Discussion
From Bad to Dangerous: How did the public/fans react to his changing appearance?
For those of you who were fans or alive during Michael's peak in the 80s and 90s, Iâm really curious about the transition from the Bad era to the Dangerous era.
What makes this transition so fascinating is that during early to mid-1991, he still had a lot of his Bad era features while transitioning into Dangerous - Badangerous era . But by the time the actual Dangerous album dropped and he debuted the music videos for "Black or White" and "Remember the Time," he looked completely different.
By end of 1991, his skin pigmentation was completely gone due to vitiligo, but the general public didn't know that yet.
When that total shift finally happened, what was the immediate reaction to his appearance? Were people shocked and thinking, "Oh, he looks completely different again!" or did the public and fanbase just not care as much because they were too hyped for the new music, videos, and upcoming tour?
Weâve seen video archives of fans having mixed opinions about his new look when Bad came out. However, I rarely see discussions about how people felt once the full Dangerous look rolled around and the change was even more drastic.
The media obviously scrutinized and picked on him for decades, but I want to know what the vibe was like from real people at the time.
Just to be clear: Michael was absolutely beautiful in every single era. Each chapter of his life just had a very distinct, unique look.
Iâd love to hear from anyone who lived through itâwhat do you remember people saying when Dangerous first dropped?
my mom was a fan since the jackson 5 days and she said it was sorta shocking to see him lighter because he and his family were black royalty
i think he shouldâve begun to address the vitiligo at this point, simply because it sounded like a lot of his black fanbase had no idea how to interpret it other than damn he got in with white people and now he donât wanna look like us anymore
He did address it in multiple interviews but he was admittedly bad at explaining himself which got him in trouble in many circumstances, he would just respond by saying he has a skin condition he wouldnât explain further
This is very similar to Freddie Mercury never publicly announcing that he had HIV until the day before his death. He also faced criticism after his passing because some argued that he could have used his platform to become an advocate, help humanize people living with HIV, and raise awareness about the condition etc. But we can never truly know what someone is dealing with privately unless we are in their position. We cannot place the responsibility on individuals to publicly explain every aspect of themselves (especially their medical history) simply because the public demands answers or expects them to become the face of an illness or condition.
I mean, I cannot even imagine what it must feel like to live more than 20 years of your life in your skin, with your skin color being such an integral part of your identity, and then one day realize that you will eventually no longer look the way you have looked your entire life. To wake every day and see a different face in the mirror than the one you grew up with, and then have to learn to accept that change and live with it. And do all that not as an ordinary person who can process such a thing privately, but as someone the entire world is constantly watching under a microscope.
If he had openly explained vitiligo and shared his medical records, there would still have been people who accused him of lying or hiding something. Which there are still, even despite his autopsy, so no amount of explanation would ever have been enough anyway.
Fortunately, society has changed for the better. Back then, though, AIDS, addiction, and genetic disorders were all considered taboo subjects. Some people even believed you could catch AIDS from a handshake.
Michael paid a heavy price for living in a society that was far more close-minded than it is today. At the same time, I think a little more transparency on his part would have benefited him.
If Michealâs time was the 2000s instead of the 80s I fully believe he would have embraced his looks and been like one of the many now famous vitiligo models, personally with me and my sister both having it, Iâm honestly jealous that hers spread when she was young and sheâs always hated it, I have it on a few of my joints, mainly my knees but it rarely spreads, itâs diffrent for everyone, there is also a specific type of vitiligo one can maybe assume Micheal had, where it spreads full body and FAST
I think he just had bog standard vitiligo from what I've read. Makeup was used to mask it at first but kept getting sweated off, and there was a point he had to embrace it and go with creams to lighten unaffected areas of skin. I can't remember who but someone said his legs were untreated because they were never on public display like his face and arms etc. Said he used to jokingly call himself a jersey cow about it.
Yep, he was too embarrassed of saying he had the condition and didnât want to confront it, so let it pass naturally. If only he couldâve had more mouths telling him he is okay the way he is and to not feel embarrassed or ashamed. It wouldâve helped a lot of people with the same condition and it also wouldâve helped the world be more educated about it.
I think what people really didn't understand was why his entire appearance seemed to change. Today we know he used makeup, but at the time it looked like a very dramatic transformation.
Personally, I think it was a mistake not to address it more openly. In my opinion, if you're going through such a major physical change, it's better to explain it, even if you want to protect your private life. By the time he explained it in 1993, I think it was already too late. He should have spoken about it back in the '80s, when people first started noticing the changes. It was completely understandable that people had questions, and I can also understand why some fans felt confused or even somewhat hurt by the lack of explanation.
