Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop”, created many controversies throughout his career and one of those involved his changing skin color. He was accused of bleaching his skin to make it paler so he wouldn’t appear as a black man. Because he had numerous plastic surgeries altering his nose and lips it only added fuel to the fire fanning the skin bleaching rumors. By the mid-90s Jackson could not ignore the accusations any longer and announced to the public he suffered from vitiligo, a condition that causes skin pigment to disappear in certain spots.
Conspiracy theorists hurried to refute Jackson’s claims, insisting that he only wanted to look like a white person and was using a skin bleaching mix called Benoquin cream to accomplish that goal.
Those rumors were finally laid to rest when the results of Michael Jackson’s autopsy report were released after his death in 2009. The doctors confirmed that Michael Jackson did, indeed, have vitiligo universalis.
There are actually two types of this skin disorder. Vitiligo often affects just patches of the skin, creating white patches here and there seemingly at random on the skin, wiping out the darker pigmentation. In the type Jackson had, vitiligo universalis, it affects the entire body turning all the skin pale.
Jackson’s dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, went public with the diagnosis at Jackson’s request in 1993 after Jackson discussed his condition during an interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said the condition had been diagnosed in 1984 and went on to say that Jackson also suffered from lupus erythematosus, another condition that also causes skin pigmentation loss.
Early during the illness, Jackson tried to use makeup to disguise the discolored patches, but eventually this became too much effort. The white patches were so extensive that it made more sense to bleach the brown bits of skin he had left, so under the supervision of his doctor, he did begin using Benoquin cream as a treatment.
Now that Michael Jackson is at rest, we only hope the hateful rumors that he wanted to become Caucasian will also be put to rest.