The black and white world of MJ & Prince.

I thought I was done with Michael and Prince, but there is always more to say. I just finished watching "Under the cherry moon" by Prince, and it was among the worse movies I've seen. Yes, prince is a great musician but this movie is so poorly done. Everything from the clothes, to the screenplay. What were they thinking when they did this movie? Perhaps the storyline could have been worked on, but the production itself with poor acting and innacurate timeline is bad. The clothes alone annoyed me as fuck, it was some kind of 80's mix with 40's and 50's involved, it just made me angry (since I'm a fashion person) lol.

This blog however is not about that horrific movie, but something that I've been thinking about a longer time. Michael Jackson and Prince were arguebly the biggest stars of the 80's (I didn't count out Madonna, promise) with Michael being named the King of Pop at the end of the era and Prince being highly respected for his musical talents. The difference and the comparison between these two artists, have always kinda followed them. I read somewhere that it was Michael's pr-team that created the so called "rivalry" because they wanted publicity for the Bad album, which would contain a track with MJ and Prince together, however it didnt go through since Prince thought it was going to be a hit anyways. The rivalry is not what I'm going to speak about tho, but rather the role that women have in their music worlds.

As a woman myself, I always look how women are portrayed in the world of music and in the world of the biggest stars of the 80's. There is no doubt that both MJ and Prince have a large female fanbase, however I think there's a big difference in the portrayal of certain women in the world of these two men, espcially those of black skin tone. I'm not a black women, but I've always been disturbed at the fact that alot of black women get neglected. One would ask me, why do you care? Well it's a simple answer, because I love diversity in ALL colors not just some, and to me being a biracial women doesnt count as a black women.

So to go back to the subject , Michael was sometimes accused for being a "race traitor"(whatever that is) because he went from black to white due to his skin condition (that many ppl refused to believe). Yes, one can argue that he wanted to appear whither by making his nose smaller, but then on the other hand, making your nose smaller doesn't equal hating your own ethnicity/race. What about certain jewish women who make their noses smaller? Do they do it because they hate their ethnicity or just simply because they find it aestheticly better? On the other hand you have Prince who's a lightskinned black man, who has so called european feautures, small nose and very light skinned. To add more facts I would even argue that Prince is mainly of mulatto/biracial ancestry and therefore looks the way he does. The reason why I'm pointing this out, is because I think it matters.

Both MJ and Prince are cross-over artists, however I think that Prince certainly had a much easier cross-over because of his feautures than the much darker Michael Jackson. In Prince's world, the females tend to look white, latina, mixed or like him, and I'm basing it on the women he's dated, casted in videos, band members, dancers etc, but in Michaels world however, he uses black women of all kind of colors. Michael was not a "race traitor", because I doubt he would idolize Diana Ross they way he did, or cast a black girl to his most known video "Thriller", or keep using strong black women in his videos such as Iman and Naomi Campbell. Michael loved being black and in his music world, black women are a great part of it, he loved his mother dearly and you can see that. He was proud of black women, it doesn't really matter if he had children with a white women (love is love regardless) because at the end of the day, he was proud and showed the world his beloved black women all around the world. I'm not calling Prince a "race traitor" but it's a shame that he never shows alot of black women, unless they are mixed. I also feel that he used his feautures to make the general public accept him more, by adding the false lie that he was biracial when in fact, both of his parents are black. Even though Prince is highly inspired by Sly & The family Stone and its diverity of people, it wouldn't have hurt to show more black women.

I have a very high respect for Michael's diverse world and showing more than "mixed women" in his videos but rather all kind of women, whether that be an african women such as Iman or an afro-cuban woman in blood on the dancefloor to thai-women in Black or White. This alone makes Michael Jackson grande in my eyes, the fact that he was NEVER afraid of just having a black cast in his videos and yet have diversity in other videos.

Neither one of them is wrong for doing what they did/do, but having so much influence as both these artist had, it was great that MJ showed the world more black women portrayed as beautiful.

/Miss X