Michael Jackson's skin change has been accompanied by suppositions for years. Today a woman who lives with the same condition is showing how vitiligo can actually transform the appearance of a person.
It's called Storm Dove and TikTok followed by almost two million people.
Its skin, a very dark time, progressively lost pigmentation due to vitiligo. Storm decided to document this transformation directly showing what happens to his body over the years.
And he made an inevitable comparison: the one with Michael Jackson.
In the case of the singer, the diagnosis of vitiligo remained not only a public statement. After death, the autopsy report confirmed the condition and raised areas of depigmentation, especially on the face, chest, abdomen and arms.
Jackson's transformation, however, is not only attributed to the natural progression of vitiligo. When residual pigmentation became increasingly irregular, the singer also used depigmentating treatments. Among the products found in his home after death were the Benoquin and the hydroquin. The monobenzone contained in the Benoquin can be used in cases of very extensive vitiligo to eliminate residual pigmentation and make skin color more uniform.
Storm's experience allows us to visually understand how extensive it can become the loss of pigmentation caused by vitiligo, without this meaning that the path is identical to each person.
For those leaving from a very dark complexion, the progressive loss of melanin can profoundly change the appearance.
Storm told how difficult it is even to find words to describe what it means, for her, to see her own complexion gradually clearing.
His video exceeded five million views.
But his testimony has above all brought attention to an important point: vitiligo is a condition that causes the loss of skin pigmentation and can, in some cases, become very extensive and visible.
The comparison with Michael Jackson thus takes on a different meaning.
It does not show that their transformations were identical: Jackson actually suffered from vitiligo, but also used treatments to depigment skin areas that kept pigmentation.
Remembering it allows to distinguish the facts from the old assumptions on its appearance and also shows how easily a visible change can be judged from the outside without knowing what is really happening to the body of a person.