From lost childhood to extreme surgery: Michael Jackson's nose tells of his entire life
Tomorrow marks 10 years since the death of one of the most famous men in the world. But there came a time when a large part of the audience stopped seeing the magic on stage to focus only on his very strange face
Of all the rumors that have circulated about the singer Michael Jackson (Gary, Indiana, 1958 - Los Angeles, 2009) both in life and after death, the most absurd, complex and at the same time representative of what his life was is that since The mid-nineties stopped having a nose. That after too many operations there was no cartilage left and the nasal structure had collapsed. He is a headline one would pass up as a tabloid eccentricity if it weren't for the fact that he also snuck into two of the most reputable media outlets in the world.
This is the truth from Michael's mouth, written in his autobiography 'Moonwalk', published in 1988: “I have modified my nose twice and recently added a cleft to my chin. That's all"
In 2003 an article by Maureen Orth in Vanity Fair (a journalist, it must be said, very critical of Jackson since the 1993 sexual assault allegations) published the following: “Up close, Jackson's looks are amazing. He wears a black pageboy wig and his face is covered in white makeup, which hides a prosthetic that serves as the tip of his nose. A person who has seen him without the device says that he looks like a mummy with two nostrils ”.
In August 2009, after Jackson's death, Rolling Stone magazine detailed in a cover story signed by Claire Hoffman the appearance of the artist's body in the morgue. Jackson's face, which he had so painfully transformed and hidden from the public for decades, was now exposed, undisguised under the harsh lights of the morgue. The prosthesis that normally held his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small dark hole. "
The biography of J. Randy Tarraborelli (Michael Jackson, magic and madness: the complete story, edited in Spain by Alba Editorial), one of the most respected and required star biographers by the media, gives the story for certain . “The structure of Michael's nose gave way years ago,” he wrote in an episode centered on the late 1990s, “as a result of the deep trauma caused by previous surgeries. The next operation consisted of adding cartilage to the tip, to support it and reshape it. However, the procedure was not entirely successful. Therefore, when he appeared in public, and even in private, Michael used a latex applique, a prosthetic nose tip, camouflaged with theatrical makeup. "
It is quite likely that this information is false. The Washington Post echoed the words of Los Angeles County Coroner Ed Winter in March 2019, who declared the rumors to be "absolutely false. [...] People suggest he has a wax nose that could take off at night and put on in the morning and it is not like that. " And to go to a more practical example: there are photographs of Michael Jackson's 45th birthday in which the singer gets involved in a cake war and receives some tarts in the face. It would be unthinkable for him to lend himself to this if his nose were really a prosthesis.
But the simple fact that for years it was debated whether or not a person had a removable nose is a sign of the extreme flamboyance that surrounded Michael. It is not an exaggeration to say that Jackson has been not only the singer but also the famous one, thus in general, that has caused the most fascination among the public and the media. Nor is it to say that his nose, in particular, has been the element that has focused the attention of the whole world. It was the cover of tabloids, the subject of various theories and was part of cruel jokes such as the parodic film Scary Movie 3, where after a fight with an impersonator of the singer actor Charlie Sheen keeps his nose in his hand.
If the artist's nose causes such fascination, it is because it is priceless as a narrative element. With it you can draw a story that goes from his unhappy childhood to his extraneous surgeries and from his undeniable talent on stage to his controversial public image
If the artist's nose causes such fascination, it is because it is priceless as a narrative element. With her you can trace a story that goes from her unhappy childhood to her extreme surgeries and from her undeniable talent on stage to the controversial public image
that the press aired. The transformation of that broad, flattened nose of youth into that small, angular protrusion is also, for better and for worse, the transformation of Michael's own life.
Michael Jackson's nose speaks of childhood and race
If Joe Jackson, the father of the family, will go down in history as one of the cruelest patriarchs of pop, it is not only because of the exploitation he carried out with his children and especially with Michael: this could be understood as the way of acting of a son of his time who knew no other way to help his children become stars than violence. "We performed for him and he judged us," Jackson recounted in his memoir Moonwalk. “If you were wrong, he would hit you. Sometimes with a belt, other times with a stick ”. This is Joe Jackson's physical abuser dimension, but there was another psychological abuser dimension who seemed to have a special grudge against his most talented son.
Joe knew that Michael had developed, in his step from child to adolescent, a great complex through his nose. Far from downplaying it, he started calling it "big nose", something like "big nose." This insult would forever resonate in his head. “I was so afraid of him that he was throwing up. I'm still scared today ”, Michael confessed to Martin Bashir in 2003. He was then a 44-year-old man who still had the tic of often putting his hand to his nose in a gesture of shame.
