"He was very insecure" Michael Jackson's son talks about his "blotchy" skin
Prince Jackson says in a podcast that his father Michael Jackson was "very insecure" about his "blotchy" vitiligo skin condition.
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- Michael Jackson's skin color always caused speculation during his lifetime. It was not clear whether the King of Pop bleached his skin because he had a problem with his African-American heritage.
- Now his eldest son Prince talks about Michael Jackson's main problem, vitiligo, in a podcast.
- The disease has made his father "very insecure".
In the podcast "Hotboxin' with Mike Tyson", Prince Jackson (26), Michael Jackson's eldest son, spoke about his famous father's skin disease.
"When I was younger, he always explained it to me and talked about it," Prince said in the interview. "I think it was even in the autopsy report. I think you can only speculate about the cause, but it's either vitiligo or a form of lupus that contributes to vitiligo."
Prince said that his father's skin disease had caused him great anxiety: "He was very self-conscious because he looked kind of blotchy," Prince said, explaining further. "So he wanted to see if he could smooth out his appearance to improve his confidence about his physical appearance."
"Vitiligo, or white spot disease, is a chronic condition in which the skin becomes discolored in patches," the Swiss Allergy Center writes on its website.
Michael Jackson spoke about it on Oprah Winfrey
The King of Pop spoke about it on US talk show host Oprah Winfrey in 1993. At the time, his change in appearance had led to much speculation. He was accused of cosmetic surgery.
Michael Jackson explained on the show: "I have a skin condition that changes the pigmentation of my skin. It's something I can't help," and he doubled down: "When people make up stories that I don't want to be the way I am, it hurts me. That's a problem for me. I can't control it. But what about all the millions of people who sit in the sun to become darker, to become different than they are? Nobody says anything about that."
The condition is familial, he says, and he can't control it. "It makes me very sad," confessed the hit singer, who died in 2009.
He tried to even out the spots with make-up. However, he found it strange that this topic caused so much speculation, as the issue was not important to him.
More is now known about vitiligo. Canadian model W innie Harlow also suffers from the white spot disease and talks about it in her interviews.