There’s a reason why country star Dolly Parton is all dolled up all the time — after years of hiding her real hair under elaborate wigs and her face under elaborate makeup, the 72-year-old has a reputation to uphold! “It’s important because I don’t want someone to see me and be disappointed,” she said in 2003, before quipping, “What they’re seeing reflects the phony that I am.”
As the Associated Press reported at the time, Dolly started wearing wigs years ago once she realized her naturally fine hair wouldn’t behave when it was dyed and teased. Now she has a dozen wigs on hand at any given time. “It got to be fun for me, a conversational piece,” she said. “But this is how I think I look the best. I’m not a natural beauty, and this is just the look I chose.”
The “I Will Always Love You” singer has always been hilariously frank about her cosmetic enhancements. “If I see something saggin’, baggin’, or draggin’, I’m [gonna] have it nipped, tucked, or sucked!” she once famously said. And when she appeared at a senior center dedication earlier this month in her Sevier County, TN hometown, she joked that she looks like a million bucks only because she has spent a million bucks to look that way.
“Part of the magic is that I look so totally artificial but I am so totally real,” Dolly said in 2003. She also explained that she can put on her wig and makeup in under a half-hour if need be, and she said she would never step out of the house without them. “Unless my husband [Carl Dean] is dying of a heart attack, and even then I would think about it,” she added.
Not even Ted Miller, her longtime business manager, had seen Dolly looking anything less than glamorous by that point. “Nor will I ever,” he said. “Dolly is Dolly. She never steps out unless she’s complete. She may sleep in it. I assume Carl Dean has seen her not in full-regalia.”
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