True You

by Janet Jackson

  I can’t describe our pain in losing our brother, or the pain of his children in losing their father, or the pain of my parents in losing their son. I still have not seen the film This Is It. I still can’t watch any of his videos or listen to his music. I’m certain that one day I’ll again be able to enjoy the miraculous sound of his voice and the marvelous sight of his dancing, but that day has not yet arrived. The mourning continues.

  As Jermaine sang “Smile,” I thought it was the perfect anthem to remember our brother by. Michael made us smile, even when his heart was breaking.

  I, too, was taught to always smile, and yet, ironically, most of my life I never liked my smile. It felt fraudulent. I smiled not because I was happy but because I adopted the message of the song that said “Light up your face with gladness, / Hide every trace of sadness.”

  I remember seeing Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman and thinking, Wow, when he smiles I can see all the way to the back of his throat. That’s what my smile looks like. My smile is hideous. Because I didn’t like my full smile, I often just grinned. In contrast to Grandmama’s beautiful smile, my smile felt forced.

  Later in life, my friend and producer Jimmy Jam was at a video shoot of mine. Things weren’t going well, and I expressed my anxiety.

  “I understand, Janet,” said Jimmy. “But forget the problems and just smile.”

  “Why would I do that?” I asked. “My smile is not my best feature.”

  “What!” Jimmy countered. “Are you crazy? People love your smile.”

  “They do?”

  “No one’s ever told you that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m telling you. Smile, girl. Just smile.”

  My siblings and I grew up with the belief that you don’t let people know what is going on inside. We didn’t carry our problems onstage. Fans paid hard-earned money to watch us perform, and our job was to make them happy. End of story.

  My early life as a performer was rooted in this unspoken belief—suppress your feelings.

  As a child, I shot an ad for Disney. They put me in Mouse-keteer ears and asked me to smile. I did. I haven’t seen that photograph since, and my sincere hope is that it has disappeared forever.

  That day, because I was missing schoolwork, I was given a tutor. At the time I was not in the advanced reading group at school, and so I had a bit of a complex about it. I loved to read, but was never a fast reader. In contrast, I saw my siblings as brilliant students who always got top grades. When my mother was in school, she had earned straight A’s. I felt inadequate. And even though as a small child I dreamed of going to college, I was afraid that I was not college material. How could I ever comprehend books that were two or three hundred pages long? I expressed my fears to the tutor, who in turn told my mother.

  Mother was upset that I had confided in a stranger. My confession may well have embarrassed her. Mother is a proud and private woman who feels that whatever is happening within the family should remain within the family. I apologized for talking too openly to the tutor. Again, I learned my lesson, but at what cost?

  I felt bad, because I wanted so very much to please my mother—and I hadn’t. She was justifiably proud that her young daughter had been chosen to do this advertisement. I had competed against hundreds of other kids, and I had succeeded. Why couldn’t I just be happy with that success and keep whatever confusion I might have been feeling to myself? From then on, I vowed that I would do just that.

  My need to please others was immense and I suspect that the same is true for most kids. Whether we’re competing to be in an advertisement, or participating in a spelling bee or beauty contest, we want to win, not so much for ourselves but for others, and especially our parents.

  We don’t know that love is something that already exists within; we act like it has to be earned. Our attitude: If we give pleasure to others, we’ll get love for ourselves. But except for those brief moments when the world awards us, that approach makes us miserable.

  When I first started performing at age seven, I had silently accepted that my duty was to please others. Naturally, I would enter into the family business, where my brothers had succeeded on a spectacular level. Although it was never stated, the same degree of success was expected of me.

  My brother Mike helped prepare me with my lines, my singing, and my little dance routine. My brother Randy was my partner. We were part of the show at the MGM in Las Vegas. We pretended to be an adult couple. Randy was Sonny and I was dressed up like Cher. We sang “I Got You Babe” and at the end, I was handed a black doll to represent their daughter Chastity. In another skit, I wore a gown and struck a sexy pose like Mae West, mouthing her famous line, “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?” The audience howled.

  The standing ovation we received every night let me know that I had done my job.

  I absorbed the audience’s appreciation, recognition, and love. It all felt good. It felt especially good to be part of my family and contributing to the creativity that made us special.

  It was a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. To be close with one’s siblings is a beautiful thing. It’s comfort, it’s reassurance, it’s security. I have great memories of that togetherness, and though at times I yearned for what seemed a more “normal” childhood, I didn’t see my life as a young entertainer as being especially rigorous or hard. It was all I knew.

  For example, Mike and I loved to re-create dance steps that we watched from the golden age of Hollywood—moves perfected by Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. By the side of our pool, we’d also mimic the moves of fabulous tap dancers such as the Nicholas Brothers. I didn’t see this as work; I saw it as a fun. And when it was time to go to work, I was ready.