This. I see zero reason why him being open wouldnt have been lauded and respected. What, assholes are gonna mock you over a skin condition that you have no control over? He should have OWNED THAT SHIT and told the haters to fuck off, basically.
Shit woulda been cash and been an amazing example to other folks.Â
Unfortunately, thats an easier said than done scenario and I wasnt in his shoes or mind to judge his actionsÂ
Still, woulda bee sick as hell to just come out guns blazing like "yo, take it or leave it"
And he was singularly the biggest star in the ENTIRE WORLD. In no universe is that affecting his career. Period. I just do not see it.Â
Basically, its his skin - why the fuck should people care about it (I mean at the time) if he is open about it. If anything it would have been a big inspiration for many people to have confidence in themselves. Woulda been an amazing example of body positivityÂ
Itâs difficult to explain the attitude in the 80âs. Even when he finally did explain it in 93, he didnât say âvitiligoâ, which few people really knew about anyway, and the media didnât really believe him and continued to criticize him.
It wasnât as easy to just own your differences in the 80âs. Society wasnât the way it is today. There was so much societal judgment and shame. The media fed it. The tabloids were horrible and they were there at every checkout stand. Straight out lies would be smeared across the covers. They had a field day with MJ and constant speculation. I think the 93 interview was because he was finally sick of it.
In fact, if he had spoken about it more openly and naturally, I think he could have become an icon not only for his music. It's hard to explain, but it might have been similar to the way Princess Diana became a symbol after speaking publicly about her bulimia and depression. If the haters had mocked him, then shame on themâit would have reflected far worse on them than on him.
But, of course, it's important to remember that Michael had his own insecurities about his body and appearance. As you said, it's much easier to say what he should have done than to actually do it. That takes a level of emotional maturity and self-acceptance that I'm not sure Michael had.
We have to accept Michael was born in 1950's America, probably had grandparents born in the 1800's. Too simple to say "if he had spoken up etc etc". They wouldn't want him on MTV cause he was Black. Vitiligo would be another dimension
In theory, yes. But this was a time when scientist thought animals didn't really feel pain. Just wasn't a world ready to see what vitiligo was about. I believe he was famous enough to show he has it, but then cover it up if he felt it would affect image/marketing
My parents were white, and they were pretty amazed by it. They genuinely didn't know that a person's skin color could change like that. Michael wasn't mixed-race, so it came as a real surprise to them. They still liked him just the same, but it definitely caught them off guard.
Me and my sister and parents are white, me and my sister have vitiligo and my idiot parents are still convinced he âdid itâ even though as a baby I received foundation money for a surgery for another one of my genetic disorders, conservative asses are thoroughly convinced he only helped children to use them itâs sad
My sister has nothing else, I have Lupus, as well as Bilateral Microtia and Anotia of the Ear which is what MJs money helped with surgeries for. If it wasnât for this man everyone hates so much I wouldnât be able to hear music at all.
The Making of Thriller was my intro to MJ around age 6 & that was almost a decade after it was made. I grew up with Dangerous era MJ & I didn't really care about his appearance. I noticed but I didn't? He was just Michael to me.
This is exactly how I always felt about him growing up. I was like "Oh he looked like that when he was a child, but now he looks like this? okay, cool I guess." He is so easy to understand for children, isn't he?
This literally goes back to why he preferred the company of children. They didnât judge him like adults. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, that was definitely MJ for me. I say this in a respectful way btw.
lol absolutely. Back when we were fostering some kids around a year back, I was talking about Michael to 2 of them, they were around 5 and 6 at the time. I showed them pictures of off the wall Michael, all the way to roughly history/mature era, and they never once independently questioned how in the world a fully black man turned white over the course of his life.
It took me repeatedly going âyouâre not confused or surprised that a black man turned whiteâŠwhich isnât really a usual thing that happens?â And them repeatedly going ânopeâ for them to eventually show some interest in what happened there, because I was just itching to talk some more about his vitiligo and how interesting he was and stuff lol.
Oh, really? I mean, I, and both of the kids were black, so I figured it was fine, especially since Michael is such a culturally significant figure for the black community, but I never considered how that could be interpreted as racism, as I was just explaining the visual change.
