Me and Michael Jackson ... and Vitiligo

This post on the Other Forum has inspired this long, boring, meander through my life experience: "So he didn't pose in the yearbook photo, but admits to donning blackface to imitate Michael Jackson. (Ironic, since Jackson had his skin surgically whitened) Wearing blackface is either wrong or it isn't."

Michael Jackson had vitiligo. He said so in interviews and it was confirmed at his autopsy.  As far as I know, there is no surgical procedure for whitening skin.

I have had vitiligo since early adolescence, and I used to research it for developments in curing or minimizing it. I read that melanocytes, the skin cells that produce melanin, each make enough for themselves and 36 other cells that do not produce melanin. So when one melanocyte's melanin producting ability is stopped, 37 skin cells lose their pigment.

The cause of vitiligo is unknown but it is hereditary (my maternal grandfather also had it). It is thought to be an auto-immune disorder where the body's immune system considers melanocytes to be foreign bodies and attacks them (whether it destroys them, or just their ability to produce melanin, I don't know.)

I was one of those little "brown as a berry" girls -- dark skinned, dark haired, dark eyed -- who would get even darker playing in the summer sun. Then, when I was twelve or so, after summer camp, we noticed a small white patch with irregular edges under my chin. Then my inner wrists and outer elbows developed white patches, followed by knees and ankles. They distressed me, but they really distressed my mother.

Sunless tanning products were just coming on the market, and my mom bought some Coppertone "Quick Tan" and applied it to my white patches with a Q-tip. Next morning my white patches were a deep, dark rust color, with the Q-tip tracks showing. (It did not wash off ... it took days to wear off.) So much for that remedy.

The doc gave me some pills called psoralens. One pill followed by four hours exposure to the sun -- daily. It was hard, almost torment.* Hot, sweaty, blinding white sun...  This was in east central Alabama. I had only my new little periwinkle, black and silver transistor radio for a companion (nobody else was fool enough to stay outside for more than a few minutes.) After many, many days, the follicles in the white patches developed a brown freckle. As summer progressed, the freckles would enlarge and run together.

I kept this insane routine up for two or three summers. Several of my white patches almost completely filled with that routine. But in the fall, when school started and the daily four hours in the sun ended, the freckles disappeared and the white patches reappeared ... and grew. Forget this!

I eventually quit trying to get rid of them and settled for covering them. In high school, I minimized the ones on my face with makeup -- Panstick was my friend. Creamy Ivory in winter, Creamy Beige in summer. As the years passed, I grew more white than brown (Creamy Ivory all the time), and by the time I reached my forties, I had few pigmented areas left. We had moved to Florida by then, and I wore long pants and long sleeves when I went anywhere. I can tell you, even with light-weight, open-weave fabrics, summer is hot in Florida.

Vitiligo is not like albinism, although each condition increases risk of skin cancer from sunlight. Albinism results in no color at all, in irises and hair, not just skin. My hair remained very dark blackish brown until the age-related gray strands started coming in, although my dark brown eyes gradually turned to a dark olive green in my late teens. I don't know if that had anything to do with vitiligo. Irises have their own melanocytes, so in theory, whatever attacks and destroys skin melanocytes could attack the ones in the irises, I guess....

In any case, at one point during this life-saga, I noticed that tattoos were no longer monochrome dark blue. There were colored tattoos, and it occurred to me to wonder if I could get myself tattooed head to toe with flesh-colored ink, ha. It seemed unlikely, and the cost would probably be prohibitive, and since I'd heard that the procedure was painful, this idea never got beyond the "wondering" stage.

I did try a few other remedies -- the most successful was to "paint" a very thin coat of NoAd sunless tanning gel on the white patches, blot them with a tissues to even out the gel (no more rust-colored Q-Tip patches for me!), let it dry and then "paint" my entire arms, legs, face/neck, etc, with the NoAd. I used a big, wide brush like you use to paint walls. It evened out the applied gel better than anything, and kept it off my palms. The NoAd also resulted in light brown coloring, not orange like some sunless tanning products. Problem was, I had to do this every third day or so and  had to exfoliate my skin like crazy... and it was pretty time consuming. I would have continued it, though -- except NoAd quit making their sunless tanning gel...

Apparently Michael Jackson's remedy was to lighten the remaining dark skin he had using products made to lighten age spots. I had never thought of that but then, I didn't want to be paler, anyway. I wanted my "brown as a berry" skin back. But, alas, it was not to be. I am now truly "lily white." What slight coloring I have comes from blood in the capillaries in my skin. I still wear long pants and long sleeves outside, as I don't know if any sun-block products offer the same level of protection. I have never worried about getting skin cancer because of this routine.

In any case, I am always amused when I see these theories about Michael Jackson's skin. I am no fan of the late celebrity -- pedophilia utterly destroys any positive feelings I might have about anybody -- but I found the "surgically whitened" comment guffaw-worthy.

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* It was nothing compared to the horrific medical conditions some kids, and adults, experience. I have no cause for complaining about it and I have never often done it.