In the late 1970s, Dolly Parton sat with Barbara Walters for an interview that could have gone off the rails. Instead, the country music queen handled every question with class and grace.
During the interview, which was aired on ABC in 1978, Walters asked Parton about her glamorous appearance and exaggerated image, at one point instructing her to stand up to show her curvy figure. Walters even asked Parton for her measurements.
“You don’t have to look like this,” Walters said, before asking the singer if she felt like she was a “joke” with her “blonde wigs” and “extreme clothes.”
Parton did not take offense and instead set the record straight on her persona.
“It’s certainly a choice,” Parton, then 32, replied. “I don’t like to be like everybody else.”
She continued, “I’ve often made this statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do. So, I just decided that I would do something that would at least get the attention. Once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked and all that, then they would see there was parts of me to be appreciated.”
“I’m very real where it counts, and that’s inside,” the “‘Jolene” singer added. “As far as my outlook on life and the way I care about people and the way I care about myself and the things that I care about. But I just chose to do this, and it’s show business is a money-making joke, and I’ve just always liked telling jokes, you know.”
Walters then asked Parton, “But do you ever feel that you’re a joke, that people make fun of you?”
Parton admitted that she knew people made fun of her, but that the joke was on them.
“But actually all these years the people, you know, has thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually been on the public,” she said. “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time or I make more jokes about myself than anybody … Like I say, I am sure of myself as a person. I’m sure of my talent and I’m sure of my love and for life and that sort of thing. I’m very content. I like the kind of person that I am. So I can afford to piddle around and diddle around with makeups and clothes and stuff because I am secure with myself.”
Parton died on Aug. 25 at age 80. She kept up with her glittery glam image for her whole life— decades after that interview with Walters. The beloved singer was known for her humor and was the first to crack jokes about her glamorous looks.
According to The Guardian, Parton once talked about all of the money she spent on her clothes, makeup, and hair, joking, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
She also once said, “I describe my look as a blend of Mother Goose, Cinderella and the local hooker!”
“I love being artificial,” Parton also said. “I think there’s a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real, but look so artificial at the same time.”
Nearly 50 years after her interview with Walters, Parton is remembered for her wit, grace, and big heart. But it was also the way she responded to that loaded question in 1978 that showed what made her so unforgettable.
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