Paris Jackson, the middle child and only daughter of Michael Jackson, says she was the late music star’s favorite when growing up.
“When I was a kid, I was with my dad and my two brothers,” the 18-year-old fashion-world figure tells columnist and author Candace Bushnell in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar magazine. “Growing up, I was treated as the favorite because I was the only girl,” she says. “I was the princess; I was perfect in my dad’s eyes.”
She and older brother Prince, 20, whom she calls “my rock, my best friend,” are Michael Jackson’s children with nurse Debbie Rowe, to whom Michael was married for three years. The couple never lived together. Youngest sibling Blanket, 15, was born via an unidentified surrogate mother.
The children were home-schooled, limiting their socialization, Jackson says, explaining that, “[The] only interactions I’d ever had were with family members or other adults.” At age 12, she says, she “didn’t have social skills. I had to force myself to learn so fast.” She added: “For the past six years, I’ve been learning how to communicate. And I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
Jackson, in addition to being a style icon on magazine covers and elsewhere, maintains steady communication with her 1.29 million Twitter followers and 1.1 million Instagram followers, alerting them to topical, often political issues such as women’s rights. “If there were to be a suggestion of an idea that women would be controlling what men do with their bodies, it would be World War III,” she tells Bushnell.
She goes on to say, “I know there are a lot of people who would feel very blessed to be in my position, so I want to use it for important things. I have a couple of ideas. I have a lot of ideas, but I’m still trying to figure out the right way to do it. I mean, I’m 18. I can’t have it all together, but I do have a plan.”
