In a Light More Flattering

MICHAEL JACKSON29. AMID the impassioned speculation about the final days of Michael Jackson, some questions about the singer just won’t go away. For example, was his nose really falling off?

The subjects of Mr. Jackson’s fading skin tone and the shape of his nose were often explained as the visual manifestations of an unhappy life, either a result of body dysmorphic disorder or feelings of inferiority about his race. Misunderstood, his extreme plastic surgery became a punch line.

“There’s so much easy speculation and so much derision about Michael Jackson,” said Linda Wells, the editor of the beauty magazine Allure. “But when you look at what happened to him in relation to the way he looked, it’s a fascinating study.”

Its September issue, out next week, includes a timeline of Mr. Jackson’s evolving images printed over two pages, which, if you step back, looks like a color card from Sherwin-Williams. Joan Kron, who has written extensively about plastic surgery, interviewed one of his plastic surgeons, a dermatologist who worked with Mr. Jackson and other medical experts to reconstruct, in essence, the blueprint of his face.

The verdict: His nose was not falling off.

While the article notes that many questions about the psychological motivations behind Mr. Jackson’s operations may ultimately be unanswerable, it does illuminate another — and more sympathetic — side to them. In many cases, Mr. Jackson was reacting to a chain of medical conditions. His first operation was to repair a broken nose, and later procedures may have masked more complicated issues, including a tattooed hairline and eyelashes to disguise the effects of lupus, and skin bleaching to lighten uneven patches caused by vitiligo.

“There is a sympathy you can have for someone who is going through a lot of things that were beyond his control,” Ms. Wells said.

She surmised that his more eccentric affectations might have been related to the effects of surgery. He may have worn a single glove to cover up discoloration on his hand, or hats to cover his hair loss. The bleaching creams would have made his skin sensitive to the sun, explaining the large black umbrellas and surgical masks that made him into something of a spectacle.

“Of course,” Ms. Wells hastened to add, “he liked being a spectacle.” By ERIC WILSON

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