Dolly Parton Says She Modeled Her Look After ‘the Town Tramp’

Dolly Parton doesn’t care what other people think about her style. Appearing on the WorkLife with Adam Grant podcast earlier this month, the Grammy Award winner, 76, revealed the worst advice she’s received throughout her legendary career, and it all had to do with how she opted to model her look “after the town tramp.”

Asked about the advice she has received throughout her decades-long career in country music, the “9 to 5” singer revealed that “the main advice that people wanted to give me was to change my look.” Parton said people have told her “to go simpler with my hair and the way that I dress. Not to look so cheap, nobody was ever going to take me seriously, they would say.” However, Parton wasn’t so easily swayed, the singer going on to explain the origins of her signature style.

“The way I look and the way I looked then was a country girl’s idea of glam, just like I wrote in my ‘Backwoods Barbie’ song. People wanted me to change, they thought I looked cheap. But I patterned my look after the town tramp,” Parton shared. “Everybody said, ‘She’s trash.’ And in my little girl mind, I thought, ‘Well, that’s what I’m going to be when I grow up.’ It was really like a look I was after. I wasn’t a natural beauty. So, I just like to look the way I look. I’m so outgoing inside in my personality, that I need the way I look to match all of that.”

This is far from the first time Parton has addressed her appearance. The country music icon has famously proclaimed on numerous occasions, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!” She also previously stated that she looks “just like the girls next door … If you happen to live next door to an amusement park.” Parton also once stated, “I’m no natural beauty. If I’m gonna have any looks at all, I’m gonna have to create them.”

Amid the ongoing conversations about her iconic style, the Run, Rose, Run artist has also been at the center of plenty of rumors. Back in January of this year, Parton took on some of those rumors head-on, revealing during a stop on Today with Hoda and Jenna that the long-standing rumor that she had an insurance policy for her breasts was is “not true.” Instead, Parton said the rumor was sparked from a joke “years ago” after she “said, ‘Well maybe I should get my boobs insured since I’m famous for them.’ But it was just a joke. I didn’t do that.”