Michael Jackson and Vitiligo

For reasons still unknown, sometimes the body produces antibodies that cannot distinguish between foreign invaders and healthy cells from your own body. The result is autoimmune disease, that is, the body starts attacking itself. These diseases take many forms, and many chronic illnesses have been attributed to this. One is Vitiligo, another is Discoid Lupus. Unfortunately having one autoimmune disease increases your risk of having another, and Michael suffered from both.

If anyone is capable of finding me someone who used to be as dark as Michael but solely thanks to bleaching agents is now as white as he was then you’re more than welcome to send me and every newspaper in the world the evidence.

These pictures and the evidence for Michael’s Vitiligo have been around since the 1980s and yet I know that I’ve never seen them published in any mainstream articles regarding his illness. When discussing his Vitiligo they’ll post a picture of him in maybe 1980 and then one from 1992 onwards to show the dramatic change as though he woke up one morning without any pigment. They also never show any photos of him with the splotches of colour he had left and try to make it seem as though he was now a universal “white” colour when in fact he wasn’t.

None of the photos have been photoshopped. If you want to claim they’re the work of photoshop I suggest you find the original unphotoshopped photo and a link to where it was sourced for me.

All the statements and commentary that Michael, his friends, family and doctors have made about his vitiligo can be found by clicking here.

Coroner statement:

They inspected his skin under a microscope and found a reduced amount of melanocytes (the cells responsible for skin pigment):

As you can see from the photos it looks as though the vitiligo started at the very tips of his fingers before it began to spread, just as it seems to be starting with his son Prince.

Which is from an article in 16 magazine in 1972, when Michael was 13

More photos of Mike from around 12-15

Around 16 here:

From around the same time period, uneven pigmentation around his face again:

On the Triumph tour his stage make up runs and you can see the depigmentation. He was already wearing a lot of make up to cover it. After the Oprah interview in 1993 a lot of people asked – why did Michael not just wear dark make up to cover up his vitiligo? He’d actually been wearing dark make up to cover his skin for years

He also started wearing the sequin glove to disguise it on this tour in 1979

Around 1984

The only editing on this photo was lightening the area where his hand had been in shade to show how uneven his skin was

Skin very visibly spotted here

Someone who visited Hayvenhurt in the mid 80s commented on how his nose was darker than the rest of his face and didn’t understand why this was

Victory Tour, his hand.

His Victory Tour glove stained with the make up he used to cover it

He’s wearing light reflective make up which makes the areas of his face with less pigment stand out under a camera flash:

Bad Tour, his hands:

A still from a tour video

You could even see the uneven skin tone in videos from the Bad tour, look at his hand here:

Bad Tour without make up:

The reason why he bandaged his hand, you can see discolouration around the edges:

TWYMMF set picture:

His hands:

Close up:

Black or White, he seems to have gone through depigmentation here, but as you can see that his skin is still uneven:

Close up of his hands:

They Don’t Care About Us in 1996, over his arms and chest.

The side of his face and his neck

HIStory

And then recently:

When he had the spider bite he had photos taken as evidence:

Yes there are pictures from these time periods where his skin looks even but keep in mind that he wore LOTS of make up, that one of the traits of vitiligo is spots shrinking and changing shape, AND that he also tried to gain his pigment back, something a lot of people don’t seem to realize.

This was his make up case backstage of Victory tour:

The makeup that you can see in his kit is called Dermablend. This is a high-pigment makeup created to cover burns, scars and skin discolorations. Many people with Vitiligo use this product, it’s sort of a cover stick for the entire face. Because it makes the entire surface of your skin one color, you have to use a few shades to avoid looking mask-like but it is very difficult to achieve a natural look. You also have to provide color for everything else – lips, eye lashes, bush, eyeshadow.

Michael used more and more stylized makeup as a result – a luxury most people on the street don’t have. Why pretend you are not wearing any when you can change your style to incorporate it? As his skin lightened more evenly, he used lighter and lighter shades of the product (which comes in tones for a variety of skin colors but can go to a very very fair as well) to match his current overall pigmentation. It’s an interesting side note than although it is an expensive makeup requiring multiple shades and its own unique setting powder, many cross-dressers and female impersonators use Dermablend to cover heavy beard shadow, heavy blocked-out eyebrows and other masculine traits not easy to cover with drug store pancake or liquid foundations.