The country music legend Dolly Parton is speaking out this week to reveal that she was physically disciplined in her youth over her fashion choices by her grandfather, who was a preacher.
In a groundbreaking moment on this day in 1978, Dolly Parton became the first country singer to grace the pages of Playboy magazine. pic.twitter.com/31uwgdDwyQ
— Eric Alper
(@ThatEricAlper) October 5, 2023
Parton ‘Whipped’ By Grandfather
“I was willing to pay for it,” Parton, 77, told The Guardian. “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.”
Decades later, Parton wrote about this in her 2011 song “The Sacrifice,” which she said “kind of sums it up. It says, ‘I was gonna be rich no matter how much it cost / And I was going to win no matter how much I lost / Down through the years I’ve kept my eye on the prize / And you ask if it’s worth the sacrifice.’ I think it is, for me.”
Check out that song in the video below.
Parton went on to say that her signature style was inspired by the local “town tramp.”
“She was flamboyant. She had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails. 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,” Parton recalled. “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.’”
The young Queen Dolly Parton, 1960
Nancy Barr pic.twitter.com/IC6bRH167R
— Harvey G. Cohen (@CultrHack) October 9, 2023
‘To Thine Own Self Be True’
Parton’s family weren’t the only ones who took issue with her fashion choices, as record executives did as well.
“I’ve always been true to myself,” she explained. “That was what my mama always used to say: ‘to thine own self be true’. I put a lot of stock in that. Everything I do, whether it’s my personality, how I conduct myself and business, or whatever, if I do it my way, according to what I understand and believe, there’s a strength in that. You can think, ‘I can stand by this, I can live by this.’”
While Parton valued the opinions of others, she “never cared so much” that it stopped her from being herself.
Though Parton has retired from touring, she’s still as busy as ever writing new music.
“I’ve been writing since I was seven years old,” she said. “I’ve always got something around to write on – chewing gum papers, napkins in a restaurant – I never know when an idea is going to hit me, and I do not like to lose them because usually they don’t come back. I’m sure I’ve lost so many great ideas because I didn’t have pen and paper.”
Dolly Parton wrote 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You' on the same day.
ON THE SAME DAY. pic.twitter.com/UMzV8hRFmN— Eric Alper
Parton Stays Out Of Politics
In this same interview, Parton revealed that she refrains from speaking out about politics “because you’re going to lose half your audience. Even within my own family, especially the last few years since Trump and Biden, all that, it’s like we can’t even go to a family dinner any more. Especially if people are drinking – they get in a damn fight at the table.”
“Don’t get so trapped where if you’re a Republican, you got to be this way, if you’re Democrat, you got to be that way. You’re not allowed to think nothing else,” she continued. “Well, how crippling is that? I’ve got as many Democrats as I do Republicans as fans, and I’m not going to insult any of them because I care about all of them. I ain’t that good a Christian to think that I am so good that I can judge people. That’s God’s job, not mine. So as far as politics, I hate politics. Hate politics.”
“I never quite understood why we have to let religion and politics and things like that stand in the way of just being good human beings.”
Dolly Parton 2022 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Award Recipient pic.twitter.com/URqpaIHJ3e— Jerry Whitney (@theharpoonman) October 18, 2022
We live in a time when countless celebrities love to lecture the rest of us about politics, typically from the liberal side, so Parton’s apolitical stance is a refreshing one. In the end, we love Parton just the way that she is, and we hope she never changes!
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