How did Michael Jackson become white
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Combination of Vitiligo and body dysmorphia.
He had some deep seated body image issues that caused him to seek out radical plastic surgery.
When he started getting vitiligo spots, his dysmorphia led him to bleach his skin in order to even it out.
He also had extensive facial reconstruction.
In the early 1980s, Michael Jackson was diagnosed with discoid lupus erythematosus (an auto-immune disease that causes skin lesions and discolouration) and vitiligo (a related auto-immune condition that causes patches of your skin to lose all colouration). These diagnoses were subject to a lot of rumours at the time (mainly rumours that this wasn’t true), but they were confirmed as definitely true by his autopsy.
Both of these diseases would slowly progress over the course of his life, causing large patches of his skin to completely lose all colouration and become extremely pale.
Jackson found having patchy/mismatched skin quite distressing, and devoted large amounts of his time and money to trying to hide it. This often focussed on lightening his remaining dark skin to match the patchy areas, and this only got more extreme as parts of his skin became paler.
We don’t know the exact full details of what he did to his skin. We know he used skin bleaching agents and makeup, and that he saw a dermatologist regularly.
Towards the end of the 80s, as he became very rich, Jackson also underwent a few cosmetic surgeries – most notably on his nose, which he always hated. He struggled with his appearance generally throughout his life.
Skin bleaching treatments to hide his vitiligo, a condition that creates uneven skin pigmentation. Pretty tragic actually — this was something people mocked him for in his later life, but I don’t think the vitiligo was widely known about until after his death.
There are a number of things Jackson rightfully deserved to be shunned for, but this wasn’t one of them.
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My father had vitiligo on his hands and part of his face. He swore blind that it was because of his frequent handling of alcohol for his DIY projects.
He was also type 1 diabetic, I understand it is quite common for people to have both auto immune diseases.
There was bleaching creams in his home when he died and his sister LaToya has said that he had been using them for years.
was there ever a consensus on whether or not he did that to those kids?
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