But I do think that the straight hair he had during most of the 00's didn't do him any favors. He looks much better with the curls
Definitely. Apart from personal subjective disagreements with the style of it, it definitely changed the shape/look of his face heavily. That combined with the drastic change in skin colour and drastic weight changes exaggerated his changes to his face. Ignore the skin colour and remove the hair, similar lighting too and you'll notice it's not as much as people think.
I think I came to the conclusion he had about... 6? surgeries.
1. Late 70s when he broke his nose. Slimmed it a bit.
2. Another right around the Thriller era. Basically the nose he had in the Thriller era.
3. Another in the Bad era (around this time came the "pinned" look, as I like to call it, also the tip started to point more up?)
4. Introduce the cleft.
5. Seems like he got it done sometime around HIStory as well?
6. Sometime in the late 90s, or around the turn of the century. It's extremely noticeable in the YRMW video.
I don't think he got anymore done after that. He definitely lied in the LWMJ, Bashir straight up asks him if he's only had one surgery, to which Michael replies "two, as far as I can remember". He doesn't distinguish between cosmetic/reconstructive surgery, he just straight up asks about surgeries as a whole. Of course he has a right to lie though, who here hasn't lied about their medical history to strangers?
As for people speculating, we can all say "who cares" "it's his body he can do what he wants" and hey I agree. In an ideal world, we'd all see it that way. Realistically though, people don't see it so much the other way. Most people aren't aware of the effects of vitiligo, let alone believed it existed back in the 1990s. The effects of lupus? How you're not meant to have plastic surgery or something when effected by lupus? (Of course I'm aware that MJ was diagnosed years after his first surgery). Realistically, people aren't going to know this and I don't think it's necesserily fair to expect them to. I didn't even have a clue lupus effected MJs skin/surgeries that badly, let alone that he had lupus until many, many years after I became a fan. I think Michael should've taken that opportunity to discuss the effect of lupus on his nose at that point in LWMJ (I see barbee talks about on Page 1, so I'll go have a read about that after this).
What I get from most people is not that they're intentionally trying to shit on MJ, but more so they're just not aware of the effects his medical conditions had on his skin. Everyone I've told about the effects of lupus on his skin, how he was mocked about his skin during puberty and how father mocked his nose, only for the world to keep mocking his nose; they all begin to understand what Michael went through and sympathise with him. I guess what I'm trying to say is, people don't intentionally want to shit over MJ, they just don't possess the knowledge to properly understand him and honestly I can't entirely blame them. He was a very private man (understandably), so the knowledge to actually understand him is quite hard to get in the first place. You try to google MJ's medical history and you're going to get a looooooot of false crap.
That's why MJ himself talking about it could've helped immensely. It's common knowledge now that he had a pigment destroying condition and I think a large reason is because he spoke out about it a few times. Most people accept that. If Michael spoke out about the effects lupus has had on his surgeries, I think it would've helped generate a lot more sympathy and understanding on a topic that is hardly common knowledge. Watching his interview with Bashir, while I'm aware of it's ethical issues as a documentary, MJ doesn't exactly make a great case for himself. He outright denies any changes for example to his lips, I do believe he had done something to his lips for example to make them appear as red as they did once his conditions took heavy effect. I feel if he was more open on the effects his conditions had on his skin and the work he had done to help minimalise damage, it would've worked much better in his favour. Of course, this begs the question why should he even discuss his personal medical history on international television. He's a human being and has the right to privacy... and I agree. He should have the right to keep it to himself, but that's the problem with being one of the most famous people in the world, there's huge pros and cons to every decision. There's no winning.