  Once, just before a Jackson Family TV special in which Randy and I were scheduled to perform “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby,” I came down with chicken pox. I felt ill physically, but I felt even worse emotionally. I was worried to death that I wouldn’t get to go on. How could I miss the show? If I didn’t perform, Randy would also be deprived of performing. How could I do that to my brother? How could I let him down? Fortunately, I got well just in time and, wearing a blue dress with a boa at the top, I strolled out in front of the cameras and we did our thing.

  It was exciting to perform onstage, but just as exciting were those brief moments when I got to live the life of a normal child.

  One day after school a friend invited me to a Brownie troop meeting. I was dying to see what the Brownies were all about, and I gladly accepted. At the home of one of our classmates, they had a little arts and crafts project. They all wore their little uniforms. They planned outings—a trip to Disneyland, a hike in the hills, a visit to an old-age home to cheer up the elderly. I yearned to wear a Brownie uniform and join the troop, but there was no way that could happen. My performance schedule wouldn’t allow it.

  Mother was angry when I arrived home late from the Brownie meeting. I hadn’t asked permission to go. She didn’t know where I was and so was understandably worried. I apologized. I didn’t tell her how badly I wanted to be a Brownie. I didn’t explain how much I loved being at the meeting and hanging out with the other girls. I kept it all bottled up inside.

  I also never discussed the terror I felt when I learned that, after physical education at school, all the girls were required to take a shower together. That meant I’d have to be naked in front of everyone. The idea freaked me out. I thought of not showering at all, but the teachers carefully checked to make sure we did what we were told.

  The godsend was a single-stall shower off by itself, with a curtain for privacy. I’m not sure we were supposed to use it, but I didn’t care. When it was time to shower, I ran like hell to that isolated shower and claimed it as my own. I was able to avoid exposing what I perceived to be my flawed and flabby body.

  With Puffy. I loved her to pieces. This dog was my life. Even though I feel she is in heaven, our souls are still connected. I miss her still. We
shared a true love. Puffy was always family to me. Puffy’s love was unconditional.

  God and Dogs

  My childhood was a powerful and often perplexing combination of experiences that were wonderful as well as challenging. One of the more challenging experiences happened when I was nine and attending public school.

  It began harmlessly. The teacher said she was looking for a student to solve a simple math problem. First the student would go stand in front of the classroom. Then the teacher would ask the question. Were there any volunteers? No hands went up.

  “I guess I’ll have to call on someone,” the teacher said.

  I prayed that she wouldn’t call on me.

  But she did.

  My heart started hammering. I was good at math, but suddenly all confidence left me. As I walked to the front of the class, I was assaulted with negative thoughts—What if I don’t understand her question? What if I don’t know the answer? What if I make a fool of myself?

  When the question was asked, my mind was too riddled with doubts to even hear it clearly. I asked the teacher to repeat the problem.

  But hearing it again made no difference. My head was filled with confusion. I panicked. I couldn’t speak; I just stood there.

  “Janet,” the teacher said, “this couldn’t be easier. You have to know the answer.”

  That only made things worse. As I stood there speechless, other kids started throwing their hands up in the air, begging to be chosen. They were practically groaning—that’s how eager they were to scream out the answer. I felt dumb. I wanted to die. I wanted to run out of the room and keep running forever.

  That incident has stayed with me. I’ve rewound the tape in my mind and watched it over and over again. I’ve dreamed about it and, decades after it happened, have talked about it. Now I’m writing about it. I realize today how much it affected me when I had to do public speaking: I hated such situations because they always reminded me of that schoolroom trauma, which had deepened my shyness and fear of facing a group of strangers. If I’m onstage, I’m fine. Being onstage is like being at home. I’ve grown up onstage. But if the stage is a classroom or a press conference, I’m unhappy and reluctant to say much of anything. That small move from my seat to a position in front of the class changed my life. I felt as though I was unfairly labeled incompetent or, even worse, stupid.

  “It felt like I was being condemned for something beyond my control,” said my friend whose stutter kept him from the junior debate team when he was ten. “I was already an advanced reader. And I could argue as well as anyone. But because I had trouble getting the words out, I was told that wasn’t acceptable.”

  Fortunately, that didn’t stop him. A casting director from a theater company was recruiting for kids’ roles in grown-up plays. My friend auditioned and was selected.

  “Something wonderful happened when I started acting,” he said. “I could lose myself in another character and suddenly my stutter was gone. I was especially good at playing characters who were scared. I used my own fears about speaking to understand their fears—and somehow my own speaking was transformed.”

  I related. I felt closest to the true me when I was presented with the challenge of acting.

  When I acted onstage during those early skits, some saw me as a little doll. But I didn’t see myself that way. I was an actress playing a part. Yet I also was a young girl, who looked at dolls as objects to adore. Dolls were beautiful. Dolls were the perfect shape. Dolls could not get too thin or too fat. Like me, dolls were quiet. Dolls were too shy to talk. They just stared at you lovingly. I also saw dolls in love with one another.

