I have always wondered just what MJ was thinking (see details)

I am a fan.

I think he had this disease

That topped off with the severe burn scars to his scalp on a man in the spotlight with people staring at each feature.

Personally, I felt after the first or second nose job something WENT wrong, then he had no choices lefton how the reconstruction would go.

I have no idea what he was thinking. I think he was his best or most attractive when “Thriller” came out. Then he was still black and his nose had been altered, but not to the extent that it was falling off. I wish he had stopped there.

He was a bi-polar bear, too, methinks, and self-loathing and horrid fits of jealousy of… well, anyone. White, female, slim nosed, OMG – what didn’t he have done? Poor baby.

I don’t know what he was thinking. I do know that he was a very attractive little boy and young man. Apparently he also had some very bad plastic surgeons, and I understand that he also suffered from vitiligo. In addition, his childhood was apparently quite abusive, so I don’t blame him for wanting to be someone else. And then there were the burns he got filming that one video.

It is too bad. He could have been a much more handsome man.

Following his death, several commentators said that 25 years ago he began becoming uncomfortable with how much he looked like his father.

@filmfann – Since his father was the one forcing him to sing even when he didn’t want to and was at the very least verbally abusive, that could be an important reason for MJ to want to change his appearance.

@filmfann You may have nailed it, bud.

@filmfann Or it’s the fact that he is just like everyone else in the public eye 24/7, and was displeased with his nose. (Thinking of Meg Ryan, Jennifer Grey, Madonna…ugh, the list is too long)

There was an extreme amount of exaggeration with the dad & the media.

I think he came to hate himself and the way he looked. Being in the public eye has its down side as well as all the glory, especially when you experience this as an ackward teenager. Given I had the money when I was a little younger (okay a lot younger) and not as wise I am not sure that I wouldn’t have made some alterations to myself that I would have later questioned.

There are no easy or simple answers to this question. Take your pick:

* He hated the idea of looking like his father
* He was frequently teased about his large nose as a teen (Quincy Jones relates that MJ earned the nickname “Smelly” in the studio because he was constantly putting a hand in front of his nose to cover it, as if there was a smell in the room)
* He had major self-image issues. When he looked in the mirror, he hated who he saw there
* Like many pop stars, he saw the need to reinvent himself every few albums. It just so happened to be that he considered his face to be another canvas upon which to try out new ideas
* As a celebrity, there was a lot of pressure to maintain a certain look, something made difficult by his case of vitiligo and his burned scalp (that Pepsi commercial screw-up seems to have caused permanent hair loss over a good portion of his head)

I think he was a very handsome looking guy around the time of Thriller, still good-looking (and even mesmerizing) around the time of Bad and still presentable around Dangerous. After that, I couldn’t help but think that he had a problem that needed to be worked out with talking, not scalpels.

Interestingly enough, one of his old doctors was on Larry King Live a while back, saying that he saw the damage done to MJ’s face by many bad plastic surgeons and offered to fix it for MJ. In fact, he helped MJ grow some new tissue which became his nose. The doc had more work in store to fix MJ and get him looking closer to way he had looked years earlier, but MJ died before he had a chance to do anymore.

While I will not speculate what he was thinking I can tell you my recent conversation with a well- respected anesthesiologist.

He told me that use of sleeping drugs is a vicious cycle and that MJ had been dependent for over a decade. He added that most- and specifically Propoful- give an illusion of restful sleep but in fact deep sleep is never achieved.

He surmised that Mr. Jackson had been sleep deprived for years. Long term sleep deprivation world most certainly compound decisions and cause poor judgement. His exhaustion could contribute to poor self image and a desire to remain an emotional child.

@Dog I am an insomniac. Being sleep deprived makes one crazy, and yes, it is a vicious cycle. I am finally on good meds (non addictive) from the doc. I doubt the poor man had any energy to be himself, really

I am beginning to wonder if it wasn’t all just drug seeking behavior.

I always, always, ALWAYS thought Joe Jackson looked like an evil snake. And I feel bad for MJ, even though I was more of a casual fan of his work. It is too bad that he didn’t have anyone he trusted enough around him to get it through to him that he needed therapy and needed to tell his dad (once he was an adult) to piss off, not surgery and drugs, and that he didn’t have anything he had to prove to anyone.

I wish I knew the answer. I really really like Michael Jackson. I feel like he had such a strange life and he was so uncomfortable with himself (his father was pretty hard on his appearance and nose in particular right?) that he felt he had no other way out than to change physically who he was. I think it’s really sad. The other day I watched like an hour of videos of him dancing..he was really something else!

MJ passed as an unhappy young boy. The huge pressures placed upon him at such a young age by his family and the public never allowed him to mature into an adult. He never slayed a single demon…..he never even faced them. He was never convicted of child abuse and I’m not aware of any evidence to support what most people believe. I think he liked to spend time with young boys because he was, for all intents and purposes, also a young boy, seeking accepting friends and an escape from the pressures of his fame (when he could no longer do that, he turned to drugs). How many adults do you know that would spend millions building a zoo in their own backyard?
See ya….Gary/wtf