Happy Birthday to Dolly Parton! Today she’s 80 years old.
Dolly has always been one of a kind, but her iconic style didn’t just fall from the rhinestone-studded sky. A throwback interview is making the rounds online — and it’s pure gold.
Turns out, Dolly’s look was inspired by a woman from her childhood that her mother really didn’t want her looking up to.
“We didn’t go to town that much, but when I would, I would go to see her,” Dolly recalled, referring to a local woman she found absolutely mesmerizing. “She had these long red fingernails, wore bright lipstick, she had peroxide blonde hair, tight clothes, short… and I thought, she is the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
Her mom, however? Not so impressed. “My mother said, ‘Oh, she’s just trash. She’s just a tramp.’ And I thought, that’s what I want to be when I grow up,”
That bold, bedazzled look would go on to define her career — from big hair to even bigger personality — and inspire countless others along the way. Dolly has never shied away from her love of glam, once famously saying, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
All these stories resurfacing for Dolly’s birthday are fun to watch. But this one hits differently — because it reminds us that the Queen of Country didn’t just break the mold, she chose a completely different one and ran with it in high heels.
And we’re all better for it.