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Despite being famous for more than 50 years now, Dolly Parton has been remarkably good at keeping some things secret. Her personal life? She's got a husband, but he's hardly ever seen. What she looks like without makeup or even natural makeup? Ha, that's a good one. What's her real hair look like? Pfft, not a clue. Who even does her hair? We! Don't! Know!
But there is one critical thing we do know about her, and it is this: Dolly Parton lives for a wig. She has been wearing them her entire professional career, which spans way back into the '60s. The reasons for this are quite practical. First, Parton has spoken openly about her fine hair, and how she understood from a young age what would happen to it if it was styled, dyed, and manipulated every single day. Also, the wigs save her a lot of time. "It's so handy, and I'm always so busy," she told Jimmy Fallon in 2014. For a woman with a stage persona that's nothing less than grand, of course wearing wigs would be easier. You can just plop one on and go. Back in 1977, when Barbara Walters asked Parton how long it takes for her to do her hair, she replied: "I don't know — 'cause I'm never there!"
Parton has been wearing wigs for so long that they're part of her public persona, which she doesn't want to veer from after decades of crafting it so perfectly. "It's important because I don't want someone to see me and be disappointed," Parton told the Associated Press in 2003. "It got to be fun for me, a conversational piece. But this is how I think I look the best. I'm not a natural beauty, and this is just the look I chose."
The Queen of Country has decades upon decades of experience rocking hairpieces, wearing wigs through trends like '60s bouffants, '70s Farrah Fawcett feathering, and even '80s mullets. Click through to see how her hair has evolved through the years.
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