He had also begun using a skinbleaching cream, which he bought by the crate.
Escaping his childhood demons had led Michael to recreate himself. Gone was the brown-skinned, broad-nosed youth with an Afro whose natural charisma charmed an audience.
In his place was a fragile, doll-like man it was impossible not to stare at in sheer disbelief.
By the end of 1990, some in his camp calculated he'd undergone ten nose operations.
One procedure to add cartilage to the tip did not work, eventually causing the structure of his nose to collapse, leaving the nasal cavity nearly flush with his face.
After that, in public and often in private, he wore a prosthetic nose tip, disguised with thick stage make-up.
He had achieved his goal of transforming himself, but at a barely imaginable price.
SHOOT: There's a pirce to pay for such high levels of self-obsession.
In some ways, Jackson's desire for physical perfection was not hard to understand, given how much time he spent studying pictures of himself, dancing in front of mirrors and watching videos, deciding which were his best features and which were not. But his quest became an obsession. His friend Jane Fonda tried to coax him out of it.
'I want you to stop,' she told him. 'No more surgery. Love yourself the way you are, for who you are.'
'I'll try,' Michael promised but, even with a new nose, he was still desperately unhappy.
The surgery went on. He denied his almond- shaped eyes and strikingly pronounced cheekbones were not natural, but definitely had an operation to create a cleft in his chin.
It was after this procedure that he was first seen wearing a surgical mask. The Press speculated that, like the famous recluse Howard Hughes, he was obsessed with catching germs, but it was more likely that he simply wanted to hide the scars.
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