  I’d have the girl dolls and boy dolls sleep in one another’s arms. And before I had any understanding of sex, I would undress the dolls and arrange their bodies so that they embraced. I did it because it seemed that, in their most natural state, they were the most loving. The dolls were not anatomically accurate, and I wasn’t thinking about anything lewd. I was just thinking about couples who, unlike my own parents, could express a close and tender relationship.

  The doll I wanted most was Malibu Barbie. She had hair down to her waist and a one-piece aqua bathing suit. Naturally, she wore sunglasses and carried a yellow towel and a bottle of suntan lotion. There was a pop-up beach tent for Barbie’s naps, in addition to a dream house complete with elevator and swimming pool. I wanted the whole package, and I wanted it badly. If there were any black dolls of any kind, they didn’t have their own commercials or beach houses like Malibu Barbie did.

  Mother said no. Mother often said no. And looking back, I’m grateful that we Jacksons did not get everything we wanted. Our parents were careful about not indulging us. Our childhood was about serious work.

  We lived on an estate that covered three acres, but that only meant we kids had to do our part to take care of it all. Mike, Randy, and I raked leaves every Saturday morning. My sister La Toya mopped the floors to perfection, never leaving a single smudge. Jermaine vacuumed. We fed and bathed our animals. In the case of some of the more exotic animals, we bottle-fed them when they were small. We cleaned their cages and kept them groomed.

  Inside the house, Mike, Randy, and I cleaned the windows with newspapers—no streaks allowed. When we washed dishes, we used scalding hot water. We made our own beds. We didn’t mind these tasks and, in fact, sang to one another as we worked. When I was asked to do something alone—carry the trash out to the end of the driveway, for example—I’d use the opportunity to speak to God. I would confide my fears and feelings of inadequacy. I realize now that that was the beginning of my spiritual journey.

  When I was down—say, after a difficult day at school—I’d talk to my dogs, Black Girl, Lobo, and Heavy. I told them my innermost feelings, and I felt like they understood. I felt safe in doing so because a dog’s love is one thing you can count on. Your dog doesn’t judge you. In many ways, like God, dogs are love.

  It was always difficult talking to my father, who made us call him Joseph, not Dad. He was a man of action, not words. And the truth is that we feared him. I was the last of nine children, and I believe that by the time I was born my parents had grown tired of disciplining. They were more lenient with me and Randy, the next to youngest, than with our older siblings. There was one time, however, when my father hit me.

  I can’t remember what rule I had disobeyed, but I had just stepped out of the bathtub when he struck me with his belt. It left marks on my skin. It’s interesting that I don’t recall the lesson my father was trying to teach, only the violence he used to make his point. Violence has a way of overwhelming everything. I think my father is misunderstood. It’s important for you to know that my father loves all of his children and that his way of communicating his love was a result of his upbringing. I tell this story not to judge him, but to be open and to break the cycle.

  Fear can also be overwhelming. Many nights my siblings and I would put on our pajamas and go to Mother’s room. We would tell jokes, read stories, and watch TV. We felt safe there. In between our laughter, we’d sometimes hear the crunching sound of tires rolling up the gravel driveway. It was Joseph in his car, headlights turned off, windows rolled down, trying to sneak up on us to hear what we were talking about. The sound of his car stopped us cold. We’d scatter like roaches, off to our rooms, ducking down low so not to be visible through the windows. We didn’t know what mood Joseph was bringing home.

  I know that my kind of story is not uncommon, and I know many have endured far worse. Through it all we always had Mother’s love as a constant, and so many people don’t even have that. But it is important to remember that with an unstable foundation, you can’t find your own true you.

  I’m certain I received less of his wrath than my other siblings did, but there were times when Joseph began screaming at me for reasons I didn’t comprehend. I now understand that he has an issue with anger management. My father’s love for us, his passion for us to succeed, his burning desire to provide for his children, were sometimes commu
nicated in anger. I wish I had understood then what I understand today. But as children, when we face anger—anger that strikes us unexpectedly, like a lightning bolt—we have no real protection. We presume either that we did wrong or simply are wrong, through and through.

  Before Joseph initiated my professional career apart from the family, Mother put me in ballet class when I was six. She had good motives. I would learn posture, movement, and grace. But unfortunately, I was bored to death. I hated wearing leotards. Then one day the teacher struck me, claiming that I was ignoring her directions to tuck in my booty.

  “I’m trying,” I said, and I was. She didn’t think I was trying hard enough. I thought it was the very size of my booty that bothered her—because there was simply no way I could tuck it any further. In any event, she lost her temper, hit me, and left me embarrassed and hurt. Mother learned what had happened and never made me return.

  When I was a teen, Mother suggested I give ballet another chance, this time with a private male instructor. At the end of a lesson, he put his hands on my face and got extremely close to me. I thought he was going to kiss me, and I turned away. It was creepy. I told Mother, who stopped the lessons right then and there.

  Mother, bless her heart, was always trying to make a lady of me. At the same time she was fiercely protective. Joseph, on the hand, was more interested in activating my career. If it weren’t for him, I would never have received national attention for something I did on my own.

  On the set of Good Times.