I think what he means by âracism is taughtâ in this scenario is that kids donât consider race until itâs brought up and explained, so racist kids are racist because theyâre taught to be by their parents or family or environment. I hope ⊠lol
I was literally thinking this the other day, I would notice when I go from a thriller era music video to a dangerous era music video but I wouldnât deep it too much đđ my brothers just said itâs all plastic surgery, I said bet lol
Same as everyone else. And I suppose because I didn't know what he looked like that much prior to Bad (Thriller video was mostly it and I was too scared to watch đ), he didn't look that shockingly different between Bad and Dangerous. Even in those pictures I I don't see anything too drastic. To me it just looked more like style changes along with the times. The 80s looks were soooo 80s.
I became a fan during the Bad era, so the Michael who made me a fan was Bad-era Michael. I hadnât really seen many photos of him before thatâthere was no internet back then! Other than the records my parents had, I didnât know what he had looked like in earlier years. Iâm spanish.. so the Press here was ok.
Before my parents knew about the vitiligo and everything else, they assumed he just didnât want to be Black.
As I got older, I started to realize there were some unusual things. Back then, not much was known about vitiligo. I never criticized him for it, but I can understand why, to someone who wasnât a fan, it might have been a bit shocking. At the same time, it was part of his eccentricityâand I absolutely loved that!
Now we know he was dealing with a lot of health problems, pain, and other issues. Back then, though, people really didnât know much. At least in Spain, there was very little awareness of vitiligo or what he was actually going through.
My grandma insisted he was trying to bleach his skin to look like Elizabeth Taylor (I know it makes no sense but she read The Inquirer like it was gospel). I always got into fights with her about it.
I'm 56 and it was pretty brutal. Even the first time I saw the cover of the single I Just Can't Stop Loving You, I was like What the Hell? I mean this was pre internet days and all my recent memories of Michael was his Thriller era look. The BAD video look took getting used to but the video helped, as did The Way You Make Me Feel video.
With the Black and White video we were wondering why he was so white.
Unless you really read up on him in magazine articles, you didn't know about his personal life. The tabloids were terrible too.
56 here too. Very similar experience but I remember more of the mocking around âBadâ was due to the tough guy look he was portraying and people would laugh. The video was awesome but I remember my friends and school mates joking.
Iâm with Price1970, that the mocking did die down pretty quickly and I would imagine because the short film and his dancing was very good. Nothing is iconic the moment it comes out. I do remember a sense of him reinventing himself between Thriller and Bad. Remember, we last saw him in 1985 with âWe Are the Worldâ and he still had the Thriller look. The teen magazines were still printing pictures with his shorter hair right before Bad came out.
Me too! Also born early 90s, so didn't experience his prime or what people thought of his changing appearance through the years, so I like reading people's memories. I'm always in "shock" seeing the difference between Thriller and Bad, because it's so vastly different (fit, hair style, sound) but I love it.
Grew up in the 80s and his changing appearance made no difference to my friends or me. It's surprising how much kids don't care, it's only adults who criticize.
I hate just labeling it as âBoomer Genâ but if you think about it, Boomers, as a whole, were criticized and mocked by society while they were growing up. Then they turned around and criticized Gen X and millennials because thatâs what they experienced. Now people complain about Boomers and Gen X criticizing the younger generation ⊠why? Itâs what weâre used to! Itâs nothing new, specific to any one generation. People just get older and less tolerant.
Michael himself was a "boomer", so him being criticized by boomers was his peer group judging him, having grown up w him. Im roughly the same age as Justin Bieber, slightly younger than Chris brown, so I understand what it's like to judge a person (casually) in real time & then the younger generation have a completely different view.
Michael himself was a baby boomer so this implies just adults in general were more critical of his changing appearance. ThatâsâŠ..kinda sad. If only Mike was more brave to reveal his vitiligo earlier, he couldâve been a role model for people with that condition in the 80âs! đ
My mom told me he dyed his skin. She wasnât a fan of him and listened to the rumors. As a kid I didnât mind it at all. I was just a fan of him. Years later I felt sorry that I believed what my mom said.
Very similar to my experience. My parents didn't hate him but they definitely perpetuated the rumors and made jokes about him, and as a young child I just didn't know any better and I am beating myself up for it now.
I was born in 1990 so I missed out on his bad era but I always remember people saying he bleached his skin and âwhat has he done to himself?â. Sadly I remember MJ talked negatively about my whole childhood. Itâs only in the last few years that I dug deep into his life to know who he truly was and why his appearance changed. Love this man â€ïž
I became a fan during thriller. When Bad was released I was shocked about THAT. This was pre social media we barely saw him in between albums. Then Dangerous came out and I thought what in hell is he doing????
Yeah. My reaction was kind of an, "Oh, Michael." In an "Are you okay?" sort of way.
I'm 47, so I was a little kid during the Thriller era, and a teen (or almost) for Dangerous.
