year when this came up: Michael may have vitiligo, but I’ll bet you anything his skin coloring today is the result of very expensive chemical bleaching. Remember when he used to sleep in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to “extend his longevity” and for “rejuvenatation?” I’m guessing that helped attain his “look.”
*TWA = Nigga With Assets. See, 50 Cents, Suge Knight.
I don’t doubt chemical skin bleaching exists, just that treatments like Jackson’s are too prohibtively expensive to all but the most rich and most committed. Melanin ain’t no joke.
Skin-bleaching products were a lot more prevelant here in the U.S. before the black power movement had the net effect of imparting some sense of ethnic pride in one’s skin color and appearance, but they’re still around. Madame CJ Walker made her millions selling hair straighteners and some skin lightening creams (not bleaching agents), and apparently countries like Mali, Nigeria and Morrocco that export skin bleaching creams to other parts if the continent with blistering side effects.
If you think Jackson’s kids are biologically his then you need to give me a hundred bucks. I’ll pay you back. Really.
I dont really carry that much cash… Can I just email you my credit card details?
Thamks for all the info on this guys, especially those with first hand information on vitiligo. I know what you’re going through, even if I am a psoriasis man myself.
I thought he admitted that the oxygen chamber was something he and his PR people cooked up as a joke for the tabloids, just for shits and giggles?
Doesn’t having vitiligo also make you more susceptible to sunburn and so you REALLY have to avoid the sun?
Guinastasia. Okay. What he said in that 1993 Oprah interview was that the Enquirer snapped a photo of him in the oxygen tent and that the story that accompanied the picture was a lie, and that the rumors that he was using it to extend his life weren’t true. He never denied that the picture itself was real. The question then becomes: was Mike actually having something done to him in the picture?
Now… he says he was just trying it out as a piece of medical equipment in a burn ward they named for him when the picture was shot and the story was made up. I’ve always wondered if this some sort of cosmetic treatment.
Googling “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy” turns up all sorts of useful medical treatments, including, hello–! compromised skin grafts. Hmm.
Make of that what you will. I offer absolutely no evidence beyond my smug and scurrilous insinuations borne of a fevered imagination with no medical training.
Yeah, some black people with really WHITE skin because of vitiligo are prone to sunburn on their non-melanin skin areas. But as a counterpoint, I’ve known a “Mister Patterson” for decades, a 70-something deacon in my grandmother’s church who was once as dark-skinned as Yaphet Kotto (I’m told) but now can easily be mistaken for an old, ruddy white man… anyway, “Mister Patterson” does not ever seem to complain about sunburn. Ever. He also doesn’t sweat much. Whether it’s because he secretly uses suntan lotion or, like my light-complexioned grandmother, strong sun just doesn’t bother him, I dunno. Give of that anomalous example the puzzling authority it deserves.
Vitiliginous patches are by definition without melanin, the “ingredient” that makes skin tan. Such patches will never tan, and will always burn, barring successfull UV light therapy. So, black people with vitiligo can burn–blacks can burn anyway.
for some reason I am unable to spell successful correctly. Forgive me.