Then to Now

The seclusion at Neverland, the child molestation charges, the short-lived marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the dangling of an infant over a balcony parapet, the illnesses, the addictions, the money problems, the unlikely friendships with Arab sheikhs — none is weirder and more troubling to some than Wacko Jacko’s increasingly deracinated As the young star of the Jackson 5, Jackson — the enigmatic and reclusive megastar who died yesterday of cardiac arrest at the age of 50 — began his career with medium-brown skin, African features and a flowing natural hairstyle, the very picture of a handsome young black male. Sometime in the early 1980s, however, Jackson’s skin began to grow lighter, and within a few years he appeared as pale as Robert Pattinson’s vampire in Twilight. At the same time, he underwent a series of plastic surgeries, including several rhinoplasties — which whittled away his nose until, by the end, it barely existed — and the addition of a cleft in his chin. His lips grew noticeably thinner, and his brow and cheekbones also appeared to have been surgically altered.