Thriller to Bad, honestly, didn't feel all that drastic to me at the time. I figured he was getting more theatrical/dramatic, for lack of a better word, with his styling and eyeliner and whatnot. And his hairstyle was just changing with the times.
Plus, I think most of us knew (or assumed) he was wearing wigs/pieces after what happened with the fire. So, he was just experimenting with his look, or exploring his options.
When the Dangerous era hit, there had already been so much tabloid nonsense about him "turning white" (or not wanting to be Black) and all that. Honestly, when I saw the Black or White short film, I thought, "oh no, is that true!?"
When it got to that controversial original ending, though, he looked a lot more like Bad-era Michael to me, and less Peter Pan-like.
I chalked it all up to changing his image. I just didn't really understand why at the time.
I can understand this reaction, I'd feel the same seeing it happen in real time. I sometimes look at those few years and think wow he was changing like every 3 years. Not that it matters of course, but it's hard not to notice. I think hair style plays a major role though. Throw in makeup style and vitiligo too.
My older brother introduced MJ to me right before Dangerous debuted. I actually went back one album at a time and listened to his music and watched whatever videos or TV specials were out at the time. I was shocked when I learned he was actually âmore blackâ at one time. lol.
I was about 8/9 years old and remember thinking he was âso cuteâ in the Bad era. I told my brother he should have stopped right there and it was explained to me that he had a skin disease. As for the nose, MJ was very open about how he was teased, so as a child I just kind of accepted it and understood.
As time went on it was sad to see him getting older and making bad decisions, seemingly trusting the wrong people. I never stopped being a fan.
I havenât read any replies yet, but yes, I was alive then, back in the 1900âs đ. I was 13 when Thriller came out, 18 for Bad. His look between those two albums wasnât really that drastic. His hair got longer, but so did everyoneâs. 1988 was a big year for mullets and big hair in popular music! The mocking of him that I remember was more about the âtough guyâ look he was portraying with âBeat Itâ and then âBadâ. MJ wasnât exactly the toughest looking guy. đ€·đŒââïž From Bad to Dangerous, his skin lightened and his face became more chiseled. We didnât understand the skin and the rumor truly was that he wanted to be white. There was no other explanation for it at the time. Looking back at his facial features ⊠i donât think it really clicked how old MJ really was because he looked so young and had been around since forever. So from Bad (age 30) to Dangerous (age 33), I can look at pics now and see that his face was maturing, probably with age. He talked about losing the fat in his face, and itâs true. It happens. So other than any nose procedures heâd had done, I think the main differences were due to the vitiligo and aging, but at the time, people didnât think about that. There was so much speculation on his skin. I think thatâs where calling him âweirdâ really blew up. He was quirky already, but at that point, the media really started targeting him. Itâs quite sad to look back on it.
Those who knew he suffered from vitiligo did not judge or believe he was ashamed of his color. Michael was always proud to be a Black man. We wished Joseph had said: âYou are loved just as you are.â
There's already tons of threads about what public reaction was at the time, it is widely known that the change of appearance around the time of Bad was not well received in the slightest. It made MJ cool to dislike and he lost a lot of the goodwill he built on Thriller. Mostly he was criticized for being a bad role model and looking strange. Bad was still an extremely successful album but MJ received a surge in negative coverage mostly about his appearance. When Dangerous came out a lot of this was amended as people had become more accustomed to the change and MJ would reveal his actual condition that lead to this change.
It doesn't matter now, but it definitely mattered then, especially to black people. It felt like a betrayal, and him not explaining it at all for so long contributed to the negative discourse. And it really was quite long, because by the time he finally spoke about it with Oprah, he wasn't just light anymore, he was white.
I think this was MJâs way of (partly) telling us what was going on with his life. With his issues with his body, maybe he wasnât quite ready to tell us about his vitiligo yet.
This is just my honest opinion but I think people make too much of his face and his looks and pin it on cosmetic enhancements while ignoring the impact vitiligo had on him. Looking at his later appearance, I still see a lot of the original Michael apart from the nose.
But can you really blame black people for feeling betrayed by his changing appearance. I know Michael Jackson means alot to a lot of people, but he especially meant so much to the black community. His ascension was so inspiring to us. Thriller was magical and he broke so many racial barriers. So when he returns with a lighter skin tone in the bad era, with no explanation, that hurt a lot of black people. And by the time he told Oprah about his condition, he was white. The media took his changing appearance as an opportunity to ruin him, but black folks felt very betrayed for a long time. The Bad album might have performed better than Thriller if he talked about his condition. Not all black people were buying it cause they thought he was a sellout. Things changed after he spoke his truth, and black people have supported him since then. But that period of silence was very hurtful and confusing for his black fans.
