Paris Jackson has responded to negative comments about her body hair that were left underneath a tribute to her late father, Michael Jackson, on his 65th birthday.
On Tuesday (29 August), 25-year-old Jackson posted a video to her Instagram account to honour her father by sharing her favourite memories of him. “Please don’t use a man you have never met as an excuse to abuse, manipulate, and harass his daughter (who you also have never met),” the video’s caption read.
The “Thriller” singer died from a cardiac arrest as a result of a propofol overdose in 2009 at the age of 50.
In the video, Jackson starts out with her hair down and then casually throws it up into a messy bun, at which point she exposes her underarm hair. While some commenters were proud of Jackson for her “strong” and “kind” tribute to her late father, others decided to focus on her unshaven underarms.
“Shaving arms is a kind of cleanliness,” one commenter wrote. “You made this whole video just to show you don’t shave your armpits,” another commenter wrote, implying Jackson made the tribute for personal attention.
A few hours after the post, Jackson took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to put a stop to the comments. “I wasn’t tying my hair up to show off my armpit hair,” her tweet began. “I’ve not shaved it for years and forget it’s there all the time. Get over yourselves.”
The tweet continued: “...I was pulling up my hair to show my glass cutting jawline.”
Since being posted Wednesday morning (30 August), the tweet has been viewed over 40,000 times. Many people took to the comments section to show their support for the King of Pop’s daughter. “I love your hair…” one comment began. “Although I shave, we as women are meant to have armpit hair, it’s there for a reason. If not, we wouldn’t have it. Oh the things we get influenced by when we grow up, to think of natural as weird and gross. Oh well. You rock!”
“If it’s not one thing it’s another,” a second commenter pointed out. “You didn’t need to explain yourself to begin with but people just love to assume and talk about things that don’t even concern them.”
In Tuesday’s video, Jackson explained that her father didn’t like his birthday and, “back when he was alive, he used to hate anybody acknowledging his birthday, wishing him a happy birthday, celebrating it”.
Her father took the secret of his birthday even further by not telling his children when it was, “because he didn’t want us to throw a party,” Jackson recalled.
The model also revealed in her video that people have often judged her for how she had previously chosen to celebrate the King of Pop’s birthday. “If you don’t wish someone a happy birthday via social media, it apparently means that you don’t love them, you don’t care about them,” she said, adding that when she doesn’t post about her dad’s birthday, “people lose their f**king minds”.
This is the second time this year the model has spoken about her father, as she also made a Father’s Day post referencing him back in June.
