On the topic of people infantilizing Michael…which is something I’ve noticed a lot on TikTok and in general being a fan for a long time. His voice, his interests, and his personality are constantly being interpreted as a sign he was mentally another age. The whole Peter Pan syndrome thing (which is a fictional disorder btw) or the belief Michael had a child’s brain in a man’s body are literally just theories based on assumptions. Michael was a grown adult: a brilliant musical genius…a complex human who could be complicated just like everyone else.
So many fans treat him like a perfect god incapable of having any faults, yet refuse to acknowledge his autonomy as a grown man. An adult man who cussed, had mature relationships, and who wasn’t an overgrown baby that fits their innocent projections. It’s one thing to acknowledge Michael’s childhood and how environmental factors shaped his development, but it’s another thing to deny him of his humanness altogether.
The way Michael chose to heal from his traumas or express his inner child doesn’t automatically mean he was a specific “mental age.” Escapism through play, creativity, and imagination aren’t signs that his brain was operating at a specific level. Finding safety in interests and building your own reality creates comfort and stability, especially after growing up in an unstable environment. I know there’s certain language used in fandom culture just for fun, but there really are people who reduce Michael to a one dimensional, naive person. As if he wasn’t this worldly man full of experiences and knowledge that was capable of making his own decisions.
Some fans may not understand the implications with how they view Michael, thinking it helps combat the false allegations, but that level of infantilization can have negative effects. If anything, that rhetoric is often fuel for guilters who theorize Michael was “out of touch with reality” or a predator who believed he was a kid himself. It’s also similar to how tabloids viewed him as “weird” or “stunted” just for how he chose to have fun/decompress. I feel like Michael deserves to be treated with the humanity that he was deprived of and not have every aspect of his life sensationalized. This infantilizing mindset is harmful, not just to Michael, but to any adults who don’t conform to the strict rules of social normalcy. This happens a lot to adults with trauma or neurodivergent disorders, but any person can be mislabeled based on social stigma.
Adults who seem “different” from social pressures often face stereotypes about their emotional complexity, sexual behavior, life experiences, and overall abilities. This mindset reflects a societal focus on linear development and pressures for adulthood to look a certain way (for example telling people to “grow up”). Assigning age levels to certain interests/behavior can create negative biases, such as the ones that surrounded Michael as black man. No one should be falsely judged for how they express joy or having interests that bring genuine happiness.
Michael was much more than a “child in a man’s body” and that type of language is very reductive. Michael was very clear in how he drew the line between “child-like” and “childish,” in his own words. There’s also a very strong racial component to this phenomenon, as Michael may not fit the stereotypes of what a black man should be like, so people tend to create their own projections and treat him like a child instead. There’s just so much more to his art, personality, philosophy, and his legacy as a black artist that gets ignored when he gets infantilized on such a level.
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