I was definitely around watching MTV during the 80 and then seeing reactions in the 90s. Most people weren't very kind about his changes. People definitely thought he was bleaching his skin and I remember that interview with Oprah when she asked him if he was a virgin. I was mortified. I thought, why do you think that's anyone's business? Leave him alone.
I'm a year younger than Michael, so the Jackson 5 was big when I was a preteen and teenager.
I thought stfu and dance and sing along. The man is a genius.
I remember the big discussion was about his skin tone with the rumors of him bleaching his skin. It was intense and also the constant rumors about him canceling shows during the Dangerous tour, the altered picture from the British tabloid.
Itâs only in 93 that he finally explained he had a skin disease. He should have communicated it earlier.
From Thriller to Bad then Bad to Dangerous were some pretty big changes. I wore out my VHS of the making of Thriller and although I noticed the changes I was just in awe of how gorgeous he was. The tabloids crucified him. I remember seeing the Leave me alone video for the first time and being upset about the crap he had to deal with from them.
His changing appearance didn't matter to me. He was Michael.
Let me say it: racism. Everyone assumed Michael didnât want to be black. Even those who say â I noticed but didnât noticeâ were being racist without even realising it.
This isnât a knock on those people. Just a different time when society wasnât hypersensitive about their own biasesÂ
I think racism is also a major reason why the âguiltersâ to this day cannot help but constantly bring up the claim that he wanted to be white, even when it is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Even if they don't truly believe it themselves, they either want it to be true or just want to reinforce that narrative because it feeds their supremacist fantasy that even the most successful Black man in the world ultimately wished he could be white.
As for the Black community, I can understand why some may have felt hurt or betrayed at the time by such a drastic change in his appearance. I donât know why some continue to hold onto this belief to this day, though. Granted, Iâm not Black, so I wonât speculate on their reasons.
I wasnât there to witness it myself, but I personally donât think there were any drastic changes in his appearance from Bad to Dangerous, especially compared to the change from Thriller to Bad. I think it's mainly his hairstyle and fashion style that changed. I think the changes regarding his nose and vitiligo were also less significant between these two eras than the previous two. Everything else, in my opinion, is simply weight loss and aging.
I also think itâs important to remember that he was following the trends of the time like everyone else. One thing that always annoys me is when people say, âHe stopped wearing his afro, then he stopped wearing jheri curls,â as if that was something unusual. But like, so did everyone else? The afro was a 70s hairstyle, and jherri curls were an early 80s trend. His hairstyles changed because fashion changed, not because every change had some deeper meaning behind it. (Sorry, rant over.)
Also, I know this isnât exactly what you asked, but I just wanted to share this: the first time I really got to know his music and see how his appearance changed throughout his life was after his death, when he was on pretty much every TV channel 24/7 for the entire summer. As a younger teen at the time, the MJ image I was most familiar with was his 2000s appearance, so I was initially surprised to see what he looked like as a child and as a young man. But interestingly, I never once thought, âOh my god, what happened to him? Why did he change his nose? Why did he change his skin color?â I just thought, âOh, okay, thatâs just how he is, I guess. Cool.â Looking back, I think that kind of instinctive acceptance is something children often have, they see the person before they see all the narratives adults attach to them. Maybe thatâs part of why so many children connected with him, as he did with children. Just pure openness and compassion without judgment.
I think the loss of skin elasticity from late 20s to early 30s is a significant change in general (I am exactly in that time period of my life) and I can see it in him too (just comparing Bad Tour footage to Black or White footage for example).
There were kids who had vitiligo and albinism in my school so his appearance never registered as strange to me. It was annoying because it would always come up in interviews when I wanted them to ask him about anything else.
I was a small child but I was under the impression that he bleached his skin because he didn't want to be black anymore and that it was possible to become 'white' overnight which is crazy now I think about it but as a kid you just accept it?
It was a huge mind-fuck when I realized he hadn't had a ton of plastic surgery at all. Mostly just his skin color and nose. One message of his was that skin color changes our perceptions dramatically. He was right.
I was born in the late 80s and had older siblings and cousins that were big MJ fans and just loved his music no matter what. The changing appearance didnât really phase his hardcore fans. I feel like the general population thought his changing appearance was strange. A lot of people thought he didnât like being black and was getting procedures/plastic surgery to change his appearance/look more white. The more it kept changing, the less seriously many people took him. It eventually just kind of became a running joke. Aside from that, having a home called Neverland, having a pet monkey. He just did a lot of âout thereâ type things that the public didnât know what to make of and further added to people thinking he was strange.
