Thriller.

Interesting Note: Before, Michael Jackson would use black make-up to cover up his white blotches. Now, he uses white make-up to cover his black ones.

During college, Dr. Junius Crookman stumbled upon a black woman with “irregular white patches on her face and hands” (Schuyler 11). This disease, he later found out, was called vitiligo. People diagnosed with this rare disease have a skin disorder that causes the loss of pigmentation, which could, in thirty or forty years, turn a black person “white.”

Earlier this week, I think Caleb brought up similarities in George Schuyler’s Black No More to Michael Jackson and the metamorphosis of his physical appearance. An icon in pop culture, Michael Jackson is one of the few 1 or 2 percent of Americans that have this skin condition. What I found interesting, however, is that even though his skin has become almost completely white over the years, he has also changed a lot of other aspects of his appearance to make himself “whiter.” Back in 1988, when his autobiography Moon Walk was published, Michael Jackson admitted to having two nose-job procedures and an operation to create a cleft in his chin. And looking at his evolution in pictures, I noticed that his hair also changed significantly. Back when he was younger and the color of his skin was still a darker pigment, he sported the Jheri curl, but now, in his most recent pictures, we only see straight hair. This made me think back to the preface of Black No More where I read about the Kink-No-More treatment.

But, this does not necessarily mean that Michael Jackson’s intentions were to become “whiter” in appearance. He said that his nose operations were performed to improve breathing and to assist in the expansion of his vocal range. Also, perhaps his hair style changed simply because like all artists, he is just trying something different or perhaps straight hair is simply easier to manage. So maybe Michael Jackson can’t be compared too closely to Black No More’s Max Disher, but it does make me think about how Schuyler’s satire may not be so fictional. Before reading this novel, I had no idea that there were really advertisements for this sort of black to white transformation that Crookman promised. I guess it just makes me wonder how extreme people are willing to experiment with their own bodies in order to achieve something.

This newspaper clipping is sad: