I think when they think of Michael Jackson, the "bad" pictures pop up first, I think you know the ones I'm talking about, there was a thread about it.
But even when faced with pictures that show his...(for want of a better word) beauty, they still deny it, and maybe say something like "He looked good when he was black". Yes, that's right but he looked amazing through the 90s as well.
He had a few of "bad" pictures in the 2000s, but that was to do with his hairstyle more than anything.
I think if he'd of kept the jheri curls, people wouldn't think of him as "ugly" or anything, because he looked fabulous in the This Is It rehearsals.