On the first day Parton arrived in country music’s capital, she met Carl Dean, an asphalt paver. They would marry two years later, in 1966. Throughout their long marriage, Dean shunned the spotlight and did not tour with her, though he would be a muse for many of her greatest hits, including “Jolene,” which was inspired by a red-haired bank teller’s crush on Dean.
‘THE DOLLY IMAGE’
Her own appearance was the object of intense interest. Initially embarrassed, she eventually found the humor in frequent questions about her extravagant dress sense and generous figure.
She dismissed rumors that her breasts were insured and laughed off periodic rumors that she was bedridden due to their weight, telling People magazine: “Well, they are heavy, but they haven’t crippled me yet.”
Parton patterned her signature look on a woman she would see walking around her Tennessee hometown in tight skirts and high heels, with red nails, red lipstick and peroxided hair. “I thought she was beautiful. But everybody said, ‘She’s trash!’” Parton wrote in her 2023 book “Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones.” “I laughed and said, ‘Well, if that’s trash, that’s what I want to be when I grow up!’”
But as much as she embraced her signature look, she also viewed it as distinct from herself. “I look one way and am another,” she told Ladies’ Home Journal in 1982. “It makes for a good combination. I always think of ‘her,’ the Dolly image, like a ventriloquist does his dummy. I have fun with it. I think, what will I do with her this year to surprise people? What’ll she wear? What’ll she say?”
She also expressed the wish that her appearance would serve to sell, rather than overshadow, her talent.
