Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was the troubled mega-pop-star who became better known in the years before his death for his bizarre behavior than for the music he created. Denied a normal childhood by his show-biz family, he became obsessed with the concept as an adult.

In an interview, he was asked:
 * Q: You don't want to grow up?
 * A: No, I am Peter Pan.
 * Q: No you're not, your Michael Jackson.
 * A: I'm Peter Pan in my heart.

He spoke and sang in a false childlike register, slipping into a deeper manly voice only when off-guard and angry. His second wife, Debbie Rowe, said that to get in the mood for sex, he dressed up as Peter Pan and danced around the bedroom. She said: "It made him feel romantic." He turned his home into an amusement park, which he named Neverland Ranch, and brought countless children there. He was widely suspected of doing more than just sleeping with the boys he had stay overnight, and formally accused on two occasions, but he was not convicted.

The most plausible explanation for much of Jackson's behavior is that he was trying to remain – or become – a child. The plastic surgery may have been an attempt to create his idealized image of himself as a boy. He probably wasn't sexually attracted to boys, per se; he just wanted to be with them and protect them, like Peter Pan was with the Lost Boys. But regardless of his appearance or self-image, he was an adult, and that may have asserted itself in inappropriate ways with his "friends" at times.