Dolly Parton Spilled The Real Reasons We Never See Her Makeup-Free

Dolly Parton wouldn't be the same without her big, Southern hair, rhinestone outfits, and glamorous makeup. That's the stage persona who took the country world by storm more than half a century ago. And she isn't about to change any of it. Barring emergencies and death, she has no intention of leaving her home without a full face on. To ensure that doesn't have to happen, Parton goes to bed with makeup on. Problem solved.

Parton's fascination with glamour has nothing to do with hiding her age. She was always like that. Growing up poor in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, she used her creativity to look her most glamorous. One strategy was to mix and match clothes from different family members to achieve unique looks. But she also turned to the outdoors. "I used to squash up honeysuckle blossoms to make perfume," she wrote in her 2023 memoir, "Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones." The woods offered plenty of makeup ops, too.

"Pokeberries! Pokeberries were major because you could mash them up and make a stain that — boy! — takes forever to come off," she wrote. What for some was a poisonous wild plant, for Parton was lipstick, blush, and nail polish. The kitchen also offered endless options. Burned matches to fill in eyebrows and flour as face powder were a few examples. "Kids make do," she wrote. If Parton's difficult childhood didn't stand in her way of standing out, nothing will. At least nothing within her control.  

Dolly Parton would leave her home with a bare face in a very specific circumstance. "Death! You'd just have to see me laid out on a stretcher," she joked in a 2023 interview with People. That would be the most extreme scenario, but she would make exceptions for life-or-death situations involving her husband, Carl Thomas Dean. "No, if my husband was sick, or if there was an emergency, of course, I would," she clarified.

That might not need to happen because she has always been prepared for the worst. That's why she started wearing makeup to bed. "When I arrived in LA in the '80s, I started sleeping with my makeup on, partly because of the earthquakes," she wrote in "Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones." The chances of cameras being around during an emergency in Los Angeles were too big to risk it. "I'm going to be ready to go!" she concluded.

Parton continued the practice even after she moved back to Tennessee. As it turns out, she also has a different reason for preferring to always look her best. "I don't want to go to bed looking like a hag with Carl!" she wrote. Besides, there are other pros to the habit of never leaving the house looking at least decent. "If I got arrested for a bad tag or whatever, I don't want a mugshot looking like some of the stars I've seen," she told People.

Dolly Parton has turned to modern medicine for help with looking her best. And she isn't afraid to give credit where credit is due. "People always say I look happy, and I say, 'Well that's the Botox,'" she joked in a 2016 interview on Today. "So, you gotta have good lighting, good makeup, and good doctors, that's my secret." Besides Botox, Parton has also admitted to getting other plastic surgeries. 

If something doesn't make her feel good, Parton sees no place for it. "I have nips and tucks and trims and sucks, boobs and waist and butt and such, eyes and chin and back again, pills and peels and other frills, and I'll never graduate from collagen," she wrote in her 1994 book, "Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business" (via Us Weekly). She has no regrets about any of it, although she worries about unexpected side effects, like hematomas and excessive swelling that can come with Botox and fillers.

When that happens, she has to adjust her work schedule, which is hard when you're as busy as Parton. "It means that instead of being back at work in two weeks, it's a month," she told Saga in 2023. She is also careful not to go overboard. And she keeps her cosmetic procedures simple. "I try to do just little bits at a time — I don't do like really big stuff," she said on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2023.