Why is Michael Jackson White?
The popular Pop singer and astounding stage performer Michael Jackson is an African-American. He was born in 1958 on August 28th as one of the nine children. He became superstar at the age of eleven. He was black in appearance when he started his career. Slowly he changed his skin color to white. He used to appear white in the public after few years of pop singing career. In the mid 90s there were several stories among the public regarding the white skin of Michael Jackson. He was abused by the media for going against his ancestral black skin. He was blamed for changing his skin color in order to appear white.
All these complaints on him made him not able to tolerate and in 1993, Michael disclosed suddenly in an Oprah show that he has a skin disease called vitiligo which turned his skin to white. In 1994, MJ’s dermatologist confirmed that Michael was suffering from vitiligo and lupus from 1984 itself. Lupus Erythematosus is a deadly disease and Michael was fortunate to have these symptoms retrograde on his skin. Lupus Erythematosus and Vitiligo are those disorders that remove the skin pigmentation and make it white.
Vitiligo disease is known to occur in people in the age range of 10 to 30 years. This is found to be a genetic disease and Michael Jackson family ancestors were found to have suffered from Vitiligo. Vitiligo according to the scientific study was observed to be an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease is a type of disease in which immune cells will try to kill the cells of its own human body. As vitiligo is related to the pigmentation, the melanin pigmentation generating cells are killed by the immune cells of the body leading to the pigmentation loss.
As Michael was worried very much about the loss of skin pigments he was advised to take treatment for de-pigmentation. This is otherwise called bleaching which takes out his pigmentation totally on the skin. A chemical of 20 percent hydroquinone mono-benzyl ether was used for this work under the supervision of his dermatologist. This has resulted in loss of total pigments giving his skin a white chalk color.
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