Even after more than a dozen smash hits, Michael Jackson never shook the insecurities he developed during his childhood, when he was mercilessly teased by his father. Jackson said his dad repeatedly told him: "God, your nose is big." Hearing that, "you want to die," Jackson said in a 2003 documentary. "And on top of it, you got to go on stage ... in front of hundreds of thousands of people and, just God, it's just hard. I would've been happier wearing a mask."
In a way, he ended up doing that: Starting with a nose job in the early 1980s, Jackson radically transformed his face, although he would only ever admit to a second nose job and the skin condition vitiligo (in which pigment-producing cells are destroyed). But plastic-surgery experts say vitiligo alone would not have left his skin such an even shade and add that, based on photos, the rumors of eye lifts, cheek implants, chin work and skin bleaching likely have some credence.
Says Dr. Wallace Goodstein, who shared a practice with Jackson's former plastic surgeon in the early '90s: "There's no question he had too many inappropriate surgeries. And they didn't serve him well."
– Charlotte Triggs
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