Several biographies of Michael and some of those around him said that he noticed that his brothers had ended up looking a lot like his father and he considered that that was one of the worst things that could happen to him. With all his money, he had the means to stop, at least physically, that transformation. "What was behind it all," wrote Frank Cascio, Michael's manager in the early 2000s, in his book My Friend Michael, "was a wounded childhood. Michael often told me that his father laughed at him. him as a child for having a big nose. "
Michael's nose speaks of his relationship with the truth and with his own body
This is the truth of Michael's mouth, written in his autobiography Moonwalk, published in 1988 and which are the only memoirs as such that the artist would leave: “I have modified my nose twice and recently I have added a cleft to my chin. That's all". One might think that this was the truth in 1988. But in 2003, during the documentary Living with Michael Jackson, a Jackson who had already radically changed in his physical appearance declared to journalist Martin Bashir: “There is no plastic surgery on my face. . Only on my nose. It helps me breathe better and reach higher notes. " "Are you telling me, honestly, that you have only had surgery once?" Insists the journalist. "Two," Michael responds. And he adds: "That I remember."
The tyrant father knew that Michael had developed, as a child to a teenager, a great complex through his nose. Far from downplaying it, he started calling it Big Nose, something like "big nose." This insult would forever resonate in his head
Perhaps all of this is much more complicated than a simple lie. Many voices, including those of some reputed plastic surgeons who spoke to different media after his death in 2009, point out that Michael could suffer from a disease called body dysmorphic disorder, which consists of an exaggerated concern for a defect (real or imagined). ) in a physical characteristic. To put it more simply: Michael would see his nose as an anorexic person sees his body. It would never be, for him, fine enough. "It seemed to me that Michael had a good physique before he changed his face," said Cascio in My friend Michael, "but I suppose that when he looked in the mirror he did not see the same as the others. Now he had a smaller nose. , but it seemed to him that he was still great. "
Michael's nose tells of a man who only lived for the stage
According to Tarraborelli's biography, Michael's first operation (remember: he admitted two) took place in 1979 when he broke it during a dance rehearsal. Gina Sprague, a worker at Motown record company, said that "when the bandages were removed, Michael liked what he saw." It is significant that the singer's first operation began on stage, because everything about his appearance seemed designed to occupy him. That androgynous nineties Michael, with a strange and fascinating face that defied race, gender and age, only screeched at us when we saw him out of lights, that is, in a paparazzi image or in images taken at events or in interviews. That extremely operated and almost gender-neutral Michael did make sense on stage, everyone in the world: slim, with an unmistakable facial silhouette and a face that lent itself to dramatically change shape and color as one placed the lights, the artificial and theatrical face Michael's was made solely to exist under the spotlight.
Also to exist as an indecipherable enigma and an unlimited arsenal of paradoxes. At the end of the day he sang about childhood even though he was almost 40 years old, he claimed that it did not matter "being black or white" and wanted to be enormously sexual (there is that famous movement in which he puts his hand to his crotch) at the same time that inevitably sweet and childish. In 1993, when Oprah Winfrey interviewed him in front of 90 million viewers around the world, she asked him a question that would scandalize us if asked of any other 35-year-old singer, and yet it sounded almost natural to the public for Michael. . The question was: "Are you a virgin?" Michael replied, "I am a gentleman." He didn't answer yes or no.
Michael's nose speaks more about us, the audience, than about him, actually
Considerations aside about his own traumas and his own decisions about his body, which he made freely although they may seem excessive, the face of Michael Jackson ended up being more the property of the public than of Jackson himself. Unable to understand deeper and personal motivations and in our efforts to find quick explanations to everything, a series of strange theories for the appearance of that billionaire artist began to appear in the press and on television: that Michael had undergone surgery to look like Peter Pan, who wanted to look like Diana Ross - a theory that made it to the ABC news - or who simply wanted to have the nose of ... a white man.
"I'm proud of who I am," he told Oprah Winfrey in 1993. "When people make up that I don't want to be who I am, they hurt me." Michael Jackson, one of the most famous men in pop culture, seemed to understand the game proposed by the public.
If fame objectifies, he was the most spectacular thing in the world. Of course he was also a human being. That is what we forgot while, fascinated and unable to raise our gaze to his eyes, we insistently observed his nose.