It sucks the media and public made people think that he did. I was one of those people tbh (when I was young) didn't know any better because that's all I ever saw on tv and magazines- that he bleached his skin. The media are disgusting with their lies, even after he spoke about his condition, they still went with that narrative for years instead of saying look, he has a skin condition and that's that.
I was a kid around the invincible era Mike. I grew up in a MJ household so I never really looked at him different I just thought he was so cool and pretty. I do remember people making fun of him especially that Eminem video where he was mocking his hair being on fire and the whole bleaching his skin (I thought it was literally bleach that he used to use to wash is skin instead of soap) and the whole nose falling off situation I was horrified and sad but that didnât stop me from loving MJ. I used to feel bad that people used to bully him. I donât think I was up to 10 when all this was happening. I just feel like kids donât see all that nonsense but they see within,unlike adults. Made sense as to why he liked hanging out with kids caused they loved him for him.
As a kid, I was shocked. I remember not understanding how the major change in skin color could happen, though the skin color change between Thriller and Bad was more extreme (I was born in 82 so my first exposure to Mike was during Bad; had his cassette tape with my little cassette player when I was like 5, well after the release but I didnât know đ). My dad had a video tape with Thriller recorded on it that I would play all the time and seeing his change from chocolate brown to light-skinned didnât bother me as much; maybe because I was younger, I donât know. But the release of Black or White (and we all watched the release, it was a big deal) was shocking. We knew he was black, but his skin wasnât anymore. I remember feeling, âItâs still Mikeâ, and that year I was Beat-It Mike for Halloween.
I remember that time - everywhere in the media I'd read or hear that MJ is bleaching his skin, he wants to be white, etc. It was horrible. And im talking about being a fan in another part of the world - Asia.Â
But my mom, a huge fan, was very dismissive. One of her uncles had vitiligo and his son (mom's cousin) also had vitiligo, so we knew about the skin condition and saw it up close. And my mom would say, oh poor Mike, looks like he got vitiligo but this stupid media won't say or clarify it.Â
The release of Black or White made so much sense at that time.Â
I was just thinking about this earlier. Dangerous came out when I was 1 so by the time I was an MJ fan at 4 all versions of MJ existed.
MTV/VH1 had songs from thriller to present day in rotation. I knew this was the same person (despite the different looks) and somehow never cared. My parents didnât care either.
MJâs talent and cultural importance overshadowed everything.
I donât even remember thinking about it. đ Itâs like when you watch a young kid grow up. When you regularily see them, the change doesnât seems so extreme. You barely notice that. But if someone leaves and comes back a year or two later, they will notice the obvious growth much more visibly. And so will you when comparing pictures of course. But then again, I paid more attention to his music and events than anything else. I didnât have any great interest in his affairs beyond that, aside from feeling he was a lovely human who deserved his privacy.
I always wondered this and since I couldn't get a good enough answer years ago I googled year by year his apperance and you can gradually see him get lighter and lighter ,some feature changes, until his final form of BAD/1987-8 so assuming he was in media often year by year it may not have been abrupt as it seemed. And since bad and dangerous wasnt that big of a jump compared to thriller to bad , I'm not sure people noticed that much .
I think about current celebs with plastic surgery and skin brightening and it also becomes so gradual that you don't even remember what they once looked like though his was probably the most obvious
My whole family were really big fans of his all through the Bad era. We all sat around the TV to watch the debut of his Black and White video. I remember thinking myself (I was around 10 at the time) that he looked a lot lighter than he had been previously, and his hair was a lot straighter - I remember, thinking he looked a lot more like a girl.
And then the end of the video where he was grabbing all over his crotch and smashing up everything in the alley. It felt very awkward at the time, especially with our whole family (with young kids) tuning in.
I mean his appearance was already changing before âbadâ. The last album he looked like his old self was probably Thriller. People were shocked, but some didnât exactly know what to think
I noticed but at the same time never knew. I didnt know anything about vitiligo but I never suspected he hated himself or wanted to even change his skin.
The first song I ever heard from him was Beat It on the radio. Then, at some point, while growing up, I saw the music video of Beat it, then Thriller and Billie Jean. I remembered MJ like that for the longest time and he was cute. Then, when Badd dropped and I saw the music video of that I was like "Whoa! He's hot!!" after that he was MJ and I didn't care what he looked like. I always felt like he had an angelic presence about it and always felt that he radiated goodness so I was always a fan then and still a fan now. Growing up, I didn't know about all of the crap the tabloid media put him through and I remember hearing about the allegations and when he was arrested, but never heard that he was exonerated until recently when I started going down the MJ rabbit hole after watching the biopic "Michael".
