Little Known Things About Dolly Parton—The Number of Wigs She Owned To Her Favorite Birthday Treat
From the extraordinary amount of wigs she owned to one of her biggest fears, these are a few things you might not know about Dolly
Key Takeaways
- Dolly Parton owned hundreds of wigs and kept show wigs in a bus cabinet.
- She often avoided rides, citing motion sickness and claustrophobia.
- She preferred chess pie for birthdays and often slept in her makeup.
After nearly six decades of life in the spotlight, there’s very little about Dolly Parton that wasn’t public knowledge. Although she did keep her personal life with her husband private—and nobody truly knows what she looked like without one of her legendary blonde wigs—there aren’t many secrets when it comes to Dolly Parton.
However, as much as you may know about the country icon, there remain a few well-kept secrets and little known facts about the singer, from the number of wigs she held owned to her preferred birthday dessert.
She lost a Dolly lookalike contest
Nobody did Dolly quite like Dolly Parton herself, but did you know that in 2009 the singer lost a Dolly lookalike contest?
“True,” Parton said when asked. “At a Halloween contest years ago on Santa Monica Boulevard where all the guys were dressed up like me and I just overexaggerated my look and went in and just walked up on stage. … I didn’t win. I didn’t even come close, I don’t think.”
She doesn’t like rollercoasters
Despite having a theme park named after her, Dolly Parton was not a fan of roller coasters. In fact, she often avoided them—even the ones in Dollywood.
“I don’t like to ride the rides, everybody knows that about me,” Parton once shared. “I have a tendency to have motion sickness. And then I’m a little bit claustrophobic. I don’t like to be closed in. And I just think ‘Well, I just have too much to lose.'” She joked, “My boobs could fly out, my hair could fall off. Any number of things could happen to me on those rides.”
She later related a memory from childhood that informed her dislike for the ride, saying,, “I used to get sick on the merry-go-round as a kid on the playground,”
Dolly had hundreds of wigs
It’s a well-established fact that Dolly Parton was a fan of wearing wigs over showing her natural hair, but did you know that she had hundreds available to her? She initially started wearing wigs in the 1960s because she was tired of badly damaging her natural hair by bleaching and teasing it.
When asked how many wings she has, she responded, “Oh, heavens, I have no idea. I can’t really count them all. I always make a joke and say, ‘I wear one almost every day, so I must have at least 365!’”
As for where she stored them when going on the road, Parton had a system: “I have a cabinet where I carry all the show wigs. I travel, when I’m on tour, with Cheryl Riddle, who is my hairdresser. But we always have a cabinet in the back of the bus to carry show wigs.”
She didn’t often eat birthday cake
Birthday cake is generally an essential part of everybody’s annual celebrations, but it was never too important to Dolly Parton. While she didn’t enjoy the tasty dessert, the singer shared her go-to preference in place of birthday cake.
“I don’t eat much cake,” she noted. “I usually have pie on my birthday. My favorite pie is chess pie.”
Chess pie is a classic southern dessert made combining pie crust, with a dense, sugary and gooey filling as well as a sugary top crust, which sounds like a delicious alternative!
Dolly slept in her makeup
Dolly Parton was known for dramatic makeup that always included a bold eyeshadow, long lashes and a bright lip color to match. But while most people remove their makeup at night and reapply in the morning, Dolly had a different method.
“I started sleeping with my makeup on, partly because of the earthquakes,” Parton wrote in her book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones. “I thought, ‘I’m not heading out on the streets without makeup in case there are cameras out there! I’m going to be ready to go!’ I don’t want to go to bed looking like a hag with Carl. It doesn’t matter when you clean your face, as long as you clean it once a day.”
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