For most of his adult life, there were rumors that Michael Jackson was bleaching his skin in an effort to look white because he was ashamed of his African-American heritage. After his death, his autopsy revealed that, as the King of Pop had said all along, he had vitiligo, a condition that causes loss of pigment and that any lightening of skin was to even out the splotchiness that the condition can cause. Michael Jackson was complicated, but he was never ashamed to be black.
I have to imagine all of that was on the mind of his daughter Paris when she asked her fans to stop editing pictures of her to make her skin look lighter or darker.
i appreciate everything y’all make for me, i enjoy every single edit i see. but please stop lightening my skin to make me look more white. and please stop darkening my skin to make me look more mixed. i am what i am. i’m aware of what i look like and i finally happy with it..
I hope everyone can understand where she’s coming from, it doesn’t seen like an unreasonable request. She’s definitely aware of all the scrutiny her father was under because of his skin condition, and she wants to make it clear she’s not ashamed of her heritage and wants to be the person she is. Apparently some reporting on the topic didn’t see it that way.
I was curious about what sorts of edits people were doing, so I took a look at her Twitter feed, and I think she’s referring to photoshopped images like this one:
That is a certainly a thing that is going on in that picture.
Wow, okay, there’s a theme. Look, Paris Jackson might have the most beautiful eyes of anyone on the planet (seriously, how can you not get lost in them) but two of them is enough. That third eye is supposed to be metaphorical. There’s a reason Tenshinhan never got married in Dragon Ball Z like Goku and Krillin. But if Paris can learn to fire a Dodon Ray, it might be a fair trade-off.