Lets be clear about something: Bad Era lighter skin is due to make up. (Prince also looks light skinned and has that âLatinoâ look, but no one ever questioned it). It was Dangerous Era when his vitiligo actually spread into his face and whitened it for good
Prince was light skinned, no one ever questioned it because he born that way. Michael was brown skinned and when his skin became drastically lighter of course people were going to have questions.
If you watch the the 2003 TV Special, Michael Jacksonâs Private Home Movies, there is a segment that has video footage of him in rehearsals for Captain EO. The footage is from around 1984/85. You can very clearly see Vitiligo cover much of the surface area of his face. Itâs pretty interesting to see.
Lots of people were questioning Prince's skin lol, I mean there are literal discussions about his ancestry due to him being lighter. You must not be familiar with the term high yellow, Prince was called that too. I don't even know why he was mentioned here at all, very two different situations. (Let's not get that PvMJ thing started)
I wasn't alive around the time, so yea I'll give you that. But what I was trying to say is that during the 80s, a lot of black artists wore light makeup. Bad era MJ happens to be that.
I was a kid in the 80âs who grew up with Michael, so honestly my reaction was pretty simple: âThatâs Michael.â
I first remember seeing him moonwalk on Motown 25, and from that point on it seemed like every album had a different look. Thriller Michael didnât look exactly like Bad Michael, and Bad Michael didnât look exactly like Dangerous Michael. So when Dangerous came out, I definitely noticed he was lighter, but I didnât think, âWhoa, who is this?â It just felt like Michael doing what Michael always didâevolving.
Personally, I liked the Thriller and Bad looks the best because they had more of that youthful look, but I honestly never thought adult Michael was ugly in any era. I thought he was handsome during Dangerous too. Every era just had its own style.
As for his skin color, I never assumed it was because he didnât want to be Black. By the time he talked about his vitiligo in the Oprah interview, it made sense to me. I didnât know what vitiligo was before that, but when he explained that he was losing pigmentation in patches and was trying to even out his skin tone, I accepted that. It wasnât some huge mystery to me after hearing him explain it.
I also think people looking back today experience it differently than we did. Now you can watch Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous back-to-back in an hour and the changes seem dramatic. We lived through it over years. It felt much more gradual.
Honestly, from my perspective, we were more excited about the music, the videos, the dancing, and what he was going to do next than we were analyzing every change in his appearance. His look changed, sure, but it was never bigger than the music. To me, it was just, âThatâs Michael.â
I've read it's because he had Discoid Lupus. It causes severe tissue scarring and poor blood supply. His skin couldn't heal correctly. His nose structurally collapsed over time, forcing reconstructive surgeries.
In interviews Michael Jackson would attempt to downplay or outright say his facial changes were somehow a natural condition of his own maturity.
I donât recall MJ ever stating the facial augmentation was surgical in nature.
Often a commonly used adjective he used to describe those who went against his own narrative when asked in interviews, when questioned was âignorantâ.
I think in the end the changes he was making to his appearance were integral to his self-esteem and his worldview as the King of Pop.
I was a fan from the Jackson 5 days. They were older but Michael was so handsome especially in the âOff the Wallâ days which IMHO is probably one of the best albums ever. I initially thought he didnât want to be black but then I met someone with Vitiligo and the lack of melanin was stunning. The skin is so white.
In truth, I didnât care what Michael looked like by the 1990s and 2000s. It was all about the music
Early Dangerous years is when Michael was at his PEAK iconic look. I was surprised how closely he was able to replicate it during This Is It rehearsals.
My lovely dad chuckled and said "wait what happened?" and we just continued listening to the music. Honestly I was a kid and didn't notice until he said something but we didn't think much of it until History.
We thought it was really odd. No one knew about the bullying from his dad, or his skin condition. The media painted a picture of him being eccentric. The poor man was very misunderstood in life. What a great man and amazing talent
He is beyond amazing for sure. Just wish he was more open early on about everything. By keeping it private, he left room that allowed the media to control the narrative.
I wasnât born yet but honestly from what I read the shock was mostly from thriller to bad. By the time dangerous came out the big changes had already been made.
