Michael Jackson Shirtless: An Experiment

My most popular blog post ever was about some shirtless pictures that were snapped of Barack Obama about 18 months before he won the presidency. To this day, I get more hits from people searching for "obama shirtless" or "obama pecs" than everything else - combined.

So I thought I'd do a little experiment to see if a person's fame always covaries with people's desire to see that person shirtless.

To test this hypothesis, Michael Jackson is the perfect person at the perfect time. At this moment, he is by far the most famous person in the world. At this moment, he is also probably one of the last people anyone *should* want to see shirtless.

In an attempt to mitigate the callousness of this endeavor, I've chosen a picture that won't gross anyone out. A picture of the Jackson 5 shirtless when they were still just a group of fairly normal-looking kids. A pic that isn't intended to be the least bit sexual:


...Afro-wholesome, ain't it?