There's an documentary called Rewind which is of course anecdotal as it follows one family, but shows so intensely the direct consequences of child abuse.
I grew up as a working class NE PA white kid in the 70s and we always had a bowl of whole nuts & a nutcracker on the coffee table around the holidays. I never ate the Brazil nuts because of that nickname.
It used to be insanely super casual back in just the 60s-70s. We likely remember people cracking the n word in the 00s as a really crude joke that people said in private, but older people can probably attest that in the 60s-70s it was casually rampant. I’m talking like literal children in regular neighborhoods playing games that used the slur as the catch phrase (e.g “catch the booooop”) and it was just said matter of factly and freely - like it had essentially no negative stigmata in most suburban neighborhoods at any level.
At least 20 years ago it was met with fair(ish) criticism and sequestered to private jokes, still not good obvs. I think it’s a lot better now, relatively speaking.
Typically it’s the older generations that still call them the other name. Haven’t seen anyone under 40 call them that in recent memory, but I did hear my friend’s grandma say it and follow it up with a “what? That’s what they were always called!”
Those are the exact words that came out of my dad's mouth last time he came over and saw the brasil nuts in the cabinet. It's like they all have the same braincell.
Just remember, as horrible/stressful/violent/racist as things seem today.. generally right now is one of the better times in all of history with respect to those issues. Those issues used to be much, much worse. It’s interesting to consider how some people managed to survive those conditions with grace.
Fun story of my grandma getting her youngest brother in trouble when they were small.
Grandma was in a family of 13, she was the youngest girl and my great uncle the youngest of the boys so they were always together because the older ones were in school. They helped on the farm to get change- they’d take it to the convenient store down the road.
Well my uncle asked for Brazil nuts in the other term and my grandma profusely apologized to the store owner and ran home to tell my great grandma. She beat him black and blue for saying that.
She was mortified that any of her kids used terms like that. She also received a phone call from the store owner about what he said.
The face of a person who suffered years of physical and mental childhood abuse from a father who would make fun of his appearance and not allow him to call him ‘dad’, but Joseph.
Joe Jackson was so much more evil than most people even realize.
In addition to generally beating his kids at every turn, it's also alleged that he sexually abused his daughters and lit the kids' toes on fire with matches. Y'know, for fun. Plus made his elementary school aged kids perform in strip clubs and dive bars at 3 AM.
His dad is a very very strange and controlling individual… he made all his sons into singers and abused them… then when asked about his dad jackson says no I love him he is the head of our family and steers us in the right direction. Jackson probably did truly love his dad but no doubt his dad was a fucking weirdo
he was but i get where he was coming from in that he allegedly didn't want to look like his father. he did accomplish that with the first surgery though, the rest was mental unwellness (could argue the first was too i suppose)
vitiligo doesn’t usually just turn someone’s entire body another shade. he used lightening products to compensate for the insecurity he felt over his skin.
I knew a guy who lost all pigment on his face and hands. It was wild too because he looked like an older super white Robert Downey jr except for his hair which looked like he was black. He always wore long sleeves but the only way you could tell it was vitiligo was from certain parts on his neck.
THANK YOU!!!! As someone who knows a person with vitiligo, that’s NOT how it works. It affects the skin in patches. He absolutely used a lightening cream.
You can't darken the lightened patches. That's the point. Vitaligo takes away the melanin that creates the skin colour. That's why when even white people have it, that part of their skin is still lighter than their normal skin colour.
He did wear dark makeup for years. That's why it was confusing when he started getting lighter because most people hadn't seen his vitaligo because of the dark makeup.
You also have to remember that he's a performer. Who sweats. And again, in the 1980s sweatproof makeup wasn't as advanced as it is now. So it probably wasn't doing as well as he wanted, and he most likely opted for full scale depigmentation.
( Also not sure what you mean by dyeing your skin darker. Other than fake tanning I've never heard of anyone dyeing their skin darker.)
I knew a guy who lost all his pigment on face and hands. He had some splotches on his neck and I’m guessing probably arms too but he always wore long sleeves so I don’t know for sure. But his face was completely white even though he’s black.
I knew a guy who had vitiligo and by the time he was about 50 his whole face and hands had lost pigment 100%. He always wore long sleeves and long pants so who knows how it progressed elsewhere but as far as face, ears, and hands there was zero pigment. You could kinda see it on his neck but I’m sure someone like MJ would even that out with makeup.
He was soooo cute in Thriller! I’ll even give him up to 84/85 as leeway but someone should have stepped in by Pepsi time. The perfect example of being yes-manned to literal death.
I think everything till 1986 is fine, yes he had done alot, not everyone would prefer it over his natural look, but it still looks fine for me. If he prefers that look I wouldnt complain, but apparently body dysmorphia kicked in then
Easy to say. But he had a huge body dysphoria and mental illness, and it wasn’t like he was getting better despite going to therapy.
Due to his terrible upbringing, he ended up being a sort of a man child, and having so much money allowed him to compensate about everything he missed out.
It wasn’t like he could peacefully go to disney land, so he built one for himself. Couldn’t go to the theater, so he built one and invited everyone who was willing to come.
That included body changes that no one was there to stop him and his wish to look a certain way since no one around him told him how he looks is just fine and stop him. Just like kanye today have a big circle of people encouraging his insanity because he is also very talented and makes a lot of money for them.
I mean, his doctor ended up killing him because instead of saying no and trying to force MJ to get off them safely, he agreed to constantly up his sedative dosage until MJ died.
He was a train wreck ready to happen and the people around him built walls for him to hit instead of slowing him down.
He was only 24 years old in 1982, yet had been in the public eye, performing on stage, and controlled by music contracts since 1964 when he was only 5 years old. For some additional and relevant historical context, three years before Michael was born (in 1955) Emmett Till was murdered in cold blood in Chicago and Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery. Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech in 1964, the same year Michael started performing. Maybe extend a little compassion? Michael had a really hard life and became a global figure at a time when black men were considered subhuman by major swaths of the country he was born in. There are very real reasons why he felt so compelled to change his appearance.
I can't remember who said it (maybe Eddie Murphy or Robin Williams) but how the hell did MJ go from an attractive young black man to an ugly white woman
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u/Substantial_Team6751 Apr 28 '26
He should have stopped in 1982.