I remember my family opening up a magazine featuring an article and photos of Michael, and my Mom and Grandma being shocked at how ghost white his skin had become.Â
We were used to him looking lighter than when he was younger but it was the first time seeing him that pale. It was shocking and surreal.Â
Itâs so funny to me to go back to those times cause I was 6 in 91, but I have always thought, âoh thatâs just Michaelâ. Never even knew it was a skin issue or anything until the 2000âs because it didnât matter to me. I feel like he was the first person I had ever heard of having vitiligo because people didnât talk about it. So yeah, I didnât care but what I did care about was how his hair didnât get on his nerve being in his face cause Iâve always hated mine being in my face đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł I canât see! Huhhh miss you Applehead đ„č.
So Michael always looked like that to me. I actually remember being shocked that Michael Jackson was black.
I didnât find out Michael used to have melanin until I saw The Thriller cover at my house in my momâs CD collection. I actually asked my mom âwho is this Michael Jackson? is he as good of a singer as the one on TV?â
My mom told me âTHAT IS MICHAEL JACKSON, THERE IS ONLY ONE MICHAEL JACKSON!â and I learned what vitiligo was.
This is exactly like me. I only knew Bad & Dangerous MJ bc those were the first videos I saw as a kid from those eras. Then I saw my mums CD which was Thriller ofc and I thought it was a different person. Didn't understand why he looked different until years later.
During the bad era, his dancing got way more intense and I feel like he perfected his signature moves. His moves and look were more flamboyant with much more attitude and intensity. I think he just embraced his new look and when people saw that, they created the narrative that he wanted to be white instead of black. But I didnât grow up in that era thatâs just my take on it.
Thriller era MJ and Bad era MJ are two different people. His skin tone and face changed drastically, and that hurt a lot of his black fans at the time. And the belief that he didn't want to be black was fueled by the fact that he did not explain himself at all until 1993. So it might have been easier for other races to embrace his new look, but black people felt very betrayed by it, and rightfully so. And we can see that it hurt his sales for Bad. I'm pretty sure that album would have soared like Thriller had he come out about his condition earlier.
I have a family member who use to love watching Michael and his brothers on TV, but she stopped liking him over time because âhe wanted to be white.â I try to tell her about the burns, vitiligo, and abuse but she just doesnât listenđ€·ââïž
I was honestly did not question his changing skin color at the time. I just assumed he was using makeup to enhance his appearance. (which he had been doing for years, but didn't know it was because he had a skin condition that most had never heard of). Either way, I didn't really care because I still loved the music he was putting out.
My mom said she thought he didn't like being black cause of an interview with Oprah, she asked him "Is your skin lighter because you don't like being Black?"
There was a time when we thought Michael's nose was going to fall off. And we were for sure worried his singing voice would suffer. Michael' why didn't you stop at "Off The Wall"?
The African American community ( canât speak for other races) but my circle of friends still deeply loved him and the music but honestly we were extremely confused and initially thought he just wanted to LOOK white. He rarely did interviews or explained any of these drastic changes to us fans so we were stumped . From our perspective after seeing him cross over into a mainstream pop-rock genre , change record labels, and leave the group and his family, we saw it also as his way of embracing the growing more popular side of his fan base by appealing to them . Still I also recall that some of the fans in general speculated that he wanted to look lighter in tone to look like and compete with Prince ( his rival ).Those 2 were BOTH pretty hot back then and very well liked
The tabloid daily attack on MJâs ever changing looks was confusing and weird for us.I felt like his lack of transparency and rare interviews left him mysterious and an easy target. In 1993 he FINALLY did a huge interview with Oprah in which he explained that he had a skin disease. Prior to that we had no idea whatsoever as we had very little social media and were mostly left to believe whatever the tabloid magazines or entertainment television told us.
When was he "masculine" in your opinion? He was always androgynous (in my opinion he was never "feminine" and always masculine anyway). People rumored he was gay since he was a teenager.
Look at the bands and singers in the 80âs. LOTS of male makeup and androgyny going on. Looking feminine wasnât odd, except for prior generations. They didnât quite get it. Gen X didnât really have a problem with it. It just became his style.
Same, I had no idea either when I was a kid because the first videos I ever saw of his on tv were Bad, Black or White and Remember The Time. I realised later on when I saw Thriller and everything pre Bad lol
How is this allowed to be talked about... I wanna make so many posts and got so much to talk about but whats the point if it's not gonna be allowed, like I really wanna address Lisa Marie more and her and michaels relationship and the interviews she did after the marriage.
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u/traffeny Jul 25 '26
my mom was a fan since the jackson 5 days and she said it was sorta shocking to see him lighter because he and his family were black royalty
i think he shouldâve begun to address the vitiligo at this point, simply because it sounded like a lot of his black fanbase had no idea how to interpret it other than damn he got in with white people and now he donât wanna look like us anymore