more than meets the eye

I'm not a Michael Jackson fan. We're opposites in fact, since he likes his men young and I like mine old. He never wanted to grow old, I was born some five decades too late. But his old songs were undeniably great. My favourite is Black and White, which I've been listening a lot lately (I love the Adam Lambert version). But there's one thing that baffled me about the icon: the whole body modification process.

MJ is the only black person I've ever heard of that became white. I never knew how he did it, and honestly I don't buy the skin condition story. I've met people with vitiligo (a German teacher of mine had it), but they only had some white spots on their faces, neck, arms, whatever. The rest of the skin kept its regular colour. MJ, on the other hand, had his whole skin became white instead of some patches popping out at a time. Admittedly, this happened over the years, with his skin progressively becoming fairer, but it's still very different from the vitiligo I've seen.

I think we all have some physical features we're dissatisfied with on ourselves. For instance, I detest how I look. I'm an daddy fanatic that looks like anything but a daddy. More of a sonny, really. There isn't a single part of my body I'm satisfied with. I'm skinny. My facial hair - the most important part of a man's body IMO - is... very sparse. Teenager quality. If I grow my hair I'll get an afro. Or maybe a jewfro since I'm pale (I'm neither black nor jew, though... so a "brazilfro" maybe). And so on. Could it be that if I had the money MJ had I would also try to make myself look closer to what I picture as the ideal look? I've never heard of surgeries to make people grow facial hair but I've never heard of treatments to make people skins go white either, and Michael Jackson is the living proof (...or not so much) that those do exist.

I prefer to think I wouldn't go to the extremes MJ went, seeing how those eventually turned him into a monster. But I wonder if I were in his shoes I wouldn't do similar things on a smaller scale.