I was a big fan on Michael's and I read a lot about his experiences with acne. I've seen him talk about it in interviews and it would only take a few seconds for him to be close to tears as he talked about being teased by people and by his brothers when he started getting acne. I remember him talking about how when Jackson 5 started, he was known as the cute little kid and the one all the girls wanted to meet. Then as he got a bit older and his acne started, the girls would rush to him, see his face and be saying things like, "Ewww! What happened?!"
The things he recalled really resonated with me because I've experienced those same kind of reactions over the years. I don't know if they ever go away. For me, some of my experiences with people hurt just as much now as they did twelve or thirteen years ago. There are probably lots that I've forgotten about but the worst ones still play a huge part in influencing my thoughts and actions - especially around people - and they haven't reduced even though my acne's gone.
Michael always seemed very shy and everyone who ever described him would use that word, shy. Same for Kurt Cobain - everyone referred to him as being shy and timid. He had lots of other things going on too, of course, but he also suffered with acne. Like Michael, performing was one of Kurt's releases and, ironically, he never made any effort to cover his skin when performing in front of huge crowds, but he would often use makeup to mask his acne when around his friends and family. I met Melissa Auf der Maur a couple of years ago and I talked to her for a while about the times she spent with Kurt. She confirmed that to me actually and told me of one occasion after a show when Kurt delayed a party so that he could try and mask his acne because he didn't want the girls who were there to see it, despite the fact that he'd just performed in front of a couple of thousand people and wasn't bothered about it then.
Personally, I'm a huge Nirvana fan and look to Kurt's experiences for a lot of things, both what to do and perhaps more importantly, what not to do. In terms of appearance - kind of short, very skinny, with acne, generally pretty awkward - I can relate to Kurt so much. Just as Kurt had his coping mechanisms for those things and just as Michael had his, I guess we all have our own, too. I suppose the trick is to make proper use of them as support so we don't hold ourselves back, then let go of those coping mechanisms when they're no longer needed so that they don't start to have a detrimental and restrictive effect.
MJ's acne was only one part of the problem. Michael suffered from the skin disease known as Vitiligo. Ignorance prevailed in the early 90's with members of the black community accusing him of bleaching his skin, claiming MJ wanted to be white.
Anyone who knows what vitiligo is could understand a dark skinned individual's desire to be one color. Acne isn't shit compared to a disease like Vitiligo, and doesn't have a cure. Even if Vitiligo is not a life-threatening disease, imagine waking up one morning to mysterious white patches developing rapidly all over your body. Michael wore a glove on his hand, and dressed in long sleeve shirts to cover the patchy white spots. Michael Jackson obviously had trouble dealing with this skin condition.
Michael Jackson was a talented performer and extremely misunderstood by the general public.
He was sensitive and shy like me so I always felt so incredibly bad for him for being made fun of all the time. First bad acne, then great skin for only a few years and then vitiligo changed everything to so much worse for him...
I never resented him for wearing surgical masks and silly disguises sometimes. I want to wear them too when my skin is bad. I just wanna put a bag over my face when I don't feel like facing strangers or even friends/family...
btw I'm an MJ fan *points to username* 
