Michael Jackson Factbook

Childhood #10. Growing up

Bashir: Did your father and your brothers tease you about your appearance, as an adolescent?

MJ: My father did. And some cousins did.

Bashir: What did your father say?

MJ: Oh God. It was pretty embarrassing. They used to tease me real bad about it.

Bashir: It's cruel, isn't it?

MJ: Yeah. It used to hurt me. I don't think he realized how much he would hurt me.

Bashir: What sort of thing would he say?

MJ: He would tease me about how I looked and he would say, "Well, you didn't get it from my side of the family. Must've been from Kate-" Kate, he would always say, meaning my mother. "You didn't get that from me, you must've got that from her."

Living with Michael Jackson documentary.

"Puberty is always a potential thief for a child star: it threatens to take away the image your dream is built on. Michael and I both struggled with acne; mine still stubborn and raging as an 18 year old, his rabid and new at 14. A liking for fried food and soda in dressing rooms had caught up with us. Like me, Marlon – who also suffered – accepted the break outs without too much angst, and I didn't think Michael would be any different. I didn't appreciate how much he worried about the threat his acne posed to his image because he never really spoke about it. We didn't really talk about that sort of thing. What "cool" teenage boy does? We Jackson brothers were especially bound that way. We had been taught so much about pride, respect and performance that we had never learned the art of easy communication. We didn't check in with each other unless it was album talk, tour madness, choreography ideas, basketball plans or girls. So Michael suffered quietly as his features changes and his skin flared up with pimples Indeed he locked it deep inside, except for the odd worry he expressed to Mother.

Michael's acne was a confusion he wasn't expecting. And then there was his nose. It widened noticeably and he hated it. In fact, he hated his nose so much that he found it hard to look at himself in the mirror. This wasn't just typical teenage self consciousness: it became a full blown inferiority complex. The more he looked at himself, the unhappier he felt. In fact, he was painfully brittle during conversations with anyone, always looking down to avoid eye contact.

His comfort zone, as always, was the stage or platform of press interviews, when reporters spoke of how "energized", "inquisitive" and "ebullient" he was. In performance mod, Michael's teenage woes were well concealed behind makeup or the performance's personality he projected. Offstage, our merciless teasing only made matters worse, but teasing is what brothers do, and we all had to go through it. When my acne kicked in, they – including Michael – called me "Bumpy Face" or "Map Face" and Marlon was "Live Lips." I even received a second label, "Big Head," because my head was, apparently, too big for my body. So when Michael was called "Big Nose" it was just part of the common initiation into manhood – but he struggled with it. Not that we knew so until much later.

Michael always recalled Joseph using the tease, and that was what hurt him most – hearing it from an adult's lips and from the man who had driven home the importance of image all our lives. "Hey, Big Nose, come over here," said Joseph. Michael said nothing and cringed each time."

Jermaine Jackson, Michael's brother.

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