Dolly Parton is sharing the inspiration behind her fashion choices.
In a new interview, the 77-year-old country music icon revealed that she based her over-the-top appearance and outfits based on the “town tramp” – a local woman in her town that wore high heels and tight skirts.
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“She was flamboyant. She had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails,” Dolly shared with The Guardian. “She had high-heeled shoes, little floating plastic goldfish in the heels of them, short skirts, low-cut tops, and I just thought she was beautiful.”
Dolly continued, “When people would say, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash,’ I would always say, ‘Well, that’s what I’m gonna be when I grow up.’”
Dolly loved the way this woman dressed and she used to copy her styles – and her father used to physically punish her for her outfit choices.
“I was willing to pay for it,” Dolly said. “I’m very sensitive, I didn’t like being disciplined – it hurt my feelings so bad to be scolded or whipped or whatever. But sometimes there’s just that part of you that’s willing, if you want something bad enough, to go for it.”
Dolly also said that growing up, all the women in her family and the women in her Tennessee town spent their lives at home and taking care of children, but Dolly knew from a young age that she “did not want for [herself].”
“My mom and my aunts – I grew up with women knowing how to be good mothers, but that was just not what I felt God had in mind for me,” Dolly recalled. “Because somebody’s got to entertain those people, to write songs about them.”
She continued, “I can write a song as if I had a house full of kids, I can write a song as if I’ve got a cheating husband, even though I never did. But I know what it’s like; I’ve seen it, been around it. There’s no thing in this world that’s foreign to me, that I don’t get or understand.”
Once she got into the music business, Dolly said that many record execs begged her to change her look, but she refused.
“I’ve always been true to myself,” Dolly explained. “My look came from a very serious place. That’s how I thought I looked best. Sometimes that’s worked for me, sometimes it can work against you. It took me probably years longer to be taken serious, but I wasn’t willing to change it, and I figured if I had the talent, it’d show up sooner or later.”
In another recent interview, Dolly revealed the hysterical reason why she declined an invitation to have tea with